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NUCLEAR
Exploring the Drama of Science, Faithfully
Clan Resources Acquires Additional Uranium
China working to restart talks with North Korea, Powell says
Killing for Christ : the Destructive Power of Faith
Bush's foreign policy harms U.S., world
EU nuke offer could help Iran get arms - think-tank
Nuclear scientist remains in custody
Iran Hints at Suspending Nuke Activities
Iran Rejects Nuclear Plan as Imbalanced, Europe Is Told
Tonnes of Iraqi explosives missing: UN agency
Pentagon says its unclear if explosives disappeared after
White House plays down loss of explosives in Iraq
Earthquakes, Typhoons Raise Nuclear Fears
Powell Stresses 'Urgency' of Talks With North Korea
N. Korea Calls U.S. Exercises 'War Action'
Powell declares North Korea a 'terrorist state'
Not all weapons are created equal
Franz J. T. Lee: World terrorism and fascism ... QUO VADIS?
Nuclear plant security attacked
Bipartisan push is on for an end to N-funds
Los Alamos Hopes for Land Transfer
Nuclear fuel removed from Hanford basins
MILITARY
Of the Evil Empire
Karzai Effectively Wins Afghan Vote as Count Nears End
Karzai Is Clear Winner, Afghan Vote Results Show
Second round of Darfur peace talks begin
New Guerrilla Factions Arise in Sudan Ahead of Peace Talks
Pacifist leader claims victory in Kosovo elections
Biological threat greater than nuclear or chemical
Israeli companies tout security gear
Top Army Official Calls for a Halliburton Inquiry
Colin Powell's Agenda in China
Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq
U.N.: Tons of Explosives Missing in Iraq
Insurgents Massacre 49 Iraqi Recruits
New Violence Flares in Iraq, After Executions Leave 49 Dead
Terrorists massacre 50 Iraqi soldiers
Insurgents in Latifiyah eager to battle British
Sharon: Gaza Plan Only Way to Security
Sharon Opens Parliamentary Debate on Removal of Settlements
Sharon Wins Cabinet Vote for His Gaza Pullout Plan
Israel targets resistance fighters' kin
Colombia Destroys Stockpiled Land Mines
US to keep small force in Bosnia after NATO-EU handover
India's military commanders meet to revamp war doctrine
Abu Ghraib Guards Kept a Log Of Prison Conditions, Practices
U.N. tallies new security costs
Army Captain Granted Reprieve After Suing U.S. Gvt.
Military Fighter Jet Drops Errant Bomb
Veteran says modern draft would include elite
"Explosive" Revelations
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Slow Pace of Pentagon's Courts Set Off Friction at White House
Anti-War Protesters' Trial Is Thursday
Soldier who sued not required to report for duty
Senators Offer Intelligence Plan
Bush Asks Leaders of Congress to Pass a 9/11 Bill Quickly
POLITICS
Operation Desert Fraud
Security Council members deny meeting Kerry
Kerry says social justice would guide presidency
Breyer Cites Doubt About Impartiality of Election Vote
Paul Wolfowitz defends his war.
Carter Tells Paper Bush Exploited 9/11
Suppression, Fraud and Breakdown:
ENERGY
Schwarzenegger Opens Stop on 'Hydrogen Highway'
OTHER
Bush Administration Backs Solar Development on Public Lands
California Puts Stem Cells to a Popular Test
Illinois Governor Seeks Vaccine Abroad
ACTIVISTS
Protesters make their case outside court
Group Assists Anti-War Tax Protesters
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Exploring the Drama of Science, Faithfully
NPR Morning Edition,
October 25, 2004
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4122442
Science certainly isn't short of drama. But filmmakers and playwrights often duck out when it comes to showing science as it really is. They tend to prefer a cartoon version that rarely bears much resemblance to the real thing.
The plays of Paul Mullin are different. He believes it's possible -- and dramatically necessary -- to explore and explain the science that drives his characters' lives. His body of work includes Louis Slotin Sonata, about the last days of a Canadian physicist on the Manhattan Project. In May 1946, during an experiment involving a spherical plutonium bomb core, Slotin's hand slipped, exposing him to dangerous levels of radiation. He died nine days later.
"Everyone in the room knew that at least Slotin, who was closest to the apparatus, was a dead man," Mullin tells NPR's Joe Palca.
"There's something deeply theatrical, deeply dramatic about somebody who knows, in an instant, that they're dead," he says.
Among Mullin's other projects is a play called The Sequence, about the race to sequence the human genome.
-------- business
Clan Resources Acquires Additional Uranium
Properties in Wyoming and Arizona
(BUSINESS WIRE)
Oct. 25, 2004
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20041025005521&newsLang=en
VANCOUVER, British Columbia------Clan Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:CLU) ("Clan") announces that the Company's wholly owned subsidiary, Energy Metals Corp (US), has signed agreements with two separate vendors to acquire 56 uranium properties in the States of Wyoming and Arizona. Many of these properties have seen extensive drilling by previous operators. These acquisitions establish the Company's strategic position as a significant property holder in the State of Arizona as well as providing key property positions in all of the three principal uranium districts of the State of Wyoming. These include 2 state leases in the Powder River Basin area, 4 properties in the Shirley Basin area, 6 state leases and 7 properties in the Red Desert or Great Divide district. Coupled with the Company's earlier acquisitions in Utah and Oregon, on completion of this transaction Clan will have had established itself as one of the largest holders of uranium properties in the United States.
The following is a summary description of the properties.
Wyoming Uranium Properties
Red Desert-Great Divide District:
The Antelope uranium property is located in the Red Desert of Wyoming, approximately 18 miles south of Jeffrey City, Wyoming. According to information provided by the vendor, uranium mineralization occurs in several roll fronts within the Browns Park Formation. Extensive drilling by Newpark Resources and others in the 1970's defined a global resource as of October 1979 of 15mm pounds at a grade of .07% U3O8. The estimate is considered to be reliable and relevant, but it does not use categories as defined in NI 43-101. The property was not drilled out at the time and little if any additional drilling has been done since. Preliminary evaluation suggests that parts of this resource may be amenable to ISL (in situ leaching) technology. This property was previously held by Cameco through the 2000 assessment year when it was dropped at a time of prevailing low uranium prices. The Company is in the process of acquiring all historical exploration and technical report data.
The JAB uranium property is located 5 miles west of the Antelope property. According to historical summary reports, Union Carbide and others have drilled in excess of 300 holes on the property on 50 foot centers along a strike length of 2 miles. Based on this drilling the historic resource, as calculated by Union Carbide, is over 3 mm lbs grading 0.071% U3O8. The estimate is considered to be reliable, but it does not use categories as defined in NI 43-101. The summary information on the property suggests that the deposit may be at least partially suitable for ISL recovery. Negotiations are underway for the acquisition by the Company of the extensive drill, metallurgical, and recovery testing database. The property was last held by Yellowstone Fuels, a subsidiary of U.S. Energy, through the 2000 assessment year when it was dropped at a time of low uranium prices.
The 800 acre Cyclone property is located approximately 6 miles north of the JAB property. According to historical summary information at least 800 closely spaced holes have been drilled to intercept the Battle Spring Formation at depths between 300 and 800 feet. Approximately 432,000 feet of drilling has been completed. In 1978 Wold Resources reported a total resource of slightly over 2,000,000 pounds averaging 0.13% U3O8. The estimate is considered to be reliable and relevant, but it does not use categories as defined in NI 43-101. Based on this summary information it is thought that the property may be amenable to ISL recovery. This property was held by Cameco through the 2000 assessment year when it was dropped; again, during a period of low uranium price. As with the Antelope and Jab properties the Company is in the process of acquiring a complete package of the technical data on the property.
The Twin Buttes property is located 18 miles due east of the JAB property. The historical reports indicate that this 680 acre property has seen several hundred closely spaced drill holes drilled on it. The Western Sheep Mountain property, approximately 14 miles north of the Antelope property, encompasses 480 acres and is adjacent to past uranium producing properties. The 180 acre Battle Spring property and the 440 acre Rocky Draw property are also in the immediate area. The Western Sheep Mountain property was held through assessment year 2003 by U.S. Energy Corp. The Battle Spring, Twin Buttes, and Rocky Draw properties were all most recently held by Cameco through the 2000 assessment year. The Battle Spring and the Rocky Draw have seen extensive close spaced drilling. As earlier mentioned with the above previously described properties, the Company is in the process to acquire data for these properties.
Shirley Basin District:
The 240 acre Midway and the 160 acre Moss Agate properties lie adjacent to past uranium producer properties within the heart of the Shirley Basin district. According to historical information close space drilling is present on both of these blocks.
The Laramie project is located about 20 miles southeast of the main production area of the Shirley Basin. This 500 acre project was held by Cameco through the 2000 assessment year. Based on previous information, this property has seen over 100 drill holes drilled on it.
State of Wyoming Uranium Mining Leases:
In addition to the aforementioned mining properties the property package includes ten (10) separate State of Wyoming Uranium Mining Leases encompassing a total of 4760 acres. These Mining Leases have an initial term of 10 years, renewable thereafter with production. Data acquisition for these mining leases is underway.
Arizona Uranium Properties
On acquisition of 35 Arizona properties the Company believes that it will become one of the largest holders of uraniferous breccia pipes in the Arizona Strip district. Historically, these targets consist of pipe-shaped breccias generally less than 1000 feet in diameter extending to depths in excess of 2000 feet containing uraninite and associated sulfide and oxide minerals of copper, iron, zinc, lead, silver, nickel, cobalt and other metals. Due to their small surface expression and high grade deep roots, these pipes do not require a large land holding to control the deposits thereby greatly reducing holding costs. These pipes are often clustered with several pipes occurring within a few miles of one another offering certain economies of scale in terms of exploration, development and production. The historical information indicates that most, but not all, of the vended projects have at least one or two drill holes. They were held most recently by International Uranium Corp. who relinquished them between 1999 and 2002.
The claim package includes 11 separate properties on the South Rim consisting of approximately 1100 acres of unpatented mining claims. It also includes an additional 20 separate and distinct pipe targets on an area referred to as the North Rim covering a total of more than 3,350 acres. In addition to these unpatented mining claims, several State of Arizona properties are included in the package.
The Wate property is held by an Arizona State Mineral Exploration Permit issued to the vendor. Application has been made to the State of Arizona to transfer this permit along with the others described herein to the Company. According to historical summary reports the 640 acre Wate project has previously identified resources of 1.12 million pounds at an approximate grade of 0.8% U3O8. The estimate is considered to be reliable, but it does not use categories as defined in NI 43-101. RME Partners Ltd. had submitted a preliminary mining plan of operation to the State of Arizona in 1993. The Company has a copy of this plan and is in the process of acquiring the detailed drill logs.
The 4 1/2 property has been approved for an Arizona State Mineral Exploration Permit which will be issued to the vendor within the next 60 days. Immediately following receipt of the Permit, an application will be made to transfer this permit to the Company. This 320 acre project has 9 deep drill holes in and around a breccia pipe. According to the prior reports the best intercept by RME Partners Ltd. on the property is 48.5 feet of 1.411% uranium. Information is not available as to whether this intercept is representative. Nor is information available to indicate if this intercept reflects the mean, range, or distribution of sample values.
According to historical reports the 320 acre Rose pipe exploration permit hosts a mineralized breccia pipe. Energy Fuels has drilled one hole in excess of 1500 feet deep. The Company has the drill log and is currently reviewing it with intentions to develop plans for further offset drilling.
The 320 acre Anderson area permit is adjacent to the Anderson Ranch property and, based on historic information, is believed to contain a small portion of the Anderson Ranch deposit. The property has numerous drill holes. The Company is currently in the process of acquiring the relevant drill data.
All resource estimates quoted herein are based on prior data and reports obtained and prepared by previous operators and information provided by the vendor. The Company has not done the work necessary to verify the classification of the mineral resource estimates. The Company is not treating the mineral resource estimates as a National Instrument 43-101 defined resource verified by a qualified person. The historical estimates should not be relied upon. These properties will require considerable further evaluation which Clan's management and consultants intend to carry out in due course.
In acquiring 29 of these uranium properties, the Company exercised its right of first refusal under a July 19, 2004 property purchase agreement with William M. Sheriff ("Sheriff"), of Wylie, Texas. Mr. Sheriff, who currently beneficially owns 8.63% or more of the issued and outstanding capital of the Company, will receive 1,250,000 common shares of the Company as consideration for 29 of the uranium properties described in this release. The shares shall be issued in tranches of 750,000 shares by December 31, 2004, 250,000 shares by March 31, 2005 and 250,000 shares by January 31, 2006.
In a separate agreement with a different vendor, the Company has agreed to issue 500,000 common shares as consideration for 27 uranium properties. The shares will be issued in tranches of 300,000 shares by December 31, 2004, 100,000 shares by March 31, 2005 and 100,000 shares by January 31, 2006. The vendor is at arms length to the Company.
The property acquisitions are subject to regulatory acceptance.
Clan Resources Ltd is a Canadian listed company involved in the mineral resource sector. Clan has adopted a strategy which will see the company focus largely on the acquisition, exploration and development of uranium assets as part of its long-term strategy to take advantage of the growth in U.S. and world-wide electrical energy demand. This increasing demand is occurring at a time when mine supplies are dwindling and inventories are being depleted.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF CLAN RESOURCES LTD.
"signed" Per: James G. G. Watt President and Director
THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS PRESS RELEASE.
-------- china
China working to restart talks with North Korea, Powell says
Knight Ridder Newspapers
BY RENEE SCHOOF
Oct. 25, 2004
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/world/10012126.htm
BEIJING - (KRT) - China is actively engaged in efforts to get North Korea back to talks on ending its nuclear weapons programs, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday after meeting China's top leaders in a one-day visit.
During the visit, Powell also urged China to keep an open mind about dialogue with Taiwan and announced that China and the United States would restart formal discussions on human rights.
China is reclusive North Korea's only significant ally and the host of talks among North Korea, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia on resolving the nuclear crisis. Powell visited Japan on Sunday and headed to South Korea later Monday to discuss ways of getting North Korea back to the negotiating table.
How to deal with North Korea has emerged as an issue in the U.S. presidential election, with Sen. John Kerry saying he'd hold direct as well as multilateral talks with North Korea, while President Bush says direct talks would undermine his six-party effort.
"China is a major provider of assistance to North Korea, both energy and other forms of assistance, and as a result of that I think China has considerable influence with North Korea," Powell said at a news conference. "What we agreed on today was the need for the six-party framework to continue, and for it to continue it has to meet."
Powell said he was confident that China was working to get the talks restarted. Senior Chinese and North Korean officials have met recently in Beijing and Pyongyang.
"I hope that as a result of our conversations today both of us will energize the other members of the six-party framework to resolve the outstanding issues that keep us from setting a date for a meeting," Powell said.
Powell met with President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing. Senior State Department officials, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, said the Chinese leaders felt as strongly as the U.S. government did about the need to restart the talks quickly.
"Based on what we heard we expect China will be working to try to see that the six-party talks are resumed in the next few months," one of the officials said.
Li said China wanted the United States to "go further to adopt a flexible and practical attitude on the issue," the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
North Korea insisted last week that the United States drop its "hostile policy" and meet other conditions before it would go back to the talks. Powell rejected those demands Saturday, saying all of North Korea's concerns could be addressed in the multinational discussions.
U.S. intelligence experts think North Korea possibly had one or two nuclear weapons and recently could have reprocessed plutonium for several more.
Powell told reporters that he encouraged China's leaders to "keep an open mind" and seize every opportunity to talk to the independently ruled island of Taiwan. The two sides haven't talked in years.
In a speech Oct. 10, Taiwan's National Day, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian offered to hold talks with China, but also described his island as a sovereign country. China's leaders didn't find Chen's speech "to be that forthcoming," Powell said.
Although Taiwan has been governed separately since China's civil war ended in 1949, China sees it as part of its territory and has threatened to retake it by force if it formally declares independence. The United States also views Taiwan as part of China, but is obligated by law to help Taiwan defend itself.
Powell discussed China's record on human rights with China's top leaders and raised specific cases with the foreign minister.
Powell told reporters he asked Li to look into the case of New York Times researcher Zhao Yan, whom Chinese authorities detained last month and who faces unspecified charges. Powell said the U.S. government hoped Zhao could be released soon. Li replied that Zhao is a Chinese citizen and his case was being handled according to Chinese law.
Powell announced that the United States and China would restart formal discussions of human rights. He said China made progress in improving its protection of basic rights in 2002, but its rights violations increased last year. China broke off the talks earlier this year in anger over U.S. criticism.
Powell, who's visiting three countries in three days, took an unusual break for a little sightseeing. He visited the Song Dong An Plaza, a modern mall with such stores as Guess and a women's clothing store called Michael Klein Paris. He bought a small art set for one of his grandchildren and an inexpensive fountain pen.
Although the visit was supposed to be a chance to greet ordinary Chinese, plainclothes police surrounded him and kept most people away.
-------- depleted uranium
Killing for Christ : the Destructive Power of Faith
bellaciao.org
by WILLIAM A. COOK
25th October 2004
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3962
A pall hangs over this election, a shroud of darkness that oppresses the heart because its outcome guarantees no change, only the certainty of continued chaos if Bush should win and the unknown direction a Kerry victory might take, a direction that could continue the chaos America's mired in, a darkness, then, to appall. I read each day the crippling accounts of soldiers caught in a maelstrom of unseen death lurking on roof tops, in narrow alleys, behind cement walls and black windows, beneath tires littering the streets. I see pictures of burned out buses, sidewalks and curbs bathed with blood, faces twisted in pain, bits and pieces of flesh scattered about like fallen leaves, blown helter-skelter by the wind. Faces, I see suffering on so many faces, mothers weeping over their dying children, old women and men huddled in the debris left of their bulldozed home, medics carrying the lifeless body of a man whose hand rests beside his face held there by the torn shred of his sleeve, his arm gone, his body black with grime.
This is a world gone mad, a madness on all sides, the madness of greed that sees in oil the riches of Sultans and Kings, the madness of arrogant pseudo-philosophers who conjure beliefs of personal superiority that gives them license to conquer and enslave, the madness of ancient minds that dreamt of power and glory in covenants with gods, the madness of fanatics that fabricate fantasy out of indecipherable images lodged in pages of metaphors, the madness of little minds that grab onto faith as the golden ring that will bring them salvation, the madness of those born again to the child's world of impossible dreams forgoing in their new world the reality of this.
Today I read of depleted uranium, 1000 metric tons made from the deadly U238 isotope dropped on America's killing fields, that wafts on the wind like aerosol spray, a toxic death that sticks in human lungs, bringing a slow and painful death. I saw pictures of new born children bloated and bruised by scars, eyes missing, a nose of scar tissue and nostrils, no lips, the detritus of our advanced civilization scattered on hospital beds in Baghdad. I read of soldiers twisted in mind and spirit by no visible symptom except the phantom of our cursed nuclear waste that encircles them in their tank and haunts them the remainder of their lives. Our young return from this nightmare of devastation devastated themselves courtesy of our Commander in Chief. And I read today that 24,010 Americans have been evacuated with wounds and injuries from our "war" zones, that 37,000 innocent men, women, and children in Afghanistan and Iraq have died and more than 500,000 have suffered wounds. And I hear the silence, the deafening silence of indifference that our compassionate conservative leader offers to those who suffer the consequence of his acts, and feel with them the utter helplessness of their plight. And I wait for a word from Kerry that he, too, hears their pain, that he will stop the slaughter in Afghanistan and Iraq and Palestine ... and I wait in vain; there is no condemnation, no plan to end the conflicts, no recognition that states terrorize, no acceptance of the right of people to fight the oppressor, no confession of wrong waged against the innocent that had not the intention or the means to threaten America.
I have heard these men, both Bush and Kerry, attest to their deep rooted religious principles, the depth of their faith in the teachings of Jesus, comforting the citizenry that they are fit for the White House because they believe. But I see nothing of Jesus in their behavior, nothing of the compassion that attended his ministry, nothing of the inclusiveness of his teachings, nothing of the love he proffered as the binding source of peace throughout the world.
I look in vain for this Christ in the Christianity practiced by the right wing, fanatical sects that preach the Book of Revelation, reveling in the glory they perceive to be their reward if they destroy the enemies they identify as the enemies of God. I wonder where in this acclaimed Christian land of TV Evangelists and literalist ministers is there a man who acts as Christ would act? I see none. I see only a God forsaken Tele-Evangelist land of vitriol and bigotry where none could say I "love the Lord my God with my whole heart and mind and soul, and my neighbor as myself." They have buried the teachings of Jesus in the quagmire of a malevolent and malicious God of the Old Testament, a God that would order one Semitic tribe to exterminate another. We have not moved beyond the racist hatred that blotted the landscape 2500 years ago.
I would have thought the founding fathers' voices would have turned us against such barbarity, for they knew that such religions were anathema to the rights of the people and to the fledgling Democracy they desired to create. They expunged such organized zealots of religion from civil discourse precisely because they knew its inherent destructive nature. But, no, we have the airwaves turned into streams of venom that flow from the mouths of the heralded self-worshipers whose mantra is hatred for their fellow man, the likes of Pat Robertson, Pastor John Hagee, Franklin Graham, Hal Lindsey, and, now, even our blessed generals who defile the houses of worship not with coins but with cursed bigotry in the person of General Boykin.
I wonder how any person can stand against the tribes that follow these accursed men? What voice can reach the soul of men, if soul they still have after their life of crime, that has been lodged deep in their bloody wallets made fat with their racist hatred for their fellows whose only sin is their belief in a God different from their own? They mount their campaigns on fear, fear lodged in a word that defies definition because it slips and slides, nay, it slithers through meaning like molten lava over rock burying it beneath layers of hot and passionate rhetoric, a word without substance or sense, a word seething with diffidence, anxiety, suspicion, even horror, the word is faith. No word evokes more fear and mistrust; no word has caused more chaos and wanton destruction, as the Crusades and the Conquistadors, rampaging through Central America, attest; no word can put people in such a state of doubt that they acquiesce to prophets of doom century after century; no word has been and continues to be more destructive in the mouths of fanatics. That is the destructive power of blind faith!
Fanatics have a way, whether they be the Imams guiding Hamas or the robed ministers of Robertson's TV Club or the ultra right Zionists in Israel, with those who abdicate responsibility to think for themselves, those who hand over their minds and conscience to them as they thunder their prophetic curses in dramatic tirades, bathing their flocks in fear and loathing. These fanatics in America, who exist through the courtesy of a democratic secular system that tolerates their presence if not their message, fetter the minds of their laity with absolute truths generated out of myths, negating thereby the very semblance of democratic thought that is premised on individual responsibility; and the lambs they lead to slaughter do not know it. These fanatics defy the laws of the secular state by determining for their congregations what political party they must support, what candidates they must vote for, and what policies they must accept. And for this defiance they pay no taxes!
But it's worse than that. These same fanatics literally compel their congregants, on fear of eternal damnation in Hell's fire, to strap themselves in the swaddling clothes of death and bring that gift to all around them, to support terrorists in the occupied territories of Palestine, to proclaim an enemy identified in the Book of Revelation, an Arab enemy who worships in the Islamic faith. And for this incitement to murder they pay no taxes and suffer no incarceration. What else do we call it but killing for Christ, killing for Allah, killing for Yahweh!
This is our dilemma. We Americans pay the bill; they act in our name. How can we, who speak with the conviction of our conscience, hope to remove the hatred a Hagee or a Robertson breeds against God's creatures? The pictures I saw today of dead and dying children in Iraq, pictures too horrific to be put in main stream newspapers or shown on TV, pictures that cry to the human soul that the pain and suffering must stop also cry out to every true Christian that Jesus' teachings never allowed for such wanton slaughter. Yet these are the innocent victims of our fanatical dependence on the preaching of these men who sit safely ensconced on their splendid chairs amidst tall vases of flowers, smiling beatifically for the cameras.
How can we witness Bush's acceptance, indeed his encouragement, of Ariel Sharon's savagery and not condemn his acts as anathema to the teachings of the Christ he proclaims as his God? How can we suffer in silence the ferociousness of Sharon as he spreads his hatred and nihilism over the bloodied landscape of the unholy lands of ancient Palestine? Our indifference, our silence blessed the rape of Rafah in May, God's month of renewal; our indifference and our silence blessed a summer of slaughter in the season of God's increase; and today, our indifference and our silence acquiesce to a season of harvest that gathers in the dead and maimed in Gaza.
Where is the voice of America that should cry against these killing fields, these American supported killing fields, these murderous rampages that defile the love Jesus begged we have for our neighbor, a love equal to that we have for ourselves?
Where are the Priests, the Rabbis, the Imams, the quiet Buddha monks, all who claim to love humankind? Why does silence reign? Whose voice are we afraid of? Where are the voices of our leaders, where is Kerry, where is Dean, where is Edwards? Why do we hear words of condemnation when we witness the wanton slaughter in Beslan of children in school yet hear not a word when the IDF slaughters the children in the kindergarten in Jabaliya or our missiles miss their intended target and destroy the lives of innocent people? Does one mother's weeping reach our ear and another goes unheard? I would that every mother's cry would reach our ears as it rents the sky that we might know what Christ meant when he said, "Love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and mind and soul, and thy neighbor as thyself."
William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His new book, Psalms for the 21st Century, was published by Mellen Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook10222004.html
-----
Bush's foreign policy harms U.S., world
Mike Pence Columbus, Indiana
Decatur Daily Democrat.
October 25, 2004
http://www.decaturdailydemocrat.com/articles/2004/10/25/news/opinion/editorial02.txt
President Bush's two main reasons for going to war in Iraq have proved bogus. Despite exhaustive searches for over a year, the U.S. has found no weapons of mass destruction, and even the administration admits they have no evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaida or 9/11 - although Vice President Cheney likes to hint otherwise, for obvious political reasons. So now the rationale has basically morphed into, "Well, Saddam was a brutal tyrant who abused and murdered his citizens. Besides, we really want to bring democracy to Iraq."
I would feel a lot better about both of those reasons if U.S. foreign policy had a more impressive track record in its dealings with Saddam and similar dictators.
In the 1980s, the U.S. supported Hussein in his war with Iran, despite his well-known abuse of his citizens' human rights. That's bad enough, but then we continued to support him even after he used chemical weapons ("almost daily," according to our own intelligence reports) against Iran, and President Reagan sent a special envoy - none other than current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - to Baghdad to shake hands with Hussein and reopen diplomatic relations.
During the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. Department of Agriculture also provided taxpayer-guaranteed loans to Iraq for purchase of American commodities, allowing Hussein to put more of his resources into the war. What is even more reprehensible and unforgivable is that we still supported Hussein after his ruthless chemical attacks on the Iraqi Kurds in late 1987 and again in March of 1988 in the infamous murder of 5,000 villagers in Halabjah, the very attack that President Bush cited in justifying our invasion of Iraq.
Where did Iraq obtain these weapons of mass destruction? From the U.S., that's where. The Senate Banking Committee, in a 1994 investigation, found that in the 1980s, U.S. suppliers had shipped to Iraq, under Commerce Department license, dozens of chemical and biological agents, including anthrax, which the Pentagon later identified as key components of the Iraqi bio-warfare program. Why would we do such a thing? As usual, to further our own interests, not those of the people in the countries involved. Recently declassified documents show that U.S. priorities were "preserving access to oil and expanding our ability to project military power in the region" - the same goals of President Bush's current neo-con advisors, the guys who had designs on Iraq long before 9/11, according to several former Bush administration officials.
Many Bush supporters say that the current president had nothing to do with our policy in Iraq during the 1980s, and that's true. However, President Bush has appointed many of those involved in the debacle, like Rumsfeld, to positions of authority, so it's hard to believe that he disagreed with it. And what's worse is that President Bush has not learned anything from our experience of coddling brutal dictators. Right now we are following the same policy with the repressive regime in Azerbaijan. We give its government millions in military aid because it has oil and cooperates with us, allowing us to build bases and station troops. Meanwhile, its leaders oppress the people, conduct crooked elections, imprison and kill political opponents, and restrict religious freedom. The citizens can see that we support those who oppress them, so once again we breed hatred for American among the powerless in an oil-rich country. Sound familiar? Makes you wonder whether Azerbaijan will become tomorrow's Iraq.
The bottom line is that President Bush misled us into an unnecessary war that has cost the lives of more than 1,000 Americans and well over 13,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including children, who will die in the decades to come as a result of the radioactive depleted uranium we used in thousands of shells and bullets in both Gulf Wars.
You see, when the shells explode, the depleted uranium bursts into tiny particles, small enough to be inhaled. The highly toxic material contaminates the air and land of Iraq. Is it any wonder that cancer, miscarriage and deformity rates in Iraq skyrocketed after the first Gulf War? Or that thousands of U.S. soldiers suffer from the mysterious "Gulf War Syndrome?" The stuff remains radioactive for millennia. Innocent kids will die, and it's not a secret to the people of the Middle East.
I guess you could say the debacle hasn't done any good for our standing in the region or in the world. Neither has President Bush's program to invest billions in new nuclear weapons. It seems just a bit arrogant and hypocritical to spend that kind of money - which could more humanely be applied to insurance programs for 45 million uninsured Americans - to add to our massive stockpile of more than 10,000 nuclear warheads while we try to persuade Iran and North Korea to halt their nuclear programs.
It's all a result of a foreign policy that the decent citizens of this country would reject if they were consulted. Obviously those in power never consult us. Thank goodness we can vote them out.
Randy Hisner
Decatur
-------- europe
EU nuke offer could help Iran get arms - think-tank
Reuters
25 Oct 2004
By Louis Charbonneau
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L25481486.htm
VIENNA, Oct 25 (Reuters) - The nuclear technology the European Union has offered Iran could help it make an atomic bomb, not prevent it, a Washington-based think-tank warned.
The EU's "Big Three" -- France, Britain and Germany -- have offered Iran reactor fuel and help developing light-water reactor (LWR) technology if Tehran stops uranium enrichment, a process which can be used to make nuclear arms.
"LWRs no longer should be considered to be safe for any nation that might divert the reactor's fresh lightly-enriched fuel or the plutonium-laden spent fuel to make bombs," Henry Sokolski, head of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), wrote in the introduction to a 62-page report.
Sokolski, a former U.S. Pentagon official, said the report was prepared by "national authorities on nuclear chemistry, commercial nuclear power reactors, and nuclear weapons designs".
The United States believes Iran's nuclear programme is a front to make atomic weapons and has criticised the EU trio and Russia for engaging Iran on the issue. Instead it wants Tehran reported to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
Iran says it needs nuclear reactors to generate electricity and strongly denies it is trying to develop an atomic arsenal.
HIDE AND SEEK
LWRs use low-enriched uranium. Although this cannot be used to fuel uranium-based weapons, which need very highly-enriched uranium, the used fuel contains bomb-grade plutonium, which can be separated from the other chemicals and used in weapons.
Sokolski said the EU was wrong to assume that such activities could not be hidden from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran hid its nuclear programme from the IAEA for nearly two decades.
"Nations can chemically separate out -- reprocess -- the plutonium contained in spent reactor fuel in relatively affordable facilities that can be quite small, as little as 65 square feet, and therefore be easily hidden," Sokolski said.
The IAEA was not immediately available for comment.
The EU offer was an attempt to avoid reporting Iran to the Security Council after a IAEA meeting at the end of November.
Tehran rejected the offer, saying it will not give up its enrichment programme, but officials from Iran and the EU's "Big Three" will still meet on Wednesday to discuss the offer.
Sokolski said under present IAEA inspection procedures, a country determined to divert fuel for weapons had ample opportunities to do so.
He said the IAEA does not conduct real-time camera monitoring of fresh or spent fuel storage sites, but reviews tapes every 90 days. The IAEA plans to extend the review interval to one year from 90 days were unwise, Sokolski added.
"The IAEA should tighten its rules and inspections (and) instead of extending the interval in between reviewing camera tapes of fresh and spent fuel storage sites, the IAEA should move toward real-time surveillance," he said.
-------- india / pakistan
Nuclear scientist remains in custody
BBC
25 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3950173.stm
Judges in Pakistan have ruled that a top scientist arrested last year for allegedly being involved in leaking nuclear technology should have his detention extended for a further three months.
The scientist, Mohammad Farooq, worked at the research laboratory headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Mr Khan is seen as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb and has admitted selling the nation's nuclear secrets to other countries.
Mr Farooq is the only employee from the laboratory who remains in custody - more than 10 other scientists and officials originally held as part of the investigation have been released.
AQ Khan himself was pardoned earlier this year by the Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf.
-------- iran
Iran Hints at Suspending Nuke Activities
October 25, 2004
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran indicated Monday it may suspend some unspecified nuclear activities after European powers offered a package of incentives in return for Tehran's agreement to permanently give up uranium enrichment.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hasan Rowhani, told state television the government was still considering its response to the offer last week by Britain, Germany and France that included civilian nuclear technology and a trade deal.
"We are trying to choose the best course of work," he said.
The United States contends Iran has a covert program to produce nuclear weapons and has been lobbying for the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions. The offer by the European powers was an attempt to head off a confrontation.
Iran has repeatedly said it will never abandon enrichment, a technology that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors as well as nuclear weapons. But on Monday Rowhani suggested some flexibility in the negotiations with the Europeans.
"Indefinite doesn't mean permanent," Rowhani said. "They (the Europeans) called for indefinite suspension as long as talks are under way. They say, for instance, that if negotiations are to last six or seven months, then Iran should not violate the suspension for that period."
He did not elaborate and it was not clear what Iran would suspend. The country is suspending the actual enrichment of uranium but is continuing with related activities, such as the building of nuclear centrifuges, despite the IAEA's request to stop it.
Iran insists its nuclear activities are peaceful and geared solely toward generating electric power.
Britain, Germany and France have warned most European countries would back Washington's call to refer Iran's nuclear dossier to the U.N. Security Council if Iran does not abandon all enrichment activities by Nov. 25, when the IAEA board of governors is due to meet in Vienna.
In London on Monday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the world would insist Iran complies with IAEA.
"I don't think dialogue has been exhausted on this," Blair said. "But we do need the Iranians to understand that the international community does not find it acceptable that they develop nuclear weapons."
Iran is due to resume talks with Europeans on Wednesday.
On Sunday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi described the European proposal as "unbalanced," but said they had "chosen the correct path of dialogue."
Rowhani said Iran was cooperating with the IAEA to prove that America "lies."
"That we cooperate with the IAEA is not because of Europe, but to make clear to the world that the United States lied when it said Iran was covertly seeking nuclear weapons," Rowhani said. "When we cooperate with the agency, it becomes clear to the world that U.S. accusations have been baseless.
"No country can force any other country to stop an activity which is its legitimate right, even for one hour. Therefore suspension, of any extent and duration, will be a voluntary Iranian decision," said Rowhani, who is also secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
Government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said the Cabinet had approved a draft law banning the proliferation, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons, and it will be sent to parliament.
--------
Iran Rejects Nuclear Plan as Imbalanced, Europe Is Told
October 25, 2004
By NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25iran.html?pagewanted=all
TEHRAN, Oct. 24 - Iran on Sunday rejected a proposal by Britain, Germany and France to suspend its uranium enrichment program and urged those countries to offer a "more balanced" proposal.
During a meeting on Thursday in Vienna, the three European countries asked Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program in return for a guarantee to help Iran build a light-water power reactor and to provide a supply of reactor fuel.
"The European proposal is their preliminary proposition and is not definitive, but it is unbalanced," said Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Assefi. "We need to reach a balanced agreement, one that would eliminate Europeans' worries, if there are any, and one that would recognize our rights within the nonproliferation treaty.''
Mr. Assefi said Iran was negotiating with other countries over its nuclear program. "Each country has its role and power," he said. "We have not limited our negotiations to the three European countries, and we are and will be using diplomacy in the future with other countries."
But he said that negotiations with Britain, Germany and France would continue and that Iran would have its own counterproposal at its next meeting on Wednesday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has told Iran that it must halt its uranium enrichment program before Nov. 25, when the agency would make a determination whether it is cooperating.
The United States says Iran is hiding a nuclear weapons plan and has urged the I.A.E.A., the United Nations' monitoring agency, to send the case to the Security Council, where Iran could face sanctions.
Enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear bombs as well as fuel for nuclear reactors. Iran says it plans to make only fuel.
Mr. Assefi said that the Europeans had not asked for a permanent suspension of enrichment, but that if they did, it would be out of question.
Hossein Moussavian, one of Iran's top negotiators, told state-run television on Sunday that the Europeans' offer was positive but that Iran could not give up its enrichment program.
"The Islamic Republic cannot rely on the fuel the Europeans are offering, because they might withdraw it any time there are differences in relations," he said.
-------- iraq / inspections
Tonnes of Iraqi explosives missing: UN agency
CTV.ca News Staff
Oct. 25 2004
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1098706634615_57?hub=World
Enough explosives to fill almost 40 trucks are missing from a former Iraqi military facility, the UN nuclear agency confirmed Monday.
The explosives, which were used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons, are missing from a facility known as Al Qaqaa.
According to the New York Times, Al Qaqaa was supposed to be under American control, but had been picked over by looters as recently as Sunday.
The UN had monitored the facility for years, but the White House and Pentagon have acknowledged that the explosives went missing sometime after the American-led invasion of Iraq last year.
U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing, the report said. It's unclear if U.S. President George Bush was informed.
Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the Iraqis told the nuclear agency the materials had been stolen because of lack of security.
"We do not know what happened to the explosives or when they were looted," she told The Associated Press.
Dangerous explosives
The explosives that have vanished are mainly HMX and RDX. They are worrisome because they can produce bombs strong enough to rip buildings apart and bring down planes.
Pan Am flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1998 was destroyed by less than a pound of the same type of explosive.
UN nuclear experts are also worried about the fact that the explosives can also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon. They can crush a hollow sphere of uranium or plutonium into a critical mass, acting as a catalyst for the nuclear explosion.
What is more troubling is the ease at which they can be transported. They can travel well because their stored energy is only released with a detonator, like a blasting cap. As well, their benign appearance makes it easy to pass them off as a harmless good.
Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein acquired HMX and RDX in the late 1980s, in an effort to build a nuclear bomb.
IAEA
The UN nuclear agency was told on Oct. 10 that the explosives had gone missing, in a letter from the Iraqi ministry of Science and Technology.
The letter said 341.7 metric tonnes, or about 377 American tonnes, of HMX, RDX and PETN had gone missing.
On Oct. 15, the IAEA informed the multinational forces through the U.S. government, telling them to inform the international coalition in Iraq of the missing explosives.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the IAEA, will report the disappearance of the conventional explosives to the UN Security Council later Monday, Fleming said.
"Mr. ElBaradei wanted to give them some time to recover the explosives before reporting this loss to the Security Council, but since it's now out, ElBaradei plans to inform the Security Council today" in a letter to the council president, she said.
With just over a week left before American voters go to the polls, the news of the missing explosives could help boost the campaign led by Democratic Sen. John Kerry.
His camp is calling on the Bush adminstration to answer for "what may be the most grave and catastrophic mistake in a tragic series of blunders in Iraq."
"How did they fail to secure ... tons of known, deadly explosives despite clear warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency to do so?" senior Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart said in a statement.
--------
Pentagon says its unclear if explosives disappeared after Iraq site fell under US control
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Oct 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041025185137.wtv8ut7t.html
A Pentagon spokesman said Monday it was unclear whether 380 tons of high explosives reported missing from a weapons facility in Iraq disappeared before or after it fell under control of US forces.
The Iraqi government this month reported the disappearance of 380 tons of HMX and RDX explosives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had monitored the explosives before the war because they could be used as a trigger for nuclear devices.
"This is a first report. We do not know when -- if those weapons did exist at that facility -- they were last seen, and under whose control they were last in," Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said.
"It's very possible -- certainly it's plausible -- that it was the Saddam Hussein regime that last had control of these things," he told AFP.
DiRita said US forces visited the Al-Qaqaa site several times after the US invasion of Iraq as part of a US-led search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and related material.
But he said it is unclear whether the missing explosives were at the site during those visits.
"The forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings at the facility. Some explosive material was discovered, none of it carried IAEA seals. They did find stuff there. They probably secured it or destroyed it," he said.
DiRita said Iraq was swimming in weapons and ammunition after the war. More than 500 weapons sites were identified after the war, and some 200,000 tons of ammunition have been destroyed by US forces.
"I'm told they (US forces) made several visits to that facility looking for WMD related (material), and obviously we need to learn more about exactly what it is they saw there," he said.
"There have been these reports that there is evidence this place has been looted. But I think that's something to be very careful about. That place was not in anybody's control but Saddam Hussein's from the beginning of the war until sometime in April," he said.
"It's just really difficult to say with any kind of certainty what happened to those weapons, and who were the last people who had control of them. But I think it's at least arguable that the last person who had control of them was the Saddam Hussein regime," he said.
-----
White House plays down loss of explosives in Iraq
Oct 25, 2004
GREELEY, Colorado (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041025193205.33jf3vao.html
The White House on Monday played down the loss of hundreds of tons of high explosives in Iraq saying that President George W. Bush knew of the disappearance but emphasising there was no nuclear risk.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush had been kept informed of the disappearance from an unguarded military installation for the past 10 days.
The explosives went missing "because of some looting that went on in Iraq toward the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or during and toward the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom," McClellan said.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors were informed because the munitions were considered dual-use materials and subject to monitoring, McClellan said.
"The first priority, from our standpoint, was to make sure that this wasn't a nuclear proliferation risk, which it is not," McClellan told reporters.
"These are conventional high explosives that we are talking about. And the president wants to make sure that we get to the bottom of this."
The US Defense Department "directed the multinational forces and the Iraqi Survey Group to look into this matter, and that's what they are currently doing," McClellan added.
The Iraqi interim government informed the IAEA on October 10 that some 350 tons of high explosives went missing from an ammunition dump in Al Qaqaa, south of Baghdad, said McClellan, traveling on Bush's re-election campaign.
IAEA officials in turn informed the US mission in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, on October 15.
National security councilor Condoleezza Rice was informed on October 15, and she informed Bush, the spokesman added.
The IAEA announced news of the missing material on Monday, confirming a report in the New York Times.
The Iraqi ministry of science and technology informed the IAEA of the disappearance of about 350 tons of mainly HMX and RDX explosive materiel, agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told AFP.
"It can be used in a nuclear explosion device, for the explosion," she said.
"That's why it was under IAEA verification and monitoring" before the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, she added.
The New York Times said the materiel "could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings."
-------- japan
Earthquakes, Typhoons Raise Nuclear Fears
October 25, 2004
TOKYO, Japan, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-25-02.asp
At least 25 people have lost their lives and more than 2,100 others have been injured in a string of powerful earthquakes that have rocked the northern coast of the main Japanese island of Honshu, starting Saturday evening. Aftershocks are continuing this morning and the death toll continues to rise.
Felt across Niigata prefecture, the quakes have collapsed homes, opened large cracks in roads, and caused a bullet train to derail for the first time in its history, the Kyodo news agency said. No passengers were injured, but it could take weeks before the line is repaired. About 300,000 homes have been left without electricity.
The shaking has been felt as far away as Tokyo, 200 kilometers (125 miles) to the southeast.
Hundreds of aftershocks have come at short intervals since the initial quake, several jolts measuring above 6.0 in magnitude.
Across Niigata buildings have collapsed. (Photo courtesy IFRC) About 61,000 residents were evacuated throughout the rural prefecture, the prefectural government said. Many people spent the night outside, huddling around fires, others took refuge in emergency shelters.
The repeated quakes have broken water and sewage lines, uprooted trees and damaged bridges. Landslides across roads have cut off many communities. People are wandering the muddy roads with heavy bundles of their possessions seeking shelter.
Among the dead and injured are many children and elderly. An elderly Ojiya hospital patient died after the tremors dislodged an artificial respirator, and a second-floor supermarket crowded with customers collapsed. There is fear that further strong tremors could strike over the next few days.
Nagaoka Red Cross Hospital in Niigata treated 312 injured people and Tokyo, Saitama, Toyama, Niigata, Tochigi and Gunma chapters as well as the Japanese Red Cross medical centre at national headquarters deployed Red Cross hospital disaster relief teams.
Disaster Management Minister Yoshitaka Murata visited the stricken area on Sunday, and government relief workers have handed out bottled water and blankets.
This latest disaster comes hard on the heels of the country's deadliest typhoon in 25 years. Typhoon Tokage swept the archipelago on Wednesday, leaving at least 80 people dead, with 12 people still missing and over 340 injured.
Officials said the damage caused by the quakes was made worse because heavy rain from the typhoon loosened sections of the earth, which slid downhill when the temblors struck.
And on September 5, two earthquakes above a magnitude of 7.2 struck Honshu's southern coast. They are the sixth and seventh most powerful earthquakes anywhere in the world this year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Japan lies over four tectonic plates and is in one of the most earthquake active regions of the world.
Less than a week before that set of earthquakes, Typhoon Chaba sped across the archipelago causing 13 deaths, flooding homes, toppling trees and causing transport havoc.
In fact, 10 typhoons have hit the Japanese islands this summer and autumn, with devastating effects.
Amidst this destruction, Satomi Oba of the anti-nuclear advocacy group Plutonium Action Hiroshima fears far worse. There are seven nuclear reactors within 10 kilometers of the epicenter of the current earthquakes, Oba points out.
The most concerned nuclear power plant is Hamaoka, a boiling water reactor operated by the Chubu Electric Power Company, that Oba is trying to remind the government, is located almost on the border of the four moving plates. "Geologists warn that the area is the most likely to be hit by a tremendous earthquake in 30 years or so," says Oba.
Kashiwazaki nuclear power plant is close to the center of the ongoing earthquakes. (Photo courtesy Nuclear Safety Network) There are 52 nuclear reactors in Japan, which generate a little over 30 percent of its electricity. They are located in an area the size of California, many within 150 km of each other and almost all built along the coast where seawater is available to cool them.
In a special to the "Japan Times" in May, Leuren Moret wrote that many of Japan's reactors have been "negligently sited on active faults, particularly in the subduction zone along the Pacific coast, where major earthquakes of magnitude 7-8 or more on the Richter scale occur frequently."
Major earthquakes occur in Japan less than every 10 years. "There is almost no geologic setting in the world more dangerous for nuclear power than Japan - the third-ranked country in the world for nuclear reactors," Moret wrote.
Oba warns that the danger exists not just in the area of the current earthquake, but in many other places as well. "It is unthinkable," he writes, that on October 22 the Atomic Energy Commission decided continuing the national nuclear policy plan, which recommends reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rather than burying it."
The Rokkasho Nuclear Reprocessing Plant in Aomori Prefecture, located on the coast of the Pacific, is scheduled to start uranium testing shortly, and this plan frightens the anti-nuclear group. "Not far from the coast line of Rokkashomura, there is a huge active fault on the seabed that might cause a gigantic earthquake,"said Oba. "The Japanese citizens' groups are trying to stop the dangerous plan for reprocessing."
-------- korea
Powell Stresses 'Urgency' of Talks With North Korea
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 25, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58476-2004Oct24.html
TOYKO, Oct. 24 -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in Asia to prod North Korea to return to talks on ending its nuclear programs, said that although there is still time to resolve the impasse, "there is a sense of urgency."
In a three-day swing through East Asian capitals, Powell is seeking to persuade U.S. allies to put additional pressure on North Korea. Japan's foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, told reporters after meeting with Powell that Japan would use a planned dialogue with North Korea next month on the subject of abducted citizens to urge its return to the bargaining table.
Even more critical to the effort is China, North Korea's main benefactor. Powell arrived in Beijing on Sunday evening to prepare for meetings with Chinese officials Monday.
Powell's deputy, Richard L. Armitage, bluntly told a Chinese official in Washington recently that China needed to view itself not as a mediator but as a participant in the effort against North Korea, according to an official familiar with the conversation.
In April, Vice President Cheney visited the region and declared that "time is not necessarily on our side" in dealing with the North Korean threat. He asserted that the Pyongyang government, given its record, could peddle nuclear technology to terrorist groups. Moreover, he warned that "we [may] have a nuclear arms race unleashed in Asia."
Asked Sunday about Cheney's statement, Powell said: "We are not out of time. . . . We are all pressing hard, there is a sense of urgency. But President Bush has made it clear that he intends to use diplomacy and political activity, working with our friends and neighbors in a multilateral way, to solve this problem."
Yet, in an interview later with Japanese journalists, Powell harshly criticized North Korea, calling it a "terrorist state" for abducting Japanese citizens and saying it "shows a disrespect for human rights."
Machimura said Japan was "very much concerned with reports and views that the North Koreans have possibly established a nuclear weapons program." But he rejected Cheney's notion of a nuclear arms race, saying Japan's commitment to not possessing nuclear weapons would not change, because the country is protected by a U.S.-Japan mutual security treaty. He added that "we have had some concrete discussions" about ballistic missile defense.
North Korea has refused to return to talks, last scheduled for September. Many analysts say they believe the Pyongyang government is waiting for the results of the U.S. presidential election. But North Korea has also cited what it calls the Bush administration's "hostile policy," pointing to a naval exercise this week off the coast of Japan and Bush's signing of a bill targeting North Korean human rights.
In the naval exercise, ships from the United States, Japan and other countries will practice halting a vessel as if it contained chemical weapons. The bill approved by Bush last week establishes a special envoy for North Korean human rights and calls on the administration to make human rights an issue in talks with the Pyongyang government.
North Korea has complained bitterly about both issues, saying U.S. actions have forced it to bolster its "nuclear deterrent."
Powell insisted that "neither of these actions are hostile actions."
--------
N. Korea Calls U.S. Exercises 'War Action'
October 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-Nuclear.html?pagewanted=all
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea said Monday that prospects for talks on its nuclear weapons program are getting dimmer every day and it condemned U.S.-led naval exercises in Japanese waters as an ``ultimate war action.''
The comments, carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, came only hours after Secretary of State Colin Powell blamed the communist country for the delay in holding new six-nation talks on its nuclear program.
KCNA said U.S. military maneuvers around the Korean peninsula show that Washington ``does not stand for a peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue.''
Currently on a trip to Asia, Powell reiterated that Washington seeks a diplomatic end to the dispute with Pyongyang.
``The DPRK is compelled to serve a serious warning to the U.S., regarding the exercise as a move to implement the U.S. pre-emptive interception strategy aimed to isolate and stifle the DPRK internationally and an ultimate war action,'' KCNA said. DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name -- the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The news agency was referring to eight-nation naval exercises in Japanese waters scheduled to begin this week.
Besides the United States and Japan, seven other countries will take part in the naval exercise, with 14 more serving as observers. The interdiction drill is part of an anti-proliferation security initiative in which allied forces can intercept ships or aircraft believed to be carrying missiles or equipment for unconventional weapons.
The initiative was begun last year primarily to deter North Korea's trade in missile and nuclear technology and components.
In Beijing, Powell urged North Korea to return to talks aimed at curbing its nuclear ambitions. He said Beijing and Washington agree on the need to hold another round as soon as possible.
``All the parties are ready. It's the DPRK that has been showing reluctance to have the next round,'' Powell said at a news conference. ``But it's the only way forward.''
Powell spoke after meeting President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders.
North Korea said dialogue can never go together with ``war exercises.''
``The DPRK has warned more than once that naval blockade exercises targeted against it would not be favorable for the atmosphere of dialogue,'' KCNA said. ``These moves only make the prospect of the negotiations with it dimmer as the days go by.''
Participants in the six-nation talks -- which also include Japan, South Korea and Russia -- missed a September deadline for holding another round after North Korea refused to take part.
--------
Powell declares North Korea a 'terrorist state'
USA Today
Barbara Slavin
Oct. 25, 2004
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1025powell25.html
BEIJING - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, on a mission to restart talks on North Korea's nuclear program, on Sunday branded North Korea a "terrorist state" that shows "no respect whatsoever for human rights."
Powell arrived in China from Tokyo, where he told the news media that naval maneuvers beginning today off the Japanese coast and a new U.S. law intended to promote North Korean human rights were not meant as "hostile acts" against North Korea. Regarding talks to end the dispute over North Korea's efforts to develop nuclear weapons, Powell said, "We are not out of time."
But in a meeting later with Japanese reporters, Powell used his harshest language to date to describe North Korea, a communist nation that may have as many as eight nuclear weapons.
Asked about North Korea's abduction of more than a dozen Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to serve as language teachers, Powell said, "A state did this, not terrorists. . . . A terrorist state did this." Also, noting that scores of North Koreans have fled their country in recent years, Powell said the refugees were trying to get away from poverty and a government that has "no respect whatsoever for human rights."
The Bush administration has urged North Korea to give up its nuclear program in exchange for aid from its neighbors and an eventual U.S. pledge not to attack the country. North Korea has attended three rounds of talks about its nuclear program with the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, but it is refusing to participate in a fourth round until after U.S. elections.
The crisis began in October 2002, when the North Koreans admitted having a secret program to enrich uranium, a fuel for bombs. The United States cut off fuel oil shipments provided under a 1994 agreement that was supposed to freeze the North Korean nuclear program.
North Korea responded by restarting a nuclear complex that yields plutonium, a bombmaking material.
In Beijing, Powell hopes to learn from the Chinese, who provide most of North Korea's food and fuel, North Korea's bottom line in the nuclear negotiations.
-------- terrorism
Not all weapons are created equal
centredaily.com
Oct. 25, 2004
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/10000117.htm
The possibility of another mass-destruction attack against the continental United States or on the territory of our major allies is the nightmare scenario that haunts U.S. policy-makers. It drove the Bush administration into Iraq despite the unfinished business lingering in Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders. Failure on the part of postwar inspectors to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq became a lightning rod for critics of the U.S. military intervention and postwar occupation.
Government officials and military experts talk publicly about "weapons of mass destruction" as if nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological weapons are equally dangerous or destabilizing. In private, they know better. What drives the sum of their fears is the possibility of a terrorist strike using nuclear weapons. The first reason is, in a word, "Russia," or Russian nukes; the second reason is "Khan," named for a prominent Pakistani scientist who became the father of that country's nuclear weapons program.
In Russia, the 1990s were marked by political instability and military uncertainty. Control over the vast nuclear arsenal of the Russian Federation and its nuclear storage sites rested upon the shoulders of a deteriorating military establishment and partly demobilized security services from the communist era.
The second reason for concern about a possible terrorist nuclear attack is that subversive networks of public officials and private entrepreneurs can serve as the midwives or expediters for the transfer of nuclear-related technologies and expertise.
A case in point is that of the Pakistani scientist Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan, who used his influence and high position in the Pakistani nuclear scientific establishment to expedite the transfer of nuclear information and technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Whether the chain of custody for information and technology in this shadow network also passed through terrorist hands is undocumented. But the states of concern in this case are so commingled with some terrorist groups that the worst possibilities cannot be ruled out.
On a global basis, acknowledged government seizures of illegal nuclear materials have not been large amounts of contraband leaking across borders. This gold standard for nuclear protection might suffice if we were worried about, say, enough fissile material to equip a small army or navy with tactical nukes. But terrorists need less plutonium or uranium if they can acquire the engineering skills and additional accouterments necessary to fabricate a crude, but effective, nuclear weapon not described here but, unfortunately, easily obtained via the Internet.
If Chechen separatists could acquire some fissile material from Russian leakage, they could pass it along to their al-Qaida fraternal freedom fighters. And it would not take a great deal of ingenuity for the components of a nuclear device to find their way through U.S. customs and across American borders into our major metropolitan areas. Even now, it is not inconceivable that some partly assembled weapons are sitting in garages or underground storage areas, awaiting the arrival of additional parts and fissile material.
Finally, if nobody else will provide the crown jewels of nuclear apocalypse to terrorist fanatics, the Iranians, once they become a nuclear power, certainly will. A nuclear-capable Iran realizes the Bush administration fears mistakenly attributed to Iraq: We are the Iranian ayatollahs' "great Satan" and their designated ground zero. And Iran's collaboration with al-Qaida is documented beyond doubt. Stephen J. Cimbala is a distinguished professor of political science at Penn State's Delaware County campus. He is the author of 27 books on international politics, the state of the American military and nuclear arms. The opinion of the columnist does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the university.
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Franz J. T. Lee: World terrorism and fascism ... QUO VADIS?
October 25, 2004
Franz J. T. Lee,
lundi, cmaq.net
http://www.cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=18630 vheadline.com http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=23214
University of Los Andes (ULA) professor Franz J. T. Lee writes:
What really is World Terrorism? Who are the current Global Fascists?
Let the historic, historical "facts" speak for themselves! We're not studying them with formal logic ... that is, because they are "true" or "false," "right" or "wrong," because we "agree" or "disagree" with them ... but simply and objectively because they reflect neither the one nor the other, since they transcend contemporary "full spectrum dominance," lies, ideology, "double-think," "newspeak," "wars of ideas," disinformation campaigns and info-war ... in nuance, they concern the abominable consequences of current global terrorism and fascism...
They indicate a specific, horrendous Quo Vadis? for Humanity, for Life on this planet.
The true terrorists and real fascists go scot free; on TV, clad in expensive white collars and silk ties, they give global "democratic and civilized" speeches when, in reality, they are the worst war criminals the world has ever experienced.
Physical and mental terrorism are not new "discoveries" of our age; they are simply millennia-old, inherent realities of our world system of labor and capital, that exploits, dominates, discriminates, militarizes and alienates whole continents, whole nations.
Hence, within this context, practically and theoretically, the immediate tasks of any world revolution concern the detonation of all the myths around world "terrorism" and "fascism," must logically be aimed at the unraveling of the age-old mental holocaust that simply erased the very autochthonous ideas, indigenous thoughts and natural existence of millions and millions of slaves, serfs, peasants, workers and intellectuals, especially of the so-called "Third World" ... in brief, these revolutionary endeavors concern the eradication of all global, objective, subjective and "transjective" master-slave relations.
The above, in general, concerns the myths of the "Happy End," of the "best democracy, constitution or laws" in the universe, of the "civilized nature" of Europeans and Americans, of the inexorable "forward" march towards "development." "progress," of "humanity," "human rights," freedom, equality, fraternity, patriotism, justice, peace, nirvana, heaven, etc.
In the last analysis, the historic truth is, that across the last millennia, billions of chattel and wage slaves never ever enjoyed any one of them. Current Afghanistan and Iraq reveal the fascist, terrorist reality of the world capitalist system across the ages. In reality, if things develop further along their current course, like anything else in the "homeland," in the "fatherland," then, as a result of competition, monopoly, concentration, corporatism, especially of new world wars, we all will find ourselves on the Genocidal Highway, on the Via Crucis towards Galactic Golgotha!
If we really and truly, scientifically and philosophically, want to know anything about the current Quo Vadis? of Humanity, then, we just need to activate our historic class consciousness, to study very carefully our own global, slave-holding, feudalist and capitalist labor history, across the last millennia, that is, we just need to become conscious of its perverse, fascist essence and its terrorist, violent social existence.
Hence, Venezuela and Latin America, only in this way it will become as clear as broad daylight what is happening now ... and what will soon occur on planet Earth. Also, what we could expect from Washington in the near future.
In reality, within the world alienated labor process in "democracy," ever since the Conquest, the French and American Revolutions and even long before, conspiracy, sabotage, murder, corruption, bureaucracy, theft, fraud, lies, character assassination, all happened so many times already; nowadays, in capitalism in agony, they have just become more open, bare-faced, blatant and brutal, more contradictory and violent ... that is, more Orwellian, more fascist and terrorist.
Of course, there are some "nice" things to enjoy in capitalism, especially for consumer bees ... but these are rather the exceptions that prove the golden rule of global, merciless exploitation of billions of toiling "drones."
Any serious study of real, true political history could verify the above very easily.
All serious social revolutionary attempts to change this state of affairs were heinously nipped in the bud -- see Algeria, Vietnam, Chile, Guinea-Bissau, Yugoslavia, etc. Currently, among a few others, mainly Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, are bravely resisting fascist world terror with all their human might.
Concerning the above, let us just refresh our historic memory a little.
We do not need much scientific evidence, to prove that the ancient slave-owning ruling classes of the Mediterranean region, from Egypt to Hellas, were socially terrorizing their "speaking-tools" and "barbarians." Also we know about the ancient slave and colonial revolts, and how brutally they were suppressed, "pacified."
We need not repeat the ruling class horror and terror meted out by Nero, Caligula, the arrogant nobility and ignorant clergy against the women, heretics, serfs and "scientists"; the Inquisition, the burning at the stake, exorcism by the Dominican Order, the Thousand Years' War, the Crusades against Bin Laden's forefathers, etc.; that was the Quo vadis?, the "future" of Pericles' "Golden Age"!
Furthermore, we should not forget Robespierre, Danton, Maria Antoinette, the guillotine, the "Reign of Terror," to verify how this bourgeois world order was born. It is not necessary to explain how Europe treated the "Blackamoors," the Jews, the African slaves, the pagans, natives, savages, indigenas of the colonial world.
According to Marx, in his major work "Capital," referring to the original accumulation of capital, this is how capitalism, its fascist, terrorist essence, was born: "dripping from head to foot, in blood and dirt." Togliatti said it: "It concerns the system." This was the "future," the Quo vadis? of the absolutist, feudalist "Dark Ages"!
Finally, we should just recollect all the intra-imperialist wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the horror and terror that resulted ... the millions who had to believe in "civilization" and "christianity," in "real socialism," "national socialism," "fascism," in liberal and monopoly capitalism. This was the "future," the Quo vadis? of the "French Revolution," the "American Revolution" and the "Industrial Revolution!"
What we explained above is the trans-historic algebra of the "American Dream," of the "Happy End," of the "Great Society," of the "Classless Society," of "Democracy," of "Globalization," of "World Peace."
In reality, it is the historic, macabre reflection of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of "gulags" and "concentration camps," of Workuta and Auschwitz, of the genocide in Vietnam and Indonesia; more recently, of Afghanistan and Iraq; of AIDS, of HAARP, of the mother of all bombs of depleted uranium, of arsenals of weapons of mass destruction.
All these already now launch the future Quo Vadis? of either Bush or Kerry, of the identical imperialist twins of Corporate America.
Now, we have a slight notion what fascism and terrorism are all about, but Venezuela and Latin America, "What is To Be Done?" (Lenin). Such a question can only occur to someone who is doing nothing.
The arch-imperialist, Cecil John Rhodes, sitting somewhere on the Matopo Hills, near current Harare, before his death, exclaimed: "So much to do, so little done ... if I could, I would annex the planets!"
Well, especially here in Venezuela over the last five years, we have reached out for the stars and planets ... not only did we, Venezuelans, discover "Jayú," a small planet revolving at the outskirts of our solar system, beyond Pluto, between April 11 and 13, 2002 ... we have also defeated Yankee fascism and terrorism, aided by local lackeys, within 47 hours.
Hence, we have to continue deepening our revolution, to globalize it, to make it a permanent world revolution, to carry forward the revolution in the revolution, against global fascism.
Franz John Tennyson Lee, Ph. D (University of Frankfurt), Author, Professor Titular & Chairholder of Philosophy and Political Science, University of The Andes, Merida (Venezuela) -- http://www.franzjutta.com ; http://www.franz-lee.org ; http://www.geocities.com/juttafranz/publications00001.html
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Nuclear plant security attacked And report echoes Utah concerns about risks from N-wastes
October 25, 2004
Deseret Morning News
By Donna Kemp Spangler and Jerry D. Spangler
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595100697,00.html
WASHINGTON - The watchdog group Public Citizen is taking the Bush administration to task over inadequate security at the nation's nuclear power plants, including the potential catastrophe from a terrorist attack on spent nuclear fuel - the same waste that some utilities want to store in above-ground casks on Goshute tribal lands in Tooele County.
The report notes that "lightly protected spent-fuel pools are situated outside containment areas" and are subject to terrorist attack. The same holds true for the above-ground casks at the nation's nuclear power plants and potentially those that would be stored in Tooele County far outside any containment area.
Those same concerns have been raised by Utah officials for years.
"Instead of getting straight answers, we get platitudes and feel-good letters," said Dianne Nielson, executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. "We are being told there's no problem, that it's safe. But we don't believe that is the case."
Utah officials have argued before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Atomic Safety Licensing Board that spent fuel rods in above-ground casks are an inviting target for terrorist attacks, as is the shipment of the waste from nuclear power plants scattered around the nation.
The nuclear industry insists it has beefed up security at nuclear power plants to the tune of $1 billion since 2001. The number of security officers at 64 plants has risen by 60 percent to 8,000, and "physical improvements at sites include additional protection against vehicle bombs as well as additional protective measures against various types of terrorist threats," according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.
"Those claims have been discredited time and again," added institute spokesman Mitch Singer of the Public Citizen study.
But the Public Citizen report observed that security improvements are a closely guarded secret, and the public has no way of knowing if the improvements are sufficient.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has thrown a shroud of secrecy over security deliberations," the report states.
The NRC has assured state officials that security measures in place to protect nuclear power plants would be sufficient to protect nuclear-waste casks in Utah.
The Public Citizen report highlights the potential terrorist threats at nuclear power plants, not the risk of storing the waste in the Utah desert.
But it also highlights the risks of transporting wastes, criticizing the administration's support for a plan to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, Nev. If enacted, it "would result in tens of thousands of rail and truck shipments of highly radioactive spent fuel - all potential terrorist targets - from reactors to a massive nuclear waste site."
Singer responded that it has been recognized since the 1950s that it is safer to have "one place buried 1,000 feet deep that borders on a military installation" for the nation's stockpile of nuclear waste. "It would be the Fort Knox of nuclear waste storage."
The Nuclear Energy Institute has not taken a position on the proposal to store waste in Utah.
Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of mostly Eastern nuclear power utilities, tired of waiting for the Yucca Mountain facility that is still years away, are awaiting final license approval for a temporary storage site on Goshute lands in Skull Valley.
The plan calls for up to 40,000 tons of highly radioactive waste to be stored in rows of casks on the valley floor about 70 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The waste could remain above ground for 20 years with the possibility of another 20-year lease after that.
The state has opposed the storage of spent nuclear fuel in Utah but has so far failed in its arguments to block PFS from obtaining the federal license for a temporary waste facility. The license application is still pending, and a ruling on a separate state claim is expected in January.
The state has also failed to stop the project through other avenues of litigation and legislation.
PFS project manager Scott Northard did not return calls.
The Public Citizen report cites one study by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that estimated the loss of tens of thousands of lives within 500 miles, and a Brookhaven National Laboratory report that predicted a contamination of 188 square miles in the event of burning radioactive wastes.
The report also criticizes the Bush administration for its cozy relationship with the nuclear industry, pointing out that Bush and the Republican National Committee have received $19.9 million in campaign contributions from the industry since 2000.
Another study in 2002 by a Washington, D.C., newspaper found the industry spent $51.2 million lobbying Congress. Another $149 million was spent lobbying the White House and executive branch agencies, the study reported.
The result, says Public Citizen, is that "three years after 9/11, Congress still has not enacted any legislation to reduce the terrorist threat at nuclear power plants, and the Bush appointees at the NRC have resisted using their regulatory powers to respond to the terrorism threat.
"For the administration and their close friends in the nuclear industry, the concern that increased security expenses could drive up the cost of nuclear power - and threaten industry profits - apparently trumps national security," it adds.
Not so, the industry responds.
"U.S. nuclear power plants are widely acknowledged by independent experts as the most secure facilities in the nation's industrial infrastructure," according to a Nuclear Energy Institute statement.
And the casks used to store the waste are concrete and rebar that have been tested "time and again" to withstand explosives and airplane crashes.
"Given the tight security around nuclear power plants and the technology of the safety measures, terrorists are going to go after an easier target," Singer said.
The Public Citizen report is available at www.homelandunsecured.org.
E-mail: donna@desnews.com; spang@desnews.com
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Bipartisan push is on for an end to N-funds
No deterrent: They say the U.S. arsenal hasn't stopped terrorist efforts
The Salt Lake Tribune
By Christopher Smith
10/25/2004
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2432232
Underground nuclear tests aren't foolproof: A detonation at the Nevada Test Site in 1970 shot radioactive debris 10,000 feet into the air. (Nevada Division of Environmental Protection file photo)
WASHINGTON - With U.S. forces entrenched in an overseas war that is increasingly short on money, a bipartisan group in Congress wants to quit spending billions of dollars annually to maintain and expand America's nuclear weapons arsenal.
Their argument: The thousands of nuclear missiles holstered by the United States haven't deterred terrorists and haven't stopped rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea from developing their own nuclear programs.
Because of the conflicting presence in the American West of federal weapons laboratories and "downwinder" citizens who harbor a Cold War distrust of the long-term health impacts from nuclear testing, there is a heightened interest in the region on America's future strategic arms policy.
It also is a case where conservative Western Republicans increasingly find themselves at odds with party colleagues.
Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House subcommittee that funds defense programs, is leading the fight to shrink the program that keeps U.S. nuclear weapons at the ready and put an end to studies on new "mini-nukes" and bunker-buster bombs.
"What is the point of threatening a terrorist with an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon?" Hobson asked in an August speech to the National Academies of Science that still is resonating in nuclear policy circles.
"Part of the argument is to hold every target at risk so that there is no safe haven for a terrorist," he said. "But as we have seen over the past three years, holding terrorist targets at risk has little to do with being able to kill them once they have been found."
With the support of Utah's three congressmen last month, Hobson easily pushed through a spending bill that provided no money for studying low-yield battlefield nukes and the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" bunker-buster warhead. It also zeroed out funding a new plutonium "pit" facility to make warhead triggers and eliminated money for enhancing readiness at the Nevada Test Site, while boosting funding for weapons dismantlement and security in the weapons complex.
Republican members of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that also funds the nuclear weapons program see things differently. Behind the chairmanship of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., they have consistently sided with Bush administration requests to boost spending on maintaining the stockpile and studying new variations of nuclear weapons.
"Hobson's comments in today's world are very reasonable, but as I try to look into the future I can foresee a set of circumstances where there is a nation-state threat by some dictator who has a very deep bunker from which he is operating," said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, a subcommittee member.
"I'd like to say to him, 'Your bunker does not give you sanctuary. We've never taken a first strike posture but if you do [fire first], it's not just going to be heavy casualties above ground, we're going to get you too,' " Bennett said.
There is disagreement among scientists whether a burrowing warhead could go deep enough before exploding, and whether tens of thousands of tons of airborne radioactive debris from a subsurface detonation would spread harm far beyond the battlefield. Bennett says those questions merit research and, armed with multiple assurances from the Bush administration that studies won't lead to testing, he supports investigating new delivery methods for existing warheads.
Idaho, New Mexico and Nevada all have major Department of Energy nuclear weapons facilities that are a lucrative source of federal jobs and research contracts. Utah, however, has no such DOE presence and is ground zero for downwinder claims.
Bennett has tried to offset his support of nuclear weapons programs with legislation setting higher safety hurdles for resumed testing. And he is vowing to provide a more stable source of funding for the ever-expanding and nearly bankrupt compensation program for downwinders, those who blame illnesses on fallout from above-ground nuclear testing in Nevada.
The last such test was in 1961, and "anybody born since 1962 has had no exposure," Bennett said. "You say that in southern Utah and they don't like to hear it, because it is a very emotional issue. I do believe clearly prior to 1962 there were downwinders, but after that, scientifically it's harder to make a case for anybody who's 42 years or older."
Robert Norris, senior researcher on nuclear policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, agrees the possibility of atmospheric contamination was greatly reduced when tests were moved underground. And while his organization lobbies against the Bush administration's nuclear weapons buildup, Norris says westerners' fears of resuming live tests in Nevada may be driven more by emotion than political reality.
"Under the Comprehensive Test Ban [Treaty], it would be almost impossible to resume testing and I don't see how it could really happen," Norris said. "Perhaps North Korea could help ease the way if they tested, but absent any sort of external provocation, we would just be doing it on our own initiative and that would cause worldwide outrage."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Los Alamos Hopes for Land Transfer
Albuquerque Journal
By Adam Rankin
October 25, 2004
http://www.abqjournal.com/north/248471north_news10-25-04.htm?tease
Los Alamos County and its school system are hoping a U.S. Energy Department land transfer will give them space for a new warehouse and administrative offices.
That would free up their current location in Los Alamos for economic development while providing the school system and Los Alamos County with a long-term revenue source.
But first, the state Environment Department needs to clear the once-contaminated parcels for business and commercial use.
The land was originally intended for the county, but an amendment offered by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., to the 2005 Defense Authorization Bill directs DOE to transfer the land to the Los Alamos Public School system instead.
"Los Alamos desperately needs more commercial development," Domenici was quoted as saying while announcing the deal approved Oct. 8 by a House and Senate conference committee.
Congress then approved the bill, which awaits only President Bush's signature to become law.
In vacating their current 13-acre space in downtown Los Alamos, the county and school system would free up one of the last remaining lots of significant size for commercial development in the downtown area. Office and retail space are at a premium there.
At the same time, the school system would acquire money-making commercial space and the county would gain revenue from property and gross receipts taxes.
The transfer includes two parcels in LANL Technical Area 21, a former plutonium processing facility before that work was shipped to Rocky Flats, Colo., near Denver.
The smaller parcel, called A-15 and about 8 acres in size, would be leased for economic and business development. A county analysis estimates the school system could generate from $50,000 to $300,000 a year from leasing the parcel.
"The county wins either way, but if we didn't have the property the county wouldn't get anything (in gross receipts taxes)," Los Alamos Public Schools Superintendent Jim Anderson said.
Rent from the A-15 parcel would be "money that we sorely need in our operational budget," he said.
Los Alamos schools also get an $8 million boost to their revenue each year from the government in order to make working at the laboratory attractive for prospective scientists.
That additional money- eyed jealously by poorer school districts in the region- had to be approved on a year-to-year basis. But a separate Domenici defense bill amendment, co-sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., makes that additional $8 million in funding a certainty each year, payable beginning in 2005 by whomever operates the laboratory.
Because the federal assistance is not adjusted for inflation, county and school officials are concerned federal funding will be devalued over time and that other income sources, such as the A-15 parcel, will become necessary.
The larger parcel, A-8, is about 25 acres and will be used to house shared school and county warehouses and physical operations facilities to streamline and cut costs, Anderson said.
But the New Mexico Environment Department still must certify that the land is safe for its intended use.
LANL spokeswoman Kathy DeLucas said the two sites in question have been cleaned by DOE and the laboratory to residential standards, a cleaner standard than necessary for light industrial use.
At the request of the state, LANL and DOE have undertaken another round of studies this summer, she said. A report on the status of the two parcels is due to the Environment Department soon, she said.
The sites held septic tanks and leach fields, and A-15 was used as a construction dump site for such things as concrete, lumber and rebar, DeLucas said.
"As far as the concerns about the cleanup, that is one of those things that has to be worked out with (the Environment Department) because it has to be usable," said Los Alamos County spokeswoman Julie Habiger.
Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a LANL watchdog, said portions of both sites abut a dump site where about 750,000 cubic feet of radioactive, chemical and solid waste is buried.
Jon Goldstein, a spokesman for the Environment Department, said the state is aware of previous releases on the sites of heavy metals, such as lead, mercury and zinc, as well as radionuclides.
"Obviously, the county has an interest in these sites, but we want to make sure the folks in the county aren't left holding the bag in any way if there are any problems," he said.
He added that DOE and the laboratory would remain responsible if any contamination is discovered after the transfer.
"Once we get that final report back from DOE, we will be able to say for sure how clean these parcels are," he said.
-------- us nuc waste
Nuclear fuel removed from Hanford basins
The Associated Press
By SHANNON DININNY
October 25, 2004
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002071958_hanford25m.html
YAKIMA - Workers and federal agencies handling cleanup at the Hanford nuclear reservation have celebrated a milestone - the removal of all the spent nuclear fuel from two leak-prone pools of water just 400 yards from the Columbia River.
The project was one of three critical cleanup problems identified at Hanford to reduce risk to the public and the environment, and the second such problem to be addressed this year.
In February, workers completed a project to stabilize and package 4.4 tons of plutonium from the nation's nuclear-weapons arsenal.
Hanford was created as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site.
The spent fuel in the two pools, known as the K East and K West basins, represented 80 percent of the U.S. Department of Energy's nationwide inventory and one of the largest sources of radioactivity at Hanford. So far, basin cleanup has cost $1.7 billion.
"The Columbia River and surrounding communities are safer today because of the success of this project," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said.
Nick Ceto, manager of Hanford cleanup for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, called the project completion a "monumental achievement."
The two basins were built in the 1950s to hold irradiated fuel from the site's nuclear reactors and later stored excess spent fuel from the N Reactor, which was used to make plutonium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
In 1992, the federal government chose to permanently close a plant that extracted plutonium from the spent fuel, stranding about 2,300 tons of spent fuel in the basins. The spent fuel rods then corroded during the underwater storage, making their removal more difficult.
In addition, the K East basin leaked about 15 million gallons of contaminated water and sludge into the soil in the 1980s and 1990s, threatening the river. The pools only had a planned use of 20 years, and in the mid-1990s, the Energy Department declared the K East basin a top cleanup priority nationwide.
Workers removed the first fuel in December 2000. They missed the July 2004 deadline to remove all of it because the last fuel to be removed was the most corroded and presented new technological challenges, said Pete Knollmeyer, vice president for Fluor Hanford, the contractor hired to complete the project.
The 3-foot fuel rods are thermally hot and intensely radioactive. They were covered with 17 feet of water in the pools, both to cool them and shield workers from radioactivity.
Only about half of the 105,000 spent fuel assemblies were intact, with the rest being highly degraded or corroded.
Crews removed the last canister of spent fuel from K East basin in July. The final canister of spent fuel was removed from the K West basin earlier this week, ending the risk from 50 million curies of radioactivity near the river, said Keith Klein, manager of the Energy Department's Richland Operations Office.
"As recently as four years ago, still no fuel had been moved, and numerous skeptics doubted it ever would," Klein said.
The fuel has been secured in canisters and transferred to an underground storage facility at the site pending eventual transfer to a nuclear-waste repository.
Still to be addressed at the basins is the removal of millions of gallons of contaminated water, sludge and debris. Each pool holds about 1.2 million gallons of water.
Work on removing sludge from the K East basin began in June, followed by removal of some contaminated water in August.
Crews remove water as cement is poured into the basins. Eventually, plans call for cutting the cement-filled basins into sections for long-term disposal and removing the contaminated soil underneath.
All fuel, debris and water will be taken out of the K East basin, and the basin itself will be removed by March 31, 2007. The K West basin will be removed by spring 2009.
The third major cleanup priority at the site involves removing 53 million gallons of toxic and highly radioactive waste from 177 underground tanks. The most dangerous waste is to be turned into glasslike logs for long-term disposal at a nuclear-waste repository. Work on the tank cleanup continues.
For 40 years, the 586-square-mile reservation in south-central Washington made plutonium for the nation's nuclear-weapons arsenal. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.
-------- MILITARY
Of the Evil Empire
bellaciao.org
By Manuel Valenzuela
25th October 2004
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3954
Let us for a few moments put aside our lavish lifestyles of fortuitous endowment and providence that have made us blind to the realities of billions of our fellow humans. Let us ignore our plasma televisions, our DVDs, our two-story cookie cutter homes and gas-guzzling SUVs. Let us promise to not open our overstocked pantries and refrigerators, or to go out and eat at one of many corporate controlled franchise restaurants offering vast assortments of gargantuan meals. We should ignore the opulence of our society that dwells permanently in our minds that makes us forget the severe indigence and suffering that transpires beyond our shores and borders.
In short, we should come out of our luxurious bubble that has shielded us from the evils inflicted on billions of humans that have not been as privy to a life of safety and security. Let us traverse the road of reality, sojourning through history and through mirages of hidden truths. Let us dive into the making of the Evil Empire so that we may see what our government has and continues to do in our name. The road ahead will not be easy to swallow or comprehend, yet we must open our minds to the possibility that what has happened is real and what is occurring is not fiction. Only then will we understand why our hands are smeared in the blood of tens of millions of human cadavers and countless more whose lives and futures have been devastated at the hands of the United States of America. Only by knowing who and what we are can we correct ourselves.
Our society is ingrained with an appetite for violence. It is apparent in the over 11,000 murders by firearm per year. It is apparent in Hollywood's gratuitous assembly-line of blood and gore, violence, devastation and death. It is visible in the ever-growing number of video games sold to our children depicting egregious violence, killings and bloodletting. Our society celebrates violence, be it through football, hockey or boxing, television, cartoons and music. Even Disney cartoon movies have as a main theme battles of good versus evil and the plethora of violence, destruction and death associated with them. The US military industrial complex supplies the world with 45 percent of all weapons for sale on the market.
Yet without public demand for violence none of the above would exist. It is the citizenry - with complicit help from government and corporate media - that drives the engine that conditions us toward accepting and participating in our violent society.
Violence in America is today a manifestation of our society and history, of a never ending thirst for blood, conquest, oppression and death that sprung from the first moment of Puritan arrival. Before and after the Revolutionary war Americans participated in one of the greatest acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing the world has ever witnessed. Millions upon millions of native Indians were slaughtered, raped and cleansed from the lands of North America. Manifest destiny ransacked from Atlantic to Pacific like a devastating hurricane, destroying everything native people thought precious and sacred. Wars against native populations extinguishing the energies of men, women, children and elderly alike. The American thirst for violence had been born. The addiction for blood would become insatiable and never ending.
Native peoples' lands were taken from them; lies, manipulations and betrayals erased their tribes from the homes they once knew and cherished. Replanted into hellholes called reservations, Indians were left to rot away their existence, given only the evil of Firewater to wash away their inner demons and scars in a land both alien and inhospitable. Hidden from the voracious Anglo onslaught, Indians of talent and ability were left to dwell on a future lost through the disappearance of opportunity. Disease, depression, lack of education and incessant poverty soon followed. Demons of a life wasted and opportunity lost consumed those who escaped the barrel of a gun and the virus of the white man.
Entire ethnicities, tribes, languages and cultures were eviscerated from the face of the Earth by those whose importance of property and ownership superceded the respect for human life. Beautiful peoples took with them to the grave lives living free, roaming pristine and untouched forests, deserts and prairies, being one with nature, respecting everything that breathed and a spirituality that has much to offer our capitalistic civilization. Advanced civilizations in wisdom and spirituality, yet seen as savages to the "more sophisticated" European people, native peoples' way of life was vanished, never to fully flourish again. Millions ethnically cleansed, millions whose lives were made barren, all making way for the destructive bulldozer ravaging land and man. The Evil Empire had sprung to life, a trail of victims visible everywhere the giant walked.
Not satisfied with the killing of millions of native peoples, the citizens of America next decided to unleash hell onto each other. As a result the American Civil War of the latter part of the 19th century killed more than 600,000 people, leaving the United States mourning for brothers and sons, fathers and grandfathers. Graveyards littered the landscape; battlefields were transformed into fields of death and devastation. Divided a prospering nation stood, soaked in blood and agony, splitting apart families, creating widows and orphans. In the end, hundreds of thousands lay dead, many more maimed and wounded, all to quench the voracious appetite for violence, death and destruction.
The Evil Empire's cannibalism was only the beginning of a much greater disease.
Lands and People of Asia
As the Empire grew stronger so too did its addiction for expansion. War with Spain commencing in 1898 brought forth new lands, colonies and treasure. Yet it also brought forth death and destruction. American violence had not dissipated; it had only evolved, with new forms of warfare and destruction arising with the passage of time. Tens of thousands died on both sides. In the end, the United States had conquered both man and land, thereby increasing its power and prestige. The Empire was growing, prospering and learning that force was the means by which to achieve its ends. Force was weapons, intimidation, violence and war. It was victory and imperialism. It was the means to becoming the most powerful nation on the planet. The Evil Empire had grown up, as the Philippines would soon learn.
In 1899 Filipino forces seeking independence from Spain confronted in armed struggle American forces intent on maintaining the colonization of the nation. A ruthless war of attrition between the two forces began. For the next three years tens of thousands of native resistance fighters died at the hands of the much more technologically sophisticated and economically powerful American military. Numerous war crimes were committed by American soldiers. Destruction and looting of property, shooting of captives, rapes of women, torture of prisoners and civilians, devastation of the environment and the forced social engineering of the people were thrust upon the nation in an orgy of occupier lawlessness.
In addition, over 200,000 civilians perished due to the brutal scorched earth policy implemented by the US military that destroyed agriculture, fertile land and villages. In addition, many thousands died from cholera arising out of economic devastation of infrastructure. The harsh subjugation of the Filipino people was a form of collective punishment that America used as a weapon of war in order to pacify the independently minded population. The American intervention in the Philippines indiscriminately erased from the face of the Earth hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. This is called genocide, and the Evil Empire got exceedingly good at it.
The reality of what happened over 100 years ago is comfortably hidden away from us today. The American war in the Philippines is today but an asterisk in our history books, yet the gravity of the malevolence cannot be forgotten. It certainly is not included in the educational material of our children, or in those of our own childhood, however. Why is this? What the US government does in our name cannot be made known lest the population rage in anger at the wickedness that America exports abroad. Genocide, collective punishment, scorched earth policy and ethnic cleansing leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings is not something to be proud of. Not when Stalin, Hitler and the Nazis did the exact same thing.
In the Philippines the Evil Empire was only getting warmed up. For the next 100 years it controlled all aspects of the Philippine government. The US installed minions and puppets that kept the populace in dire poverty, robbing the nation blind and fostering an era of inept and corrupt leaders handpicked by America. Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled as dictator of the beleaguered nation from 1965 until his ouster in 1986, is the best example of American complicity in the utter devastation of both the people and economy of the Philippines.
Marcos ruled with extreme harshness, subverting democracy, robbing the nation blind (some estimates have him stealing anywhere from $3 to $30 billion dollars) and killing thousands of dissenters and opposition members who dared speak out against the injustices and inequalities. He brought onto the nation's masses untold suffering, indigence and slave labor, wages and conditions. Hundreds of thousands have died form malnourishment, disease, poverty and exploitation. The nation's debt amassed under Marcos is today responsible for the dire circumstances of the population, and is a reason for the growth of Muslim and Marxist revolutionary groups prospering and threatening the government.
The beneficiary of the evil spawned by Marcos you may ask? The Evil Empire, which established military bases that helped expand the Empire geopolitically, collected hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, exploited slave labor for the manufacture of cheap products sold back in the US and controlled a subjugated populace through neo-liberal economic policies that privatized and made available to American corporations national industries and utilities. The Evil Empire and the Corporate Leviathan are one and the same, after all, their interests not mutually exclusive.
The Evil Empire's claws of incessant violence soon expanded to other nations of Southeast Asia. When its addiction for destruction was not satisfied with the firebombing of Tokyo that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, it turned to that most evil of human creations: the atomic bomb. After becoming the only nation to ever use atomic weapons on innocent populated areas, killing hundreds of thousands and unleashing utter devastation on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, America soon launched its appetite for blood in the Korean Peninsula after it entered the war, creating vast killing fields of both soldiers and civilians. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on all sides perished along with upwards of three million Koreans (North and South) who were caught in the crossfire of ideologies and human wickedness. Following the Korean War America soon found itself immersed in yet another war, this time in Vietnam. Decades of war led to the death of 58,000 American soldiers, over 100,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and close to one million North Vietnamese soldiers. Estimates place the number of civilian deaths at anywhere from 400,000 to two million. If the illegal American bombing of Cambodia and Laos orchestrated by Henry Kissinger is considered, in which civilian targets were selected and bombed, upwards of two million more Southeast Asians can be added to the Evil Empire's macabre statistics. Furthermore, many more died as a result of the total devastation of land and infrastructure the bombings and war created, including the continued death and disease of land and man due to the lingering effects of Agent Orange and through the enormous amount of unexploded bombs and ordinance still littering the ground.
Indonesia is another nation that, through the American imposed and supported dictator Mohamed Suharto, suffered tremendously thanks to the meddling by the Evil Empire. Under Suharto's watch, anywhere from 500,000 to two million people were killed in a 1965 alleged coup attempt, most of them dissenters, leftists, communists or opposition members. In 1975, with American blessings and weaponry, Suharto invaded East Timor in order to stop an insurrection by the native people, killing 250,000 people out of a population of 650,000. During Suharto's stay in power he detained and executed hundreds of thousands of Indonesian opposition members. His reign ended in 1998. During this time corruption was endemic, as was the subversion of democracy, freedoms and rights. In 1999 it was found that the Suharto family fortune totaled $15 billion, most of it coming from those government funds created thanks to international loans and the labor of the masses.
Lands and People of Latin America
The Evil Empire's omnipotent reach has had devastating effects in Latin America as well. The US government has interfered with the internal governance of several Central and South American nations in its quest to maintain its form of democracy and capitalism. The US has meddled in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Brazil, not to mention Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. The Evil Empire has imposed coups and US friendly dictatorships and leaders in many of the above mentioned nations. In Central America it supplied death squads with military support and logistics. In Chile, Argentina and Brazil, dictators, with the consent of their American masters, initiated a war against leftist dissenters and opponents, leading to the disappearance of thousands of men and women. In Panama, Manuel Noriega, a former CIA puppet, betrayed his American masters and hell was unleashed on Panama City by the US military. Anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 civilians died as the Evil Empire pursued the capture of one man.
Today, the Evil Empire is once more interfering in the destabilization of Latin American nations. Haiti is but the latest but by no means the last country to be burned by the searing claws of America's might. President Aristide, a champion of the poor and a seeker of equality and justice, stepped on US shoes with his defiance of neo-liberal threats imposed on him by Haiti's elite and the Bush administration. In essence, he sealed his own fate, and the clandestine coup sponsored by the US removed Aristide from office. As a result, Haiti, which has been the slave shop for US corporations for decades, will remain poor and exploited, a cesspool of poverty and hopelessness for its citizens.
Colombia has, thanks to the US, become a militarized zone where hundreds of people are killed on a yearly basis. Civil war has ensnarled the nation, instability runs amok and the livelihood of rural peasants has been destroyed by the coca eradication program enacted the America that has ruined arable land. With the potential of large oil reserves present under the nation's lands and the already discovered exploitable natural resources prevalent throughout the countryside, Colombia has become a target for US interests. Oil and energy companies, along with their growing infrastructure, are already protected by the US military as they continue their exploitation of the nation.
Meanwhile, the Evil Empire already has its sites set on destabilizing Venezuela and a harsh critic of the US, Hugo Chavez. Forces now at work, supported and maintained by the US, are slowly setting in motion mechanisms that, it is hoped, will unseat Chavez from office, whether by force or other means, thereby installing a friendly US pro-neo-liberal puppet that will allow for the pilfering of Venezuelan oil by the Evil Empire. A coup, assassination and or invasion are not out of the realm of possibilities, especially when black gold is involved.
What the Evil Empire has done to Latin America and its hundreds of millions of people is the imposition - by its proctors in high office and its bullying threats involving capital - of market colonialism that has had the effect of imprisoning and enslaving the masses. Neo-liberal ideology has indebted most "third-world" nations, not simply those of Latin America, and it has furthered indigence, lack of education, the corrosive caste system upon which millions are born into, inequality, injustice, hunger, disease, suffering, loss of opportunity and death.
Latin American nations have been made worse off since the inception of neo-liberal economic models forcefully imposed by the Evil Empire. As a result, labor has been made cheaper for US corporations, translating into cheaper goods for its citizens. Through the back-breaking slave labor, conditions and wages Latin Americans are exploited so that we in the rich north can consume to our hearts content. Yet millions upon millions live in squalor, surviving day to day, usually earning less than two dollars a day, living in feeble conditions and without the chance of ever improving their lives due to the non-existence of opportunity.
The Evil Empire's domination of Latin America (for more detail please see my January 12th article, Not in Our Backyard) has resulted in the mass migration towards our borders. When mechanisms such as NAFTA and neo-liberal tools are put in place in countries such as Mexico, only the elite benefit and profit. Everyone else is made worse off; jobs are meager, scarce and dehumanizing. US subsidies to agriculture have devastated rural farmers and workers in Latin America. When these people leave for the cities they find that employment is non-existent and life unbearable. The push to migrate north, where natives no longer perform the jobs of hard labor, is tremendous.
Thus, today we see millions of undocumented workers living in the US. It is the Evil Empire's imposed economic models and trade mechanisms that have created the eruption of Latin slave labor in our nation. Is it any coincidence that the mass migration north began after NAFTA was imposed on the region? The only entities that have benefited from NAFTA, both in the US and Mexico, are the corporations and the few ruling elite. Everyone else has been thrust into the realm of exploitation and failure.
The near enslavement of Latin America for the benefit of the Evil Empire has devastated millions of lives, talent and ability. It has created colonized economies, based on US crony capitalism that has exploited both man and land. Public companies and utilities have been privatized and subjugated to fit the Leviathan's goals. The rich have become richer while the poor poorer, and this has led to the greatest disparity in wealth the region has ever seen.
The Evil Empire has created a region that has for the last fifty years been subservient to the US. Its many puppets and proctors have helped devastate lives and subjugate the masses. Democracy has historically been an illusion. Fraud, coups, assassinations, destabilization, dictatorships and a state of perpetual wretchedness have been used by the Evil Empire as tools to control Latin America. When the will of the people triumphs, such as in Chile with Allende, Venezuela with Chavez or Haiti with Aristide, the Evil Empire imposes its will in order to decimate democracy and maintain a system that benefits the US, its corporations and the elite.
Social democracy and economic models that benefit the masses are not allowed to flourish lest they become a threat to the US. Systems of governance that benefit the people are never allowed to prosper, lest the "pestilence" gain momentum and traverse like a virus beyond borders, giving millions of destitute people hope. Only US style crony capitalism that makes serfs and slaves of the masses for the greater benefit of the Leviathan and the elite oligarchs can exist. Only US style debauched democracy can stand, where the will of the people is silenced and their incredible ability quashed.
The Evil Empire has in the last fifty years devastated hundreds of millions of lives and we are all complicit, thanks to the work of our government, in the ruination of lives and exploitation of human energies.
Lands and People of the Middle East
With wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Evil Empire has killed tens of thousands of Arabs in the last two years. The remnants of cluster bombs and depleted uranium used by the American war machine have and will continue to kill and maim thousands more in the coming decades.
US sponsored sanctions on Iraq, in essence nothing more than a cruel form of economic genocide that was imposed in the aftermath of Gulf War I, unleashed its inherent evils for the next decade, resulting in the death of up to a million men, women and children who were denied basic necessities needed for survival. This form of crime against humanity enforced by the Evil Empire was in essence a quasi-concentration camp in which a million humans perished due to the American government's collective punishment on an entire population.
Iraq, needless to say, has suffered tremendously both by the one-time American lackey whose tyrannical dictatorship led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and by US wars and sanctions. The Evil Empire has made the Cradle of Civilization a walking wasteland of death, suffering and destruction, a barren desert whose fertility has been eroded.
For years the people of Iran were forced to endure the horrors and despotism of the shah, an American proctor and puppet that subjected his people to tyranny, oppression and exploitation. Democracy was subverted, many innocent civilians were killed or disappeared and the nation fell into decay while the shah and his cronies basked in the splendor of oil's rewards. When the masses finally revolted, the American embassy was attacked and destroyed, a clear symbol of who the people thought was responsible for their misery. The Great Satan was purged from the lands of Persia and to this day has not returned.
Today, Saudi Arabia is controlled by a US-protected monarchy loyal to its masters. Meanwhile, the people linger in growing poverty and desperation. Democracy is non-existent, as are freedoms and liberties. As a result, many living below human dignity are turning toward resistance and resentment that is manifesting itself in a growing hatred of both the Saud monarchy and American "Crusaders" despoiling sacred Muslim lands.
In Turkey, the Kurdish minority has for years been ethnically cleansed by the Turkish government. Hundreds of thousands of people have died and many more maimed and injured thanks to the vast, modern and sophisticated array of weapons and military hardware provided by the Evil Empire, who has turned a blind eye to the genocide and repression that has brought misery and suffering to the Kurds of Turkey. The Empire's failure to act in the face of such crimes against humanity and its approval of arms sales to the Turkish military makes it complicit in the systemic annihilation and plight of the Kurdish people.
Through one-sided political support for the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by Israel against the occupied and oppressed Palestinian people, the Evil Empire's hands are smeared in the blood of a people robbed of their land, raped of their livelihood and dehumanized of their existence. It is American Apache helicopters, Abrams tanks, Caterpillar bulldozers, fast missiles, smart bombs, weapons and bullets that are decimating an entire population, making prisoners of millions who now live in Bantustans and ghettos.
This, along with billions of dollars in financial and military aid to the Israeli government has morphed the crimes of the IDF with the interests of the Evil Empire, forming a Molotov cocktail of destruction, dehumanization and death. The apartheid wall being built today that is usurping Palestinian land, crops, water, homes and lives is in large part possible thanks to American taxpayer money. The Evil Empire's role in Israel's treatment of the native Palestinian people is apparent in the geopolitical protection afforded the country by the US and its role in vetoing UN condemnations of Israeli behavior and by its tacit support for Israeli actions in the occupied territories.
The Evil Empire is once more involved in the devastation of millions of people who have been robbed of their lands and lives, live in utter decay and dehumanization, suffer severe forms of collective punishment and are being ethnically cleansed in a most meticulous and abhorrent way. Palestinians are today living in a state of apartheid, in ghettos resembling large concentration camps, under the watchful eyes of a trigger-happy occupying force, struggling to survive on the measly crumbs Israel throws their way and with the knowledge that their endemic and ruinous plight is endorsed by the greatest "purveyor of democracy" and "defender of human rights" the world has ever seen.
In Central Asia, the Evil Empire is systematically forging alliances with a new group of tyrannical dictators that have subjugated their people to despotism. In these nations, democracy is dwindling, freedoms are hardly existent and the decay of liberties is being exacerbated. Torture, death, misery and poverty are hallmarks of the new group of dictators now entrenched in the pockets of the US government. It seems that when vast oil wealth is involved the US altruistic fight for democracy is a principle that is easily disposed of and forgotten. The struggle for human rights and dignity the US so boldly declares as a priority is erased and ignored.
The Evils Done in our Name
The devastation of peoples throughout the planet directly or indirectly sponsored by the Evil Empire, who through no fault of their own are denied rights, freedoms and democracy, are subjected to gross human rights violations and persecutions and face death or disappearance is a crime against humanity. It is state sponsored terrorism and genocide. Market colonialism has decimated both countries and the lives of their inhabitants. Economic genocide has wrought suffering and increased indigence, robbing millions of education, healthcare, opportunity and livable wages. The world's people have in many instances been enslaved to cater to the interests of the Evil Empire and its minions.
The evils done in our name have created worldwide animosity and hatred. They have given rise to desperation and humiliation that is today manifested by the growing number of humans fighting the system that has been imposed onto them. From Al-Qaeda to Iraqi freedom fighters to the Venezuelan poor to enlightened Europeans to the growing number of sprouting "terror" groups franchising around the world, the people of the world are growing frustrated at the Evil Empire's devastation of peoples in order to suit its interests, both corporate and governmental.
Billions are searing in anger at the US government and by indirect complicity at its citizens as well. We are no longer welcome neighbors in the community of nations. To be American is to be scorned and castigated, to be unwelcome in the lands of the exploited and subjugated. The evils done in our name are beginning to have karmic repercussions through out he globe, and the danger now present will affect us all who have been made blind to the crimes against humanity and the planet being committed by theEvil Empire.
In the last 200 years the United States has killed, directly or indirectly, tens of millions of human beings, surpassing the horrors of evildoers past and present. It has created untold levels of suffering and depravity, sending untold millions to the sewers of poverty and dehumanization. These truths are not easy to swallow, or to accept, yet they are as real as the air we breathe. It is time we accept the evils done in our name.
George W. Bush is but the latest in a long line of presidents who have continued the cycle of violence our nation has such a propensity towards. America, it seems, gravitates naturally towards violence and destruction, perhaps due to the fact that besides 9/11, we have never seen the true horrors of what man is capable of unleashing onto his fellow man. The reality that afflicts billions is to us a distant haze of blurriness. We have not been made privy to the suffering and misery, the death, disease and maiming of a land in war, an environment in flames and a people in battle. Our luck has been the world's misfortune.
Our society has been made blind to endemic and ceaseless worldwide suffering at the hands of our government. Through years of conditioning we now fail to blink at the carnage our military engenders around the world. From the cradle to the grave we are subjected to incessant violence, whether real or fictional, that makes us immune to the torment prevalent in the rest of the world. Through careful manipulation we are made to believe that war is peace, destruction is prosperity and murder is life.
The world burns while we live lives of consumption and production, happy worker bees stuck in hour long commutes working most of our productive lives. We live in peace and harmony at home, distracted from reality by our television screens and movie theatres, by our lavish lifestyles and wasteful society. In the land of the individual the communality of peoples is an alien principle. Content, conformist and passive thanks to our nation of plenty, we care not for peoples outside our borders. We have everything we need, after all, and a plethora of distractions in our daily lives prevents us from even considering that a larger world exists beyond our shores.
The impenetrable bubble we live in protects us from empathizing with billions whose lives have been made worse since the birth of the Evil Empire. We have been made ignorant to that which has been unleashed onto the world and that owes its existence to our continued lifestyle and complicity by acquiescence and failure to act. The Evil Empire runs rampant through the planet, devouring all in its path, enslaving millions and conquering and despoiling lands. Meanwhile, inside the belly of the beast we sit, basking in extravagance and splendor, complacent in life and circumstance, unwilling to open our eyes and minds to the evils done in our name.
Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst, Internet columnist and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel now on sale by Authorhouse.com. A collection of essays, Beyond the Smoking Mirror: Reflections on America and Humanity, will be published in early 2005. His articles appear in alternative news websites and you can find him regularly on informationclearinghouse.info. His unique style and powerful writing is read internationally and seeks to expose truths and realities confronting humanity today. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net. A diverse collection of many of his essays and articles can be found below:
Articles by Manuel Valenzuela, 2004 and at at my archives
Echoes in the Wind Sales Page Mr. Valenzuela's new novel now on sale. Almost 600 pages in trade paperback form on sale internationally through secure webpage transaction
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article7123.htm
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Karzai Effectively Wins Afghan Vote as Count Nears End
October 25, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/asia/25afghan.html?hp&ex=1098676800&en=96d7f2d8baa6a4af&ei=5094&partner=homepage
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 24 - President Hamid Karzai has won the majority of votes in the Oct. 9 election, results posted Sunday on the election commission's Web site show, effectively securing his position as Afghanistan's first popularly elected president.
Mr. Karzai, who had been widely expected to win, received more than 4.2 million votes - more than half of the estimated ballots cast. Under the election rules, any of the 18 candidates must receive 50 percent plus one vote to win, avoiding the necessity of a runoff. The presidential term is five years.
While the official, final tally is not due until Oct. 30 and some other candidates have refused to concede and continued to accuse Mr. Karzai of vote fraud, election officials and outside election observers said it was not possible for him to lose his overall majority.
"We won, that's 100 percent sure," said Hamid Elmi, campaign spokesman for Mr. Karzai. "The counting process is not quite finished, and there are ballot boxes still in quarantine, but I should say that we have succeeded," he said.
Results posted on the Internet by the Joint Electoral Management Board, an Afghan and United Nations election commission, showed Mr. Karzai way ahead by Sunday evening, with 94 percent of the votes counted.
He had 55.3 percent of the vote. His nearest rival, the former education minister, Muhammad Yunus Qanooni, had 16.2 percent.
Among the other candidates, the Hazara Shia leader, Muhammad Mohaqeq, received 11.8 percent, and the Uzbek general, Abdul Rashid Dostum had 10.3 percent. The only woman presidential candidate, Masooda Jalal, was running sixth, with 80,922 votes, or 1.1 percent. Nonetheless, her showing was a landmark for a woman in Afghan politics.
While the two-week counting process was near an end, ballots from the most remote province, Badakhshan, and the two other regions representing Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan, were still to be counted.
The election was widely regarded as remarkably peaceful, despite incidents of violence and threats from insurgents loyal to the ousted Taliban rule. Elections observers from the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who fielded barely 122 international observers around the country, have described the election as an "orderly and transparent process."
Mr. Karzai's main rivals declined to comment on the results until all the votes were counted and results of an investigation into irregularities by an international panel of experts is presented Monday. Mr. Qanooni's representatives acknowledged Mr. Karzai's lead, but said they would not react until final results were released.
Fifteen ballot boxes remain in quarantine, subject to investigation by the panel of three international election officials, but the bulk of the 100 boxes originally put aside because of complaints of fraud have been released and included in the counting, the United Nations spokesman, Manoel de Alemida e Silva, said.
Opposition candidates were sticking to their complaints that large-scale election fraud had occurred in favor of Mr. Karzai. "Definitely I should say there was a lot of cheating, and we want to congratulate to Mr. Karzai on the election that he is winning as a result of a large-scale fraud and cheating," Dr. Yassa, a representative of the Shia Hazara leader Muhammad Mohaqeq, said in a telephone interview.
Latif Pedram, who was running in fifth place with 1.2 per cent of the vote, said widespread fraud had occurred, which he described as "completely shameful."
"It is obvious for everyone that Karzai could not get 15 percent of the votes if the election had been fair. Now if Karzai, or anybody else, becomes the president of the country as a result of this election, he will be a false president," Mr. Pedram said.
Mr. Karzai's victory is not the landslide that he and his Western backers had hoped for. He has found overwhelming approval among his fellow ethnic Pashtuns in the south and east, winning 90 percent of the vote in some of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. Yet he has made a poor showing in much of the north, where voters tended to vote according to their ethnic group, supporting the main Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara candidates.
His two vice-presidential running mates, the Hazara leader Karim Khalili, and the Tajik Ahmed Zia Massoud, the brother of the legendary resistance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, failed to bring in the vote from their respective ethnic groups. Diplomats here said Mr. Karzai will have to repair relations with the ethnic minorities who dominate the north, and balance that with acknowledgement of the support he won in the south.
"He has to think of a more coherent policy towards the Hazaras and the north, which has not been managed well," said one foreign diplomat. "And for the Pashtuns, who have given him such a vote, he has to get reconstruction going in their areas, and continue a policy of dialogue with moderate Taliban," the diplomat said.
The need for compromise between north and south, between Pashtuns who have always ruled Afghanistan and the northern tribes who want more rights for their people and between the Pashtuns who largely supported the Taliban movement and those who fought it, has often made Mr. Karzai's interim administration ineffectual.
Diplomats are hoping for a strong government that will tackle disarmament, narcotics control, corruption and institutional change, areas in which Mr. Karzai has largely failed to make an impact.
Mr. Karzai was outspoken in the weeks before the vote, often promising that if he won he would no longer put up with a tricky coalition government, but would form a government from like-minded people who will follow his own agenda.
Yet diplomats and United Nations officials are already warning that he will have to find ministers from among the ethnic minorities to join his cabinet and answer to the widespread public dissatisfaction in the north.
The most immediate task of the next government should be to prepare for parliamentary elections, set for the spring, but widely expected to be held in the summer or fall, said Jean Arnault, the leader of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
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Karzai Is Clear Winner, Afghan Vote Results Show
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58452-2004Oct24.html
HERAT, Afghanistan, Oct. 24 -- President Hamid Karzai has won a majority of votes in Afghanistan's election, clinching a five-year term and becoming the country's first democratically elected president, according to preliminary results released Sunday. With 94.3 percent of the votes counted, Karzai was winning 55.3 percent, or 4.2 million, of the votes cast, enough to avoid a runoff, the Joint Electoral Management Body reported. Any showing of less than 50 percent would have required a runoff between the top two vote-getters, according to the Afghan constitution. Even if all the votes that are currently uncounted went to his rivals, Karzai would still win a majority. An official announcement may be made later this week.
Karzai's closest rival, his former education and interior minister, Yonus Qanooni, conceded defeat. Qanooni was far behind with 16.2 percent, or 1.2 million, of the votes cast, the results showed.
Tallying the votes from the Oct. 9 election has been a painstakingly slow process, as election officials said workers needed to become accustomed to the new experience of examining ballots, discerning voter intentions and counting the estimated 8 million votes cast.
Aides to Karzai, the U.S.-backed candidate, have been reluctant to claim victory until a final, official announcement. But the Associated Press quoted a presidential spokesman Sunday night as saying: "We were up against 17 candidates, but the people were behind us. We will sleep soundly tonight."
Qanooni acknowledged his defeat, according to his spokesman, Sayed Hamid Noori, the Reuters news agency reported. The Associated Press quoted one of Qanooni's two running mates, Taj Mohamed Wardak, as saying, "We are waiting for the international experts to decide on the fraud and cheating."
Other Karzai challengers said it was too early to concede before all the ballots were counted and results made official. Along with Qanooni, they had initially announced a boycott of the election, and a refusal to accept the results, because of concerns that voters at some polling stations had washed ink -- intended to prevent them from casting more than one ballot -- off their hands. But the candidates dropped that threat, under intense pressure from U.S. diplomats, and agreed to allow a three-member international panel to investigate whether the ink problem was serious enough to invalidate the results. The panel, consisting of a Canadian, a Briton and a Swede, is due to make a decision in a few days.
The elections body had initially set Oct. 30 as the target date for finishing the vote count and announcing a decision.
While the election was relatively peaceful, despite vows by remnants of the ousted Taliban rulers to disrupt it, the counting was marred Saturday by a suicide bombing on a busy shop-lined street in Kabul that is typically frequented by foreigners. An attacker dressed as a beggar and wearing a string of six grenades detonated the explosives just after 3 p.m., killing himself, a 12-year-old Afghan girl and an American woman, identified as a 23-year-old translator and former Army reservist who lives in Uzbekistan and was visiting Kabul. Apparently three of the grenades exploded, Afghan and foreign officials said.
A purported Taliban spokesman asserted responsibility for the attack in a satellite telephone interview with Reuters in Kabul. Three Icelandic members of the International Security Assistance Force on patrol in the capital were injured in the attack, two slightly and one more seriously. The injuries were reported not to be life-threatening.
A top military official said in an interview that the attacker, whose body was destroyed by the blast, was probably an Afghan, not a foreigner, because he appeared to have a good knowledge of Kabul, and particularly Chicken Street, which is popular with Westerners shopping for carpets and antiques.
Lt. Col. Mohammed Tahir, director of disarmament and demobilization for the Afghan Defense Ministry in the western city of Herat, said remnants of the Taliban may be resorting to suicide bombings because they had been weakened militarily. "The Taliban are getting weaker and weaker, and they know they will soon be finished," he said. "They want to scare people."
"It's like two wrestlers in a match," Tahir said. "The one that is losing decides to throw an illegal punch."
-------- africa
Second round of Darfur peace talks begin
October 25, 2004
United Press International
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041025-095840-3709r.htm
Abuja, Nigeria, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- The second round of talks aimed at finding a solution to the Darfur crisis in western Sudan resumed in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Monday.
The last round of the African Union-chaired negotiations ended in September with no results.
In Washington, the U.S. State Department said Monday it expects both sides to first sign a humanitarian protocol and then finalize and sign a security protocol.
A senior U.S. official, Bruce Ehrnman, from the State Department's African Affairs Bureau, is attending the talks as an observer.
The 20-month conflict in Darfur, which the United States describes as genocide, has displaced approximately 1.5 million people and about 70,000 people have died as a result of the conflict since March.
While the African Union has repeatedly said it believes in African solutions for African problems, Jan Pronk, the U.N. secretary-general's special envoy in Sudan, visited Abuja during the weekend to persuade delegates to demonstrate a commitment to making peace.
Last week, the AU approved plans to expand its military presence in Darfur from about 300 troops to more than 3,000. The European Union announced Sunday it will pay more than half the cost of the military force.
--------
New Guerrilla Factions Arise in Sudan Ahead of Peace Talks
October 25, 2004
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/africa/25darfur.html?pagewanted=all
ABUJA, Nigeria Oct. 24 - As many as two new guerrilla factions have emerged in western Sudan, potentially complicating peace talks that are scheduled to start here on Monday between the Sudanese government and its two established rebel foes, the United Nations top envoy to Sudan said in an interview on Sunday.
Little is known about the power and political objectives of the new insurgents. But with their recent attacks, they have posed a new source of insecurity in an already traumatized region and have imperiled the safety of African Union monitors and aid workers. The new guerrillas are not among the signers of the cease-fire agreements between the government of Sudan and the two established Darfur rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army.
"At the beginning, I thought they were an artificial creation, but now I think it's more serious," said Jan Pronk, the United Nations special representative on Sudan. "It's a force with which you have to reckon."
Mr. Pronk, who is from the Netherlands, said that one group was based near the northwestern border with Chad and that the other was in southern Darfur.
According to Maj. Gen. Festus Okonkwo, a Nigerian who commands the African Union Cease-Fire Commission, the new northern group, the National Movement for Reform and Development, attacked a government convoy on Oct. 6. General Okonkwo said it was unclear whether the same faction was responsible for planting mines that killed two aid workers recently.
General Okonkwo described the group as a breakaway faction of the Justice and Equality Movement. That faction's chief negotiator, Ahmed Tugod Lissan, said the new group had been created by an ousted field commander of the Justice and Equality Movement who now is collaborating with Khartoum and its allies in Chad. "They have been created by the government," Mr. Lissan declared. The government said it knew nothing about the group.
News of the latest factions came on the eve of peace talks. The talks are to be mediated by the African Union and are aimed at ending a nearly 20-month conflict that has left more than 1.5 million people homeless and, according to the World Food Program, claimed 70,000 lives from hunger and disease. United Nations officials have said that the insecurity in the region has threatened the delivery of emergency food aid.
As rebel and government delegates arrived here in recent days - rebels in suits and coats, the government officials in white robes and turbans - they took turns accusing one another of bad faith.
The Sudanese agriculture minister and chief negotiator here, Magzoub el-Khalifa Ahmed, blamed rebels for fomenting trouble across Darfur to sustain international attention. "They need to stimulate all these governments and all these organizations on their side by making the situation worse on the ground," he said.
Rebels said the government could not be trusted. "My honest feeling is they're interested in delaying," said the Sudan Liberation Army's chief negotiator, Sharif Harir.
No one expects that the talks, which are scheduled to last up to three weeks, will yield a comprehensive peace deal. The previous session broke off in September after disagreements over whether the government would disarm the allied Arab militias that have killed and brutalized villagers in Darfur.
The United Nations Security Council, threatening sanctions, has pressed Sudan to disarm the gunmen and has urged both sides to allow access for aid. Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, has commissioned independent observers to assess whether the violence in Darfur constitutes genocide.
The Security Council is scheduled to hold a special session on Sudan next month in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. The Security Council has only met outside its headquarters in New York twice; once in 1952 in Paris, and again 20 years later in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
On Sunday afternoon, after speaking to delegates in a closed-door session, Mr. Pronk said he had urged both sides to take on the political grievances that led to conflict. "We are trying to make clear to them, and I am, 'You are here to fight for your people; you have to do that today,' " Mr. Pronk added. "I'm telling them, 'Don't lay mines.' "
The rebels' political goals have never been clear, beyond vague demands for the sharing of wealth and power in Sudan. That could also be a potential stumbling block in the talks.
Meanwhile, preparations were under way for the deployment of additional African Union troops in Darfur. By the end of the year, General Okonkwo said, troop strength would grow to 3,320, from the current 463.
A delicately worded mandate authorizes the African Union to monitor cease-fire violations and protect civilians who are "under imminent threat." That language is purposefully open to interpretation. The commander said his soldiers could not enforce the law, but added, "We cannot sit down and watch civilians being killed while we are around."
-------- balkans
Pacifist leader claims victory in Kosovo elections
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By John Phillips
October 25, 2004
http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20041025-120901-6502r
PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro -- Demands for early independence for Kosovo arose yesterday after elections in which a near-total boycott by Serbs left pacifist President Ibrahim Rugova -- known as the "Gandhi of the Balkans" -- an easy winner.
Addressing reporters at his imposing residence overlooking Pristina's crowded slums, Mr. Rugova claimed victory after independent observers declared that his Democratic League of Kosovo had received 47 percent of the vote.
"I insist that Kosovo's independence be recognized, and then standards will be easily fulfilled, as in every state in Europe," Mr. Rugova said, reversing the United Nations' long-touted "standards before status" mantra for the province.
Mr. Rugova's main rival, the Democratic Party of Kosovo led by a former rebel commander, took 27 percent, said Ibrahim Makolli of the independent Center for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms. The rest of the vote was split among smaller parties.
Ethnic Serbian leaders in northern Kosovo were jubilant that only 0.3 percent of the Serbian minority of 80,000 had cast ballots, responding to appeals by the Serbian Orthodox Church and Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.
Serbs had argued that their participation would serve only to give legitimacy to the Kosovo assembly's drive to achieve independence when talks on the final status of the U.N.-administered province begin in mid-2005.
"This is a triumph," said Radmila Trajkovic, a member of Kosovo's National Serb Council in the divided northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica.
"With this low turnout, the Serbian community has turned the election into a referendum to show that it rejects what the international community is doing, and that changes must be made to create a truly multicultural society."
Under electoral rules, the Serbian community still will receive 10 seats in Kosovo's 120-seat parliament. But the low turnout casts doubt on the legitimacy of those representatives.
Western diplomats say Mr. Kostunica is sure to argue that the boycott amounts to support for the Serbian government's plan for the decentralization of Kosovo, which was drawn up after ethnic Albanian gangs rampaged through Serbian villages in March, leaving 19 persons dead and 4,000 people homeless.
NATO sent 2,000 extra troops from France, Germany and Italy to ensure security for the election.
The voting passed without major clashes, but Serbs complained that nationalist thugs used intimidation and death threats to keep them away from voting places.
Mr. Rugova yesterday dismissed the importance of the Serbian electoral boycott, saying it would make no difference to the drive for independence.
But the abstention has left Kosovo's chief U.N. administrator, Soren Jessen-Petersen, with a dilemma over how to wind down the expensive U.N. protectorate and devolve power to the Kosovo assembly while protecting the Serbian minority.
Mr. Jessen-Petersen blamed intimidation for the boycott. "There would have been more Serbian voters if those who wanted to have a monopoly over the Kosovo Serbs had not appeared," he said in a reference to the nationalist community leaders.
-------- biological weapons
Biological threat greater than nuclear or chemical: British report
LONDON (AFP)
Oct 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041025163827.8c0292u2.html
The threat from biological weapons has outstripped that of chemical and nuclear weapons because of advances in biotechnology, the respected British Medical Association (BMA) warned in a report published on Monday.
"What we are talking about here is the development of a technology which could clearly be misused by terrorists or deranged individuals," the author of the report, Professor Malcolm Dando, told a London press conference.
"We have a much more difficult problem in controlling biological weapons (as opposed to nuclear) in the long term," said Dando, an arms control expert for over 20 years.
In 1999, the BMA -- a voluntary professional association of doctors -- issued a report calling unsuccessfully for the 1975 UN convention on biological and chemical weapons to be strengthened.
The US government argued that imposing controls on biotechnology would interfere with benign research being carried out and consequently pulled out of international talks aimed at boosting the convention in 2001.
In its latest report, "Weapons and Humanity II", the BMA warns that the window of opportunity to tackle the spread of biological weapons was shrinking fast.
If unchecked, terrorists could target specific ethnic groups and spread devastating diseases such as deadly strains of flu, a synthetic version of the polio virus or genetically-engineered anthrax, it said.
"It's never been easier to develop biological weapons -- all you have to do is look on the Internet," said Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the BMA.
"The situation today is arguably worse than it was when we published our last report five years ago," she told the press conference.
"The very existence of international laws to protect us is being questioned, and the anthrax attacks in the US in 2001 caused widespread panic and fear."
Urging the international community to take up the issue, she said: "This report does not make comfortable reading, but it is essential governments take action on this issue now.
"If we wait too long it will be virtually impossible to defend ourselves."
-------- business
Israeli companies tout security gear
October 25, 2004
By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041025-120901-2103r.htm
Chemical-detecting cameras and imaging gear that instantly can map out an area of nuclear contamination will be among the goods offered at an extraordinary trade conference in Washington this week.
Sixty top Israeli security-related companies will be displaying their latest technology for American companies and agencies responsible for patrolling U.S. borders and protecting against terrorist threats.
Some of the most exciting equipment is suitable for customs, border patrol, and detection, said Rob Hartwell of the American Business Development Group (ABDG), which helped organize the Oct. 28-29 conference for invited guests only.
"The Israelis excel at combining photo optics, sensing devices, cameras and also water-acoustical instruments, capable of detecting any intrusion and identifying whether it is human or animal," Mr. Hartwell said.
The conference also will help Israeli firms connect with like-minded American companies interested in satellite tracking, security systems, firearms, ammunition, maritime security, armor and bulletproof glass.
The United States and Israel already cooperate in the military arena, and several skilled Israelis have clearances to work in the U.S. military sector. This week's symposium is designed to expand that cooperation into the homeland-security arena.
Israel's government must approve the transfer of any sensitive technology, and several companies will not disclose their most advanced technologies. But many companies are ready to show off equipment that is more advanced or more competitive than anything made in the United States.
One company has developed hyper-spectral imaging based on satellite technology that can instantly map out an area contaminated by weapons of mass destruction and determine the best evacuation routes, Mr. Hartwell said.
Another offer is for a product already being used "in a major conflict" - a vehicle-borne camera that can see in the dark, sense heat or movement, and sniff out a number of chemical and biological compounds.
"A lot of different industries in Israel have transferred their knowledge to nonmilitary applications," said Ronin Zahavy, director of industry affairs for the Israeli Export and International Cooperation Institute.
More than 200 Israeli companies were evaluated over the last six months by conference organizers. Some offers were rejected, such as a company whose major concept was a lounge chair with a built-in lie detector.
ABDG, a consulting group, traveled to Israel with more than 20 experts, including former military members, program managers, potential clients and Capitol Hill defense staff, to vet the companies invited to the program.
There will be some 60 presentations in three sessions during the two-day conference, with the aim of finding business partners and establishing joint ventures to better approach the American market.
"We are arranging face-to-face business-opportunity meetings with U.S. companies and essentially trying to take the cream of the crop of Israeli technology and putting them in front of top U.S. companies," Mr. Hartwell said.
--------
THE BILLIONS
Top Army Official Calls for a Halliburton Inquiry
October 25, 2004
By ERIK ECKHOLM
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/politics/25halliburton.html?pagewanted=all
The top civilian contracting official for the Army Corps of Engineers, charging that the Army granted the Halliburton Company large contracts for work in Iraq and the Balkans without following rules designed to ensure competition and fair prices to the government, has called for a high-level investigation of what she described as threats to the "integrity of the federal contracting program."
The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, said that in at least one case she witnessed, Army officials inappropriately allowed representatives of Halliburton to sit in as they discussed the terms of a contract the company was set to receive.
Her accusations offer the first extended account of arguments that roiled inside the military bureaucracy over contracts with the company.
In an Oct. 21 letter to the acting Army secretary, Ms. Greenhouse said that after her repeated questions about the Halliburton contracts, she was excluded from major decisions to award money and that her job status was threatened. In response, Army officials referred her accusations to the Pentagon's investigations bureau for review and promised to protect her position in the meantime.
Ms. Greenhouse, 62, is a veteran of military procurement and serves the Corps of Engineers as the principal assistant responsible for contracting - the top civilian overseeing the agency's contracts. She also has chief responsibility for reviewing adherence to Pentagon rules intended to shield awards from outside influence and promote competition.
The contracts to Halliburton, a Houston-based conglomerate headed by Dick Cheney before he became vice president, have stirred controversy and charges of favoritism because some were granted on an emergency basis, without competitive bidding. The company's operations in Iraq, involving work for more than $10 billion, have also been dogged by charges of overbilling and waste and have been an issue in the presidential campaign.
The Pentagon has asserted that, as the invasion of Iraq began, Halliburton was the only company able to provide services with the required speed and secrecy. But Pentagon auditors later questioned the company's billing practices and found examples of reckless spending or unjustified charges.
Halliburton has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, saying it has performed well in a war zone and that many of its critics are politically motivated.
Ms. Greenhouse's lawyers sent the letter on her behalf to the acting secretary of the Army, Les Brownlee, calling for a high-level investigation of what the letter describes as threats to the "integrity of the federal contracting program."
They sent copies to several Congressional committees, and a copy was provided to The Times by a Congressional staff member. Portions of the letter were described in Time magazine on Sunday.
In a response dated Oct. 22, Robert Fano, a senior lawyer in the Department of the Army, said that the acting secretary had referred her letter to the Pentagon inspector general "for review and action as appropriate" and that he had directed the Army Corps of Engineers "to suspend any adverse personnel actions" against Ms. Greenhouse.
Some of the contracts Ms. Greenhouse says she questioned, including a noncompetitive agreement with the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root in early 2003 for Iraqi oil repairs that was initially worth up to $7 billion over five years, have already attracted debate in Congress and the news media. In the resulting firestorm, the contract was later shortened to one year and supplanted by a competitive process, just as Ms. Greenhouse had recommended initially.
Another decision, made this spring to extend for an extra 11 monthswithout bidding a K.B.R. contract providing logistical services in the Balkans, has received less notice. In this case, Ms. Greenhouse asserted, where operations have continued for four years, claims of an emergency or that Kellogg Brown & Root was the only feasible provider were not tenable. The company is expected to draw $165 million from the extension.
Mr. Kohn said Ms. Greenhouse was "absolutely not" seeking financial rewards through a lawsuit under the federal whistle-blower act, which offers substantial sums to government workers who expose fraud. Nor, given her senior executive status, can she be easily fired by the agency, though she could be moved to a less responsible position.
"The contracting process at the Army Corps of Engineers has broken down, and she feels she can't continue to do her job as she sees it," said Michael D. Kohn, a partner of Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, which represents Ms. Greenhouse and signed the Oct. 21 letter, in a telephone interview.
Ms. Greenhouse said she would not grant interviews without permission from her employer, fearing possible retribution, Mr. Kohn said.
"Employees of the U.S. government have taken improper action that favored K.B.R.'s interests," the letter said, and Ms. Greenhouse "experienced repeated interference with her role" as chief monitor.
In the case of the 2003 Iraq oil award, Kellogg Brown & Root was given a secret contract months before to draw up plans for fixing oil facilities. Once the invasion began, as the letter relates, it was then deemed the only company in a position to carry out the plan.
Ms. Greenhouse says she argued strenuously that a noncompetitive contract should not be given for more than one year. Instead, the company was given a five-year contract worth up to $7 billion.
As they worked on the final contract, she asserts, Army officials held a meeting on Feb. 26, 2003, to discuss tasks and costs, and Kellogg Brown & Root representatives were invited to attend. "Eventually the discussions turned to matters that Ms. Greenhouse concluded were outside the scope of information K.B.R. should be privy to" before the contract was fully defined, the letter said.
On her protest, the company officials left the room, but "the line between government officials and K.B.R. had become so blurred that a perception of a conflict of interest existed," the letter said.
The company gained $2.4 billion on the oil contract in the first year, before the Pentagon cut it short and put out competitive bids. The company won a part of the continued work.
In another case, in late 2003 when Pentagon auditors found that Halliburton may have overcharged the government $61 million for fuel, the Army Corps of Engineers issued an unusual waiver calling the price reasonable. Ms. Greenhouse says in her letter that officials deliberately excluded her from the decision and had one of her subordinates sign off on the waiver.
-------- china
Colin Powell's Agenda in China
October 25, 2004
Wall Street Journal
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed102504a.cfm
During his visit to Asia this week, Colin Powell can expect Chinese leaders to speak bluntly, and the U.S. secretary of state will need to speak plainly in return.
What is most needed is a frank discussion about China's relations with North Korea, Taiwan and Japan. First, Mr. Powell should warn Beijing that its political, economic and military support for North Korea in its quest for a nuclear weapons capability belies Beijing's claims that China values a denuclearized Korean peninsula. Second, Mr. Powell will need to remind Beijing's leaders that the level of U.S. arms sales and military exchanges with Taiwan are linked to the level of threat China poses to Taiwan. And finally, Mr. Powell must caution China not to test America's commitment to Tokyo with illegal incursions into Japanese waters.
It is time Mr. Powell spoke candidly about America's disappointment with China's stance toward North Korea. Beijing's public statements and economic-aid policies have bolstered Pyongyang's position and undermined Washington's. The so-called six-party-talks framework for dealing with North Korea's nuclear-weapons ambitions has been underway for over a year, and has yielded zero progress. Instead, the situation has deteriorated. North Korea has claimed -- credibly -- that it has reprocessed spent nuclear-fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium.
During this time, China has lavished economic aid on Pyongyang, and continually praised North Korea's leaders for their contributions to stability in the region and to world peace. China's continuing and generous stream of aid relieves North Korean leaders of the burden of choosing between saving their economy from collapse and developing nuclear weapons.
China's unwavering political, rhetorical and economic support for North Korea contrasts starkly with Beijing's attacks on Washington's policies. Immediately after the first round of six-party talks in August 2003, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi told journalists that "the American policy toward DPRK -- this is the main problem we are facing." Chinese sniping at the U.S. position continued unabated this year.
On June 6, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing even questioned American assertions that North Korea has a uranium-enrichment program. The existence of a North Korean uranium-enrichment program is at the core of American charges that North Korea violated the terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework, and the U.S. intelligence that led to those charges were bolstered by interrogations of Abdul Qader Khan, the Pakistani nuclear-weapons chief who admitted he sold an entire fissile uranium production cycle to North Korea after 1995. Moreover, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney briefed Chinese leaders on the North Korean uranium program during his visit in mid-April. China's public failure to acknowledge the facts is a sure sign it is not interested in pursuing the type of "body-cavity search" inspection regime that would be required for a complete dismantlement of the North's weapons programs.
The second area where a U.S.-China dialogue needs straight talk is Taiwan. Maintaining a defense relationship with Taiwan was an explicit condition of U.S. normalization with China in 1979, and the survival and success of Taiwan's new democratic government is in Washington's interest. Taiwan is one of America's top 10 export markets and a key defense and intelligence partner. As such, it has been a consistent U.S. policy that Taiwan's political status may not be changed except with the explicit "assent" of the people of Taiwan.
China apparently feels that military posturing will induce the U.S. to back away from its support for Taiwan. Over the past four months, China has demanded the so-called "Three Stops" -- that the U.S. ends all arms sales, official encounters with Taiwan and support for Taiwan's role in international organizations. In the meantime, China has increased its missile deployments, expected to reach an estimated 600 by the end of 2004 from 500 in 2003. More disturbing, defense sources in Washington have said that China has dramatically increased the number of jet-fighter sorties along the "center-line" of the Taiwan Strait in recent weeks.
In confronting Chinese demands that Washington abandon its defense support for Taiwan, Mr. Powell should restate that it has been U.S. policy for 25 years to sell arms to Taiwan, and that the U.S. could not have normalized relations with China in 1979 unless this was clearly understood. He might also repeat patiently, as President Ronald Reagan declared in 1982, that the level of arms sales is "conditioned absolutely" upon the continued commitment of China to the peaceful solution of the cross-strait differences.
Finally, Mr. Powell should remind his Chinese hosts (in the words of Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly) that Washington's "one China policy" is not the same as Beijing's "one China principle." He should make clear that Washington's policy must not be misinterpreted as an acknowledgement that Beijing has any right to use force against Taiwan. According to Mr. Kelly, America's policy is that Beijing should renounce the use of force toward Taiwan, and that both sides should "pursue dialogue as soon as possible through any available channels, without preconditions" and "on an equal basis."
China's aggressiveness in East Asia is not limited to Taiwan. Chinese maritime vessels are pushing the envelope in Japanese waters in the East China Sea. Mr. Powell must therefore be prepared to caution China against giving official permits to Chinese oil-exploration ships to begin resource surveys in Japanese waters near Okinawa and the Senkaku Islands, known in China as the Diaoyu Islands. Chinese oil exploration in Japan's exclusive economic zone is designed to probe for weakness in the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty.
Mr. Powell must be prepared to repeat clearly the U.S. position that the Senkaku Islands have been under Japanese administrative control since they were returned as part of the reversion of Okinawa in 1972. He should leave the Chinese in no doubt that the U.S. will support its most important ally in Asia, just as Japan has supported Washington in the war against terror.
In these important foreign-policy matters, a candid, clear dialogue between Washington and Beijing is essential if both sides are to avoid stumbling into a crisis.
Mr. Tkacik, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., is a retired officer in the U.S. foreign service who served in Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Taipei.
-------- iraq
TRACKING THE WEAPONS
Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq
October 25, 2004
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ, WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25bomb.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all
This article was reported and written by James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.
The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."
Administration officials said Sunday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.
American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings.
The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.
The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. The other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain.
"This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk," one senior Bush administration official said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said Sunday evening that Saddam Hussein's government "stored weapons in mosques, schools, hospitals and countless other locations," and that the allied forces "have discovered and destroyed perhaps thousands of tons of ordnance of all types." A senior military official noted that HMX and RDX were "available around the world" and not on the nuclear nonproliferation list, even though they are used in the nuclear warheads of many nations.
The Qaqaa facility, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, was well known to American intelligence officials: Mr. Hussein made conventional warheads at the site, and the I.A.E.A. dismantled parts of his nuclear program there in the early 1990's after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In the prelude to the 2003 invasion, Mr. Bush cited a number of other "dual use" items - including tubes that the administration contended could be converted to use for the nuclear program - as a justification for invading Iraq.
After the invasion, when widespread looting began in Iraq, the international weapons experts grew concerned that the Qaqaa stockpile could fall into unfriendly hands. In May, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum warned that terrorists might be helping "themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."
Earlier this month, in a letter to the I.A.E.A. in Vienna, a senior official from Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology wrote that the stockpile disappeared after early April 2003 because of "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security."
In an interview with The Times and "60 Minutes" in Baghdad, the minister of science and technology, Rashad M. Omar, confirmed the facts described in the letter. "Yes, they are missing," Dr. Omar said. "We don't know what happened." The I.A.E.A. says it also does not know, and has reported that machine tools that can be used for either nuclear or non-nuclear purposes have also been looted.
Dr. Omar said that after the American-led invasion, the sites containing the explosives were under the control of the Coalition Provisional Authority, an American-led entity that was the highest civilian authority in Iraq until it handed sovereignty of the country over to the interim government on June 28.
"After the collapse of the regime, our liberation, everything was under the coalition forces, under their control," Dr. Omar said. "So probably they can answer this question, what happened to the materials."
Officials in Washington said they had no answers to that question. One senior official noted that the Qaqaa complex where the explosives were stored was listed as a "medium priority" site on the Central Intelligence Agency's list of more than 500 sites that needed to be searched and secured during the invasion. "Should we have gone there? Definitely," said one senior administration official.
In the chaos that followed the invasion, however, many of those sites, even some considered a higher priority, were never secured.
A No Man's Land
Seeing the ruined bunkers at the vast Qaqaa complex today, it is hard to recall that just two years ago it was part of Saddam Hussein's secret military complex. The bunkers are so large that they are reminiscent of pyramids, though with rounded edges and the tops chopped off. Several are blackened and eviscerated as a result of American bombing. Smokestacks rise in the distance.
Today, Al Qaqaa has become a wasteland generally avoided even by the marines in charge of northern Babil Province. Headless bodies are found there. An ammunition dump has been looted, and on Sunday an Iraqi employee of The New York Times who made a furtive visit to the site saw looters tearing out metal fixtures. Bare pipes within the darkened interior of one of the buildings were a tangled mess, zigzagging along charred walls. Someone fired a shot, probably to frighten the visitors off.
"It's like Mars on Earth," said Maj. Dan Whisnant, an intelligence officer for the Second Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment. "It would take probably 10 battalions 10 years to clear that out."
Mr. Hussein's engineers acquired HMX and RDX when they embarked on a crash effort to build an atomic bomb in the late 1980's. It did not go smoothly.
In 1989, a huge blast ripped through Al Qaqaa, the boom reportedly heard hundreds of miles away. The explosion, it was later determined, occurred when a stockpile of the high explosives ignited.
After the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the United Nations discovered Iraq's clandestine effort and put the United Nations arms agency in charge of Al Qaqaa's huge stockpile. Weapon inspectors determined that Iraq had bought the explosives from France, China and Yugoslavia, a European diplomat said.
None of the explosives were destroyed, arms experts familiar with the decision recalled, because Iraq argued that it should be allowed to keep them for eventual use in mining and civilian construction. But Al Qaqaa was still under the authority of the Military Industrial Council, which ran Iraq's sensitive weapons programs and was led for a time by Hussein Kamel, Mr. Hussein's son-in-law. He defected to the West, then returned to Iraq and was immediately killed.
In 1996, the United Nations hauled away some of the HMX and used it to blow up Al Hakam, a vast Iraqi factory for making germ weapons.
The Qaqaa stockpile went unmonitored from late 1998, when United Nations inspectors left Iraq, to late 2002, when they came back. Upon their return, the inspectors discovered that about 35 tons of HMX were missing. The Iraqis said they had used the explosive mainly in civilian programs.
The remaining stockpile was no secret. Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the arms agency, frequently talked about it publicly as he investigated - in late 2002 and early 2003 - the Bush administration's claims that Iraq was secretly renewing its pursuit of nuclear arms. He ordered his weapons inspectors to conduct an inventory, and publicly reported their findings to the Security Council on Jan. 9, 2003.
During the following weeks, the I.A.E.A. repeatedly drew public attention to the explosives. In New York on Feb. 14, nine days after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented his arms case to the Security Council, Dr. ElBaradei reported that the agency had found no sign of new atom endeavors but "has continued to investigate the relocation and consumption of the high explosive HMX."
A European diplomat reported that Jacques Baute, head of the arms agency's Iraq nuclear inspection team, warned officials at the United States mission in Vienna about the danger of the nuclear sites and materials once under I.A.E.A. supervision, including Al Qaqaa.
But apparently, little was done. A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces "went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal." It is unclear whether troops ever returned.
By late 2003, diplomats said, arms agency experts had obtained commercial satellite photos of Al Qaqaa showing that two of roughly 10 bunkers that contained HMX appeared to have been leveled by titanic blasts, apparently during the war. They presumed some of the HMX had exploded, but that is unclear.
Other HMX bunkers were untouched. Some were damaged but not devastated. I.A.E.A. experts say they assume that just before the invasion the Iraqis followed their standard practice of moving crucial explosives out of buildings, so they would not be tempting targets. If so, the experts say, the Iraqi must have broken seals from the arms agency on bunker doors and moved most of the HMX to nearby fields, where it would have been lightly camouflaged - and ripe for looting.
But the Bush administration would not allow the agency back into the country to verify the status of the stockpile. In May 2004, Iraqi officials say in interviews, they warned L. Paul Bremer III, the American head of the occupation authority, that Al Qaqaa had probably been looted. It is unclear if that warning was passed anywhere. Efforts to reach Mr. Bremer by telephone were unsuccessful.
But by the spring of 2004, the Americans were preoccupied with the transfer of authority to Iraq, and the insurgency was gaining strength. "It's not an excuse," said one senior administration official. "But a lot of things went by the boards."
Early this month, Dr. ElBaradei put public pressure on the interim Iraqi government to start the process of accounting for nuclear-related materials still ostensibly under I.A.E.A. supervision, including the Qaqaa stockpile.
"Iraq is obliged," he wrote to the president of the Security Council on Oct. 1, "to declare semiannually changes that have occurred or are foreseen."
The agency, Dr. ElBaradei added pointedly, "has received no such notifications or declarations from any state since the agency's inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq in March 2003."
A Lost Stockpile
Two weeks ago, on Oct. 10, Dr. Mohammed J. Abbas of the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology wrote a letter to the I.A.E.A. to say the Qaqaa stockpile had been lost. He added that his ministry had judged that an "urgent updating of the registered materials is required."
A chart in his letter listed 341.7 metric tons, about 377 American tons, of HMX, RDX and PETN as missing.
The explosives missing from Al Qaqaa are the strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the globe. The Iraqi letter identified the vanished stockpile as containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, which stands for "high melting point explosive," 141.2 metric tons of RDX, which stands for "rapid detonation explosive," among other designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, which stands for "pentaerythritol tetranitrate." The total is roughly 340 metric tons or nearly 380 American tons.
Five days later, on Oct. 15, European diplomats said, the arms agency wrote the United States mission in Vienna to forward the Iraqi letter and ask that the American authorities inform the international coalition in Iraq of the missing explosives.
Dr. ElBaradei, a European diplomat said, is "extremely concerned" about the potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.
Its fate remains unknown. Glenn Earhart, manager of an Army Corps of Engineers program in Huntsville, Ala., that is in charge of rounding up and destroying lost Iraqi munitions, said he and his colleagues knew nothing of the whereabouts of the Qaqaa stockpile.
Administration officials say Iraq was awash in munitions, including other stockpiles of exotic explosives.
"The only reason this stockpile was under seal," said one senior administration official, "is because it was located at Al Qaqaa," where nuclear work had gone on years ago.
As a measure of the size of the stockpile, one large truck can carry about 10 tons, meaning that the missing explosives could fill a fleet of almost 40 trucks.
By weight, these explosives pack far more destructive power than TNT, so armies often use them in shells, bombs, mines, mortars and many types of conventional ordinance.
"HMX and RDX have a lot of shattering power," said Dr. Van Romero, vice president for research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, or New Mexico Tech, which specializes in explosives.
"Getting a large amount is difficult," he added, because most nations carefully regulate who can buy such explosives, though civilian experts can sometimes get licenses to use them for demolition and mining.
An Immediate Danger
A special property of HMX and RDX lends them to smuggling and terrorism, experts said. While violently energetic when detonated, they are insensitive to shock and physical abuse during handling and transport because of their chemical stability. A hammer blow does nothing. It takes a detonator, like a blasting cap, to release the stored energy.
Experts said the insensitivity made them safer to transport than the millions of unexploded shells, mines and pieces of live ammunition that litter Iraq. And its benign appearance makes it easy to disguise as harmless goods, easily slipped across borders.
"The immediate danger" of the lost stockpile, said an expert who recently led a team that searched Iraq for deadly arms, "is its potential use with insurgents in very small and powerful explosive devices. The other danger is that it can easily move into the terrorist web across the Middle East."
More worrisome to the I.A.E.A. - and to some in Washington - is that HMX and RDX are used in standard nuclear weapons design. In a nuclear implosion weapon, the explosives crush a hollow sphere of uranium or plutonium into a critical mass, initiating the nuclear explosion.
A crude implosion device - like the one that the United States tested in 1945 in the New Mexican desert and then dropped on Nagasaki, Japan - needs about a ton of high explosive to crush the core and start the chain reaction.
James Glanz reported from Baghdad and Yusifiya, Iraq, for this article, William J. Broad from New York and Vienna, and David E. Sanger from Washington and Crawford, Tex. Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad.
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U.N.: Tons of Explosives Missing in Iraq
October 25, 2004
By WILLIAM J.KOLE
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NUCLEAR_AGENCY_IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Several hundred tons of conventional explosives were looted from a former Iraqi military facility that once played a key role in Saddam Hussein's efforts to build a nuclear bomb, the U.N. nuclear agency told the Security Council on Monday.
A "lack of security" resulted in the loss of 377 tons of high explosives from the sprawling Al-Qaqaa military installation about 30 miles south of Baghdad, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said.
The IAEA fears "that these explosives could have fallen into the wrong hands," said spokeswoman Melissa Fleming.
The development immediately became an issue on the U.S. presidential campaign trail, with the White House downplaying the threat from the missing cache of weapons but Sen. John Kerry's campaign calling the disappearance a "grave and catastrophic mistake."
ElBaradei told the council the IAEA had been trying to give the U.S.-led multinational force and Iraq's interim government "an opportunity to attempt to recover the explosives before this matter was put into the public domain."
But since the disappearance was reported in the media, he said he wanted the Security Council to have the letter dated Oct. 10 that he received from Mohammed J. Abbas, a senior official at Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology, reporting the theft of the explosives.
The materials were lost through "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security," the letter said.
The letter from Abbas informed the IAEA that since Sept. 4, 2003, looting at the Al-Qaqaa installation south of Baghdad had resulted in the loss of 214.67 tons of HMX, 155.68 tons of RDX and 6.39 tons of PETN explosives.
HMX and RDX can be used to demolish buildings, down jetliners, produce warheads for missiles and detonate nuclear weapons. HMX and RDX are key ingredients in plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex - substances so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just 1 pound to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 170 people.
ElBaradei's cover letter to the council said the HMX had been under IAEA seal and the RDX and PETN were "both subject to regular monitoring of stock levels."
"The presence of these amounts was verified by the IAEA in January 2003," he said.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the explosive material found there did not carry IAEA seals. He did not say what type of explosives were found or how much.
"Coalition forces were present in the vicinity at various times during and after major combat operations. The forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings at the facility, but found no indicators of WMD," Whitman said. "While some explosive material was discovered, none of it carried IAEA seals."
The Iraqis told the nuclear agency the materials were stolen and looted because of a lack of security at governmental installations, Fleming said.
"We do not know what happened to the explosives or when they were looted," she told AP.
A European diplomat familiar with the disappearance of the explosives said their presence was widely known.
The Associated Press drove past the compound Monday and saw no visible security at the gates of the site, a jumble of low-slung, yellow storage buildings that appeared deserted.
Iraq's interim government warned the United States and U.N. nuclear inspectors earlier this month that the explosives had vanished.
"Upon receiving the declaration on Oct. 10, we first took measures to authenticate it," Fleming said. "Then on Oct. 15, we informed the multinational forces through the U.S. government with the request for it to take any appropriate action in cooperation with Iraq's interim government."
Bush's national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, was informed after Oct. 15, and then she notified Bush, the White House said.
During an Air Force One trip Monday between Texas and Colorado, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the administration's first concern was whether it was a nuclear proliferation threat, and it had determined it was not.
"Remember at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom there was some looting, and some of it was organized," McClellan said. "There were munitions caches spread throughout the country, and so these are all issues that are being looked into by the multinational forces and the Iraqi Survey Group."
The probe will include finding out what happened to the weapons and whether they are being used against U.S. forces, he said.
At the State Department, deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said the first the United States knew of the missing explosives was when the IAEA informed the government in a letter to the U.S. mission in Vienna. The Pentagon then ordered an investigation.
"This is the first time that we knew that this material under IAEA seal was not where it was supposed to be," Ereli said.
In Washington, a spokesman for Kerry's campaign said the Bush administration "must answer for what may be the most grave and catastrophic mistake in a tragic series of blunders in Iraq."
"How did they fail to secure ... tons of known, deadly explosives despite clear warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency to do so?" senior Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart said in a statement.
"They were urgently and specifically informed that terrorists could be helping themselves to the most dangerous explosives bonanza in history, but nothing was done to prevent it from happening."
Before the war, inspectors with the Vienna-based IAEA had kept tabs on the so-called "dual use" explosives because they could have been used to detonate a nuclear weapon. Experts say HMX can be used to create a highly powerful explosion with enough intensity to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction. IAEA inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the 2003 invasion and have not yet been able to return despite ElBaradei's repeated urging that the experts be allowed back in to finish their work.
ElBaradei told the Security Council before the war that Iraq's nuclear program was in disarray and that there was no evidence to suggest it had revived efforts to build atomic weaponry.
Saddam was known to have used the Al-Qaqaa site to make conventional warheads, and IAEA inspectors dismantled parts of his nuclear program there before the 1991 Gulf War. The experts also oversaw the destruction of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons.
The nuclear agency pulled out of Iraq in 1998, and by the time it returned in 2002, it confirmed that 35 tons of HMX that had been placed under IAEA seal were missing.
ElBaradei told the United Nations in February 2003 that Iraq had declared that "HMX previously under IAEA seal had been transferred for use in the production of industrial explosives, primarily to cement plants as a booster for explosives used in quarrying."
"However, given the nature of the use of high explosives, it may well be that the IAEA will be unable to reach a final conclusion on the end use of this material," ElBaradei warned at the time.
"A large quantity of these explosives were under IAEA seal because they do have a nuclear application," Fleming said Monday.
The nuclear agency has no concrete evidence to suggest the seals were broken, Fleming said, but a diplomat familiar with the agency's work in Iraq said the seals must have been broken if the explosives were stolen.
IAEA analysts have viewed satellite photographs of Al-Qaqaa, and only two storage bunkers showed damage that may have occurred in bombing during the war, an agency source told AP. The other bunkers were intact.
On the Net:
IAEA, http://www.iaea.org
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Insurgents Massacre 49 Iraqi Recruits
State Dept. Official Killed in Attack at U.S. Military Base
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58312-2004Oct24?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Oct. 24 -- The bodies of 49 freshly trained Iraqi National Guard recruits, lined up and executed by insurgents, were discovered on a roadside about 75 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said Sunday.
In a separate attack, a member of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security was killed when a rocket or mortar round landed in a U.S. military base adjoining the Baghdad airport early Sunday morning. Edward J. Seitz, 41, was the assistant regional security officer for the U.S. Embassy.
The massacre of the recruits occurred shortly after sunset Saturday near the army's main training base in Kirkush, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, a spokesman for the interim Interior Ministry. The recruits had just departed the base aboard three buses to begin a 20-day leave when they were stopped at a checkpoint manned by insurgents dressed as Iraqi police, residents said, according to Abdul-Rahman.
Most of the recruits appeared to have filed off the buses, lined up in four rows and lain down before they were shot. The first 37 bodies were discovered Saturday night. Another 12 were found after daybreak Sunday a short distance away, still inside the minibus where they were killed. Three drivers were among those killed.
"All of them were from the southern provinces," Abdul-Rahman said of the victims. "Most of them had their hands tied behind their back."
No security vehicles accompanied the minibuses, which were unmarked. The guardsmen were dressed in civilian clothes and were unarmed because they were going on leave, the spokesman said. Their bodies were transported to the nearby town of Mandali, a town on a road that hugs the Iranian border leading south and east from Kirkush.
A group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant linked to al Qaeda, asserted responsibility for the attack on the guardsmen, whom it called "apostates," according to a statement posted on the Internet.
The attack was unusual for its boldness if not for its target. The men and women who staff Iraq's nascent security forces -- and whom U.S. officials are counting on to take on a greater role from U.S.-led military forces -- have been killed by the hundreds over the last year, in attacks that appear to be increasing in audacity and frequency.
In the hours before the recruits were killed, at least six other attacks on Iraqi security forces were officially recorded:
• An Iraqi police officer was found dead in a field in Baghdad.
• Another police officer was killed when shots were fired into his patrol car as it made a U-turn on a street in the capital.
• The operations chief of the police department in the Kurdish city of Irbil in northern Iraq was assassinated by a pistol shot.
• A car bomb exploded at an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint in Balad, northwest of Baghdad.
• A roadside bomb exploded beside a police patrol in the southern city of Basra.
• In Dawr, a town in north-central Iraq, three vehicles pulled up to the local police station and 30 men swarmed out; they bound the officers inside and carried away every weapon in the station.
Two attacks on security forces were reported after the roadside massacre. An explosives-laden flashlight was tossed at a National Guard checkpoint near Baqubah, wounding three. Three guardsmen and a civilian driver were injured when a roadside bomb went off beside the vehicle in which they were riding to work, the Associated Press reported.
Iraqis reacted to the massacre with expressions of sympathy for the recruits and a variety of possible explanations.
"Those people are serving their country, why are they killed?" said Salman Mohammed, 42, as he waited for a friend in a Baghdad restaurant where they planned to break their Ramadan fast at sunset. "I think that there are foreign countries that want to destroy these forces. I think the Zionists are behind that. They want to make this country collapse . . . to extend their state from the Nile to the Euphrates."
Sabah Hussein, a baker, noted that many people had come away from encounters with guardsmen feeling abused.
"Of course I am against what happened," said Hussein, 51. "It is terrible. But sometimes I think they don't behave well with the people. A few days ago, they came and raided the nearby husseiniya," he said, referring to a Shiite mosque. "They were really impolite with the people. So maybe there are some people who lost their son, friend, brother or any relative because of them, so they ambushed and killed them.
"Or maybe there are some gangs who were paid to kill them for the sake of some other side which we don't know."
Another Baghdad resident said both sides in the encounter -- insurgents and guard recruits -- were probably interested only in a paycheck.
"There are no jobs, and that is why many young men joined these groups," said Ali Saber, 22, a student in the college of arts at Baghdad University. "Not for the sake of jihad or resistance, but to gain money. And the same is with the National Guardsmen. Most of them, if not all, joined the army for the sake of money."
That reality -- widely acknowledged across Iraq -- has apparently played a role in many attacks. A mortar attack on a National Guard base north of Baghdad last week occurred as 550 guardsmen had gathered in formation.
The deputy governor of Diyala province, Aqil Hamid Adili, said the insurgents clearly had help planning Saturday's mass execution.
"There was probably collusion among the soldiers or other groups," he told the satellite news channel al-Arabiya. "Otherwise, the gunmen would not have gotten the information about the soldiers' departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed."
The State Department said that Seitz, the slain diplomatic security special agent, was killed around 5 a.m. when indirect fire hit Camp Victory, the sprawling U.S. base beside the Baghdad International Airport.
"The Department of State and I mourn the loss of one of our own today in Baghdad," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said during a tour of Asia. "Ed was a brave American, dedicated to his country and to a brighter future for the people of Iraq."
The Bureau of Diplomatic Security is the State Department's security unit. Its agents conduct a variety of tasks, including designing physical security for U.S. diplomatic buildings and personnel, and assessing threats, investigating attacks and devising responses.
Seitz, who was married, joined the State Department 16 years ago and had been posted to Washington, Chicago and China. He spent four years in Detroit as an investigator with the FBI's joint terrorism task force before heading to Iraq this past summer, according to Terry Booth, an FBI special agent in Detroit.
"He was considered part of our extended family," Booth said. "He was an outgoing and personable guy. Today is a very sad day around our office."
In 1999, Seitz was honored by the State Department for his response to the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. Before joining the State Department, Seitz was a police officer in Cleveland.
In other incidents, a Bulgarian soldier was killed when a car bomb exploded near his convoy in Karbala, about 60 miles southwest of Baghdad. A Turkish truck driver was found shot to death beside a highway near Baiji, north of Baghdad. The headless body of a man was fished out of a river in the northern city of Kirkuk.
A 17-year-old Iraqi girl and an 11-year-old boy were killed and four people wounded in clashes Saturday night between U.S. troops and insurgents on the outskirts of Samarra, 65 miles north of Baghdad, police said on Sunday. Witnesses said a U.S. military Humvee was also damaged, the Reuters news agency reported.
In Fallujah, a U.S. warplane bombed a fortification that insurgents were attempting to rebuild, the military reported.
In Baghdad, a suspected car bomb exploded near the Australian Embassy Monday morning. The target appeared to be a security convoy; witnesses saw an armored vehicle blown off the road and ambluances tended to an unknown number of wounded and dead.
Special correspondents Bassam Sebti and Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad and Saad Sarhan in Najaf, and staff writer Anne Hull in Washington contributed to this report.
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New Violence Flares in Iraq, After Executions Leave 49 Dead
October 25, 2004
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/24cnd-iraq.html?pagewanted=all
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 25 - Fresh violence swept across Iraq today as Iraqi officials pressed their investigation into the role played by insurgent infiltrators in the ambush that left 49 Iraqi national guardsmen dead on Saturday.
A suspected car bomb killed three Iraqis and wounded two Australian soldiers at about 8 a.m. today when it exploded near the Australian embassy in an upscale district of Baghdad. About three hours later, one Estonian soldier was killed and five others were wounded in western Baghdad when their convoy was attacked by a homemade bomb set along the roadside.
News agencies reported that a group linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Qaeda sympathizer whom American officials blame for many of the car bombings and beheadings in Iraq, took responsibility for the attack on the Australians in a posting on the internet.
After the bomb exploded, American tanks, Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles arrived and set up a cordon around the scene. American soldiers trained their rifles on Iraqi onlookers, as some neighborhood residents who came to see the aftermath of the bomb were still wearing pajamas. Soldiers walked a bomb-sniffing dog around the blast area, searching for other explosives, as a Humvee with speakers on top warned Iraqis to leave in case another blast occurred.
In Canberra, an official with the Australian military, Mike Hannan, said the attack occurred when "a security detachment patrol of armored vehicles was engaged by an improvised explosive device that was hidden in a vehicle," according to Agence France-Presse. "We know that two of the three Australian vehicles were damaged and three of our people suffered non-life-threatening injuries," Mr. Hannan said, adding the most serious injuries were from facial wounds.
Mr. Zarqawi has also taken credit for the ambush on Saturday that killed 49 trainees for the Iraqi national guard. Iraqi officials today continued to probe how the killings were accomplished and the role infiltrators played in planning the attack.
In a statement, the Ministry of Defense said "the terrorists never stopped from taking religion as a cover to commit the most horrible crimes which target our sons in the new army" and vowed that "these cowardly and treacherous actions will not stop our fighters of the courageous army from carrying on to purify the soil of Iraq from the criminal and terrorism groups."
Ministry of Defense officials said today that the attack happened at about 8 p.m. on Saturday night, as the unarmed soldiers, who were on leave, were "heading to their families along with three other civilian drivers."
In Estonia, the prime minister, Juhan Parts, confirmed that the victims of the convoy bombing late this morning in western Baghdad were Estonian and that the death was the second suffered by Estonian troops in Iraq.
Mr. Parts, quoted by the news agency Reuters, said he believed the attack was part of an effort by insurgents to destabilize Iraq before planned national elections in January. But he said it was crucial for the country's soldiers to remain in Iraq.
"It is extremely important to continue the determined work of the international coalition to guarantee the victory of democracy and human rights in Iraq and the security of all Iraqis," Mr. Parts said.
Zaineb Obeid contributed reporting from Balad Ruz for this article, Iraqi employees of the New York Times from Najaf and Karbala and Danny Hakim from Detroit.
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Terrorists massacre 50 Iraqi soldiers
October 25, 2004
By Robert H. Reid
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041025-011420-6711r.htm
BAGHDAD - Terrorists waylaid three minibuses carrying U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers heading home on leave and massacred about 50 of them - forcing many to lie down on the ground and shooting them in the head, officials said yesterday.
Some accounts by police said the attackers were dressed in Iraqi military uniforms.
The killing of so many Iraqi soldiers - unarmed and in civilian clothes - in such an apparently sure-footed operation reinforced American and Iraqi suspicions that the country's security services have been infiltrated by insurgents.
A claim of responsibility posted on an Islamist Web site attributed the attack to followers of Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi.
Elsewhere, a U.S. diplomat was killed yesterday morning when a rebel-fired rocket or mortar shell crashed into the trailer where he was sleeping at an American base near the Baghdad airport, the U.S. Embassy announced.
Edward Seitz, 41, an agent with the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, was believed to be the first U.S. diplomat killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. Al Jazeera television reported yesterday that the militant Islamic Army of Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack.
A Bulgarian soldier was killed and two others were injured in a car-bombing near Karbala, the Bulgarian Defense Ministry said. Karbala, a Shi'ite holy city south of Baghdad, had been quiet since U.S. troops routed Shi'ite militia there last spring.
The Iraqi soldiers were on their way home after completing a training course at the Kirkush military camp northeast of Baghdad when their buses were stopped Saturday evening by rebels near the Iranian border about 95 miles east of Baghdad, Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman said.
There was confusion over precise figures, although the Iraqi national guard said 48 troops and three drivers were killed.
Mr. Abdul-Rahman said 37 bodies were found yesterday on the ground with their hands behind their backs, shot execution-style. Twelve others were found in a burned bus, he said. Some officials quoted witnesses as saying insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at one bus.
"After inspection, we found out that they were shot after being ordered to lay down on the earth," said Gen. Walid al-Azzawi, commander of the Diyala provincial police, adding that the bodies were laid out in four rows.
In a Web site posting, the Al Qaeda in Iraq, formerly known as Tawhid and Jihad, claimed responsibility for the ambush, saying: "God enabled the mujahideen to kill all" the soldiers and "seize two cars and money."
The claim could not be verified, but appeared on a Web site used in the past by Islamists.
Zarqawi and his movement are believed to be behind dozens of attacks on Iraqi and U.S.-led forces and kidnappings of foreigners. Many of those hostages, including three Americans, have been beheaded - some purportedly by Zarqawi himself.
The United States has put a $25 million bounty on Zarqawi - the same amount as for Osama bin Laden.
U.S. officials believe Zarqawi's group is headquartered in Fallujah, an insurgent bastion 40 miles west of Baghdad. Yesterday, a U.S. Marine F-18 Hornet war plane struck an insurgent position there, the U.S. military said. Witnesses said six persons were killed.
Fallujah fell under rebel control after the Bush administration ordered Marines to lift their three-week siege of the city in April. U.S. commanders have spoken of a new offensive to clear rebel strongholds ahead of Iraq's crucial elections in January.
Iraqi police and soldiers have been increasingly targeted by insurgents, mostly with car bombs and mortar shells. However, the fact that the insurgents were able to strike at so many unarmed soldiers in such a remote region suggested the guerrillas may have had advance word on the soldiers' movements.
"There was probably collusion among the soldiers or other groups," Diyala's deputy governor, Aqil Hamid al-Adili, told Al Arabiya television. "Otherwise, the gunmen would not have gotten the information about the soldiers' departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed."
Last week, a U.S. defense official told reporters in Washington that some members of the Iraqi security services have developed sympathies and contacts with the guerrillas. In other instances, infiltrators were sent to join the security services, the official said on the condition of anonymity.
He cited a mortar attack Tuesday on an Iraqi national guard compound north of Baghdad as a possible inside job. The attackers apparently knew when and where the soldiers were gathering and dropped mortar rounds in the middle of their formation. At least four Iraqis were killed and 80 wounded.
One American soldier also was wounded in the pre-dawn attack that killed Mr. Seitz, the State Department said. The attack occurred at Camp Victory, headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition's ground forces command.
In Beijing, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described Mr. Seitz as "a brave American, dedicated to his country and to a brighter future for the people of Iraq."
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said Mr. Seitz was a "committed professional" who served with distinction.
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Insurgents in Latifiyah eager to battle British
October 25, 2004
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041025-011436-5153r.htm
LATIFIYAH, Iraq - Anti-government forces in this city just south of Baghdad say they are preparing a grim welcome for Britain's Black Watch regiment when it moves north from Basra as early as this week.
"It'll be easy to beat the British because the British are weaker than the Americans," boasted Abdullah Al-Ashiq, the reputed head of resistance fighters in this city, the U.S. Marine defenders of which are being shifted for an anticipated offensive in Fallujah, an insurgent stronghold.
The British "are used to fighting against pathetic forces like the Mahdi's Army of Muqtada al-Sadr," he scoffed. "That means they haven't got good experience in real fighting. Just wait. The British will discover the difference between us and them - the hard way."
Preparations to fight the British are at fever pitch, with the positioning of booby traps, roadside bombs and mortars.
Some of the British forces are expected to hunker down in the city's main police station, which is fortified with huge concrete slabs. But the extremists said they have infiltrated the Iraqi national guard, and that their spies within the police will provide them with precise information about British troop movements.
Mines also are hidden in tunnels and underpasses, while the area's orange groves and palm trees provide ideal cover for guerrilla fighting. The insurgents repeatedly have blown up the rail line that brings supplies from Baghdad. No trains are running now.
Any substantial casualties among the 850 Black Watch soldiers would bring more political trouble for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose Cabinet approved the deployment last week despite harsh criticism at home.
Four senior members of previous Conservative Party governments renewed the attacks yesterday, with former Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine saying the transfer of the Black Watch was far too big to be a purely operational matter.
The move was "militarily extraordinarily ill-judged" and appeared linked to the Nov. 2 U.S. presidential election, Mr. Heseltine said.
In Latifiyah, thought to be the place where terrorists held and decapitated Briton Kenneth Bigley and two Americans, some residents said the British troops might be given a short period to "prove themselves."
"I think the situation will be sorted out peacefully, because the British have a good policy to negotiate," said Abu Rashid, a 55-year-old farmer. "The Americans don't."
The extremists' main bases are an oil storage and processing depot on the outskirts of Latifiyah, and a mosque called Al-Masraa.
A reporter who entered the mosque found many fighters who spoke in a Syrian or Jordanian dialect. Some of them were reading from the Koran, while others intoned the afternoon prayer. The foreigners refused to be interviewed.
There are 22 mosques in the city, all dominated by Sunni hard-liners who follow the same Salafist philosophy as terror mastermind Osama bin Laden and Iraq's most feared terror leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi.
Zarqawi and his followers, who claimed responsibility for the Bigley slaying, have been able to operate with impunity in the city, but there is widespread public resentment against them.
Once a mainly Shi'ite farming area, much of the land and its homes were given to Sunnis by dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, and Shi'ites now represent about 20 percent of the population.
Recently, hard-line Sunnis have used Latifiyah to shoot and rob Shi'ite pilgrims who trek southward to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala - on the same road that the British soldiers must use now.
The hard-liners have ruined many Shi'ite-owned shops and, just south of the city, destroyed the Sa'eed Faraj, a shrine revered by the sect. The contractor who started to rebuild it has been killed.
"These people are not normal Sunnis who we can get along OK with," said a former Shi'ite shop owner. "They're from the Salafist sect, and they hate us."
Some Shi'ites are so angry that they were happy to provide information that could help expose the terrorists.
"The Tawhid and Jihad group [led by Zarqawi] is hidden in Al-Ba'ath district in northern Latifiyah, and they generally begin their shooting sprees around 11 in the evening," said Hassen Jassem, a 26-year-old farmer.
"Day by day, they harm us more and more. They stop us praying the Friday prayer in our traditional way. They demand we pray in the Sunni way. If we refuse, we're kicked out of the mosque."
Residents blame the attacks on their shops and property on a group of armed men known as "the Opel group" - a reference to the cars they use - and say the police are unwilling to leave their heavily defended station to protect the citizenry.
"I was afraid, so I got out," said minibus driver Ramadan al-Yassini, 47, who made his decision when a Shi'ite school principal was killed.
Iraqi police and national guard units backed by U.S. troops raided the town Sept. 4 and said they had arrested nearly 500 people and seized large caches of weapons.
But 12 police officers were killed in the raid, and an insurgent calling himself Abu Tahrir said later that his men had targeted the government forces with a suicide car bomb before attacking with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
"The mujahideen holy warriors only lost eight martyrs," he said. "They arrested just 80 men, and most of them were just civilians." •Distributed by World News and Features. Paul Martin in London contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon: Gaza Plan Only Way to Security
October 25, 2004
By RAVI NESSMAN
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon opened a stormy debate in parliament Monday with a passionate appeal to lawmakers to support his Gaza withdrawal plan - which has divided the country and weakened his government - as the only way to secure Israel's future.
The withdrawal would mark the first time Israel has pulled down Jewish settlements in the West Bank or Gaza, and Sharon is hoping a decisive victory in a parliamentary vote scheduled for Tuesday will blunt calls for a national referendum on the plan.
"This is a fateful moment for Israel. We are dealing with a difficult decision that has few parallels," he said in a speech repeatedly interrupted by heckling from hard-line opponents.
The two-day debate in the Knesset is the climax of a monthslong confrontation over the "unilateral disengagement" plan, which Sharon has pushed despite strong opposition from much of his Likud Party and the threat that it could destroy his coalition government.
As the debate began, violence flared in Gaza, with Israeli troops killing 15 Palestinians and wounding 91 others in a raid on the Khan Younis refugee camp to halt Palestinian mortar fire at nearby settlements. Two Israeli soldiers were wounded.
Violence in Gaza has increased in recent months, with Palestinian militants trying to prove they are forcing Israel out, and Israel seeking to crush the militants to show it is not withdrawing under fire.
Sharon says his plan to leave Gaza and pull down four small West Bank settlements is vital to ending four years of devastating violence in the region. Jewish settlers accuse Sharon of caving in to Palestinian violence and fear the withdrawal will be the first step in a larger pullback.
Palestinians view the plan with skepticism and worry that Sharon hopes to use the limited withdrawal to mute international criticism of Israel and strengthen its hold over large parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands the Palestinians claim for a state.
The program, which will uproot 8,800 settlers, is a sharp reversal for the premier, who was once the settlers' top patron in the government. Sharon said supporting the withdrawal was the most difficult decision of his long career.
"I know the significance of the Knesset's decision for thousands of Israelis who have lived for many years in the Gaza Strip, who were sent there in the name of Israeli governments, and built their homes there. Who planted flowers and trees, and brought up their children, who have never known another home," he said. "I know this well. I sent many."
Sharon said his plan was not intended to replace negotiations with the Palestinians in the long run.
"It is a necessary step during a period in which negotiations are not possible. All is open when terror - this murderous terror - stops."
The plan has sharply divided Sharon's Likud Party, with nearly half the 40 Likud lawmakers saying they will vote against it, forcing Sharon to rely on the support of dovish opposition parties.
Sharon is expected to win Tuesday's vote, but will need a solid margin of victory to silence opponents' demand for a national referendum.
Sharon opposes a referendum, which would take months to prepare, as a stalling tactic and said it would only increase the divisions and the hatred on both sides. However, several Cabinet members, including Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have called for a national vote.
Media reports say Sharon should get at least 65 votes - and possibly as many as 70 - in the 120-member Knesset, with fewer than 48 lawmakers voting against the plan.
The withdrawal plan has stirred passions on both sides.
Thousands of supporters demonstrated outside the Knesset on Monday night, singing songs, waving Israeli flags and holding signs reading "leaving settlements - a choice for life" and "leave Gaza immediately."
Opponents plan a major demonstration of their own before the vote Tuesday.
In the Gaza settlement of Neve Dekalim, dozens of settlers gathered around a campfire Monday evening to burn letters the government sent them offering advance compensation payments if they agree to leave the settlement early.
Sharon was repeatedly heckled during his speech, with hard-liners yelling for him to resign and calling him a traitor. Three lawmakers were ejected for repeatedly interrupting the prime minister.
Reaching beyond parliament, Sharon appealed Monday for support from the Israeli public, which polls show strongly supports his plan.
"I call on the people of Israel to unite in this fateful moment, to allow us ... to erect a dam against the hatred among us," he said.
Tuesday's vote is the first of several that Sharon will need to win for the plan to be implemented next year. Sharon told Likud lawmakers Monday that a final government vote on the withdrawal will come in June or July.
Sharon's government remains in danger of falling over other issues, including the budget.
Also Monday, Israel agreed to let Yasser Arafat leave his Ramallah compound for the first time in 2 1/2 years for medical treatment in the West Bank city, raising concerns the Palestinian leader is seriously ill.
The Defense Ministry said it made the decision after a request from Palestinian officials. But Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat denied the Palestinians asked for such permission and said Arafat will not take up the offer.
The 75-year-old Arafat has been suffering from the flu, but is recovering, Palestinian officials said.
The Israeli media has speculated that Arafat may be far more ill than has been disclosed and may actually have cancer. Arafat's health became the subject of intense speculation after Tunisian and Egyptian doctors were flown in to examine him in recent weeks.
--------
Sharon Opens Parliamentary Debate on Removal of Settlements
October 25, 2004
By GREG MYRE and CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25CND-MIDEAST.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Oct. 25 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon opened a two-day parliamentary debate today with a vow to see through his controversial plan to unilaterally remove all 21 Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Sharon's speech was greeted with noise and catcalls from within the hall and outside it, where several thousand demonstrators had gathered, and three members of Parliament, including his former housing minister, were expelled from the hall for heckling him.
Although Mr. Sharon is expected to prevail in the vote on Tuesday evening with the aid of his formal opposition on the left, the reactions were a sign of how much his plan is roiling the country and his own Likud Party. Nearly half the Likud members in Parliament are expected to vote against Mr. Sharon, and another party in his weakened coalition, the National Religious Party, will meet Tuesday morning to discuss quitting the government.
Mr. Sharon's party rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been meeting with the National Religious Party in a renewed effort to force Mr. Sharon into a referendum on his Gaza plan. But Mr. Sharon's advisers say he prefers to a referendum bringing the Labor Party into his coalition or even holding new elections.
Mr. Sharon, nicknamed "the bulldozer," said his plan would be welcomed by the world, produce "a gateway to a different reality," and most importantly "strengthen Israel's grip over the land that is crucial to our existence" - in other words, parts of the West Bank.
But dismantling settlements - including four tiny ones in the West Bank - is precisely what many on the right do not want to sanction. The Likud may split, analysts suggest, with Mr. Netanyahu under great pressure to lead an open revolt against Mr. Sharon. A reshaped coalition and early elections are therefore more likely than before.
The Gaza decision was the "most difficult" of his life, Mr. Sharon said, speaking with unusual control and fluency amid the heckling. He said that he felt for the settlers and admired them, and that he knew that they had been sent to Gaza "on behalf of the governments of Israel." But then he quoted a previous Likud leader, Menachem Begin, who once told them: "You are wonderful people. But you suffer from one weakness: you've developed a complex of Messianism." Citing his participation in all of Israel's wars, Mr. Sharon added, "I have also learned that the battle over this land will not be determined by the strength of the sword alone."
In a nod to the United States and the West, he said he remained committed to an eventual peace settlement with the Palestinians when they had a leadership prepared for peace. "The disengagement plan is not meant to replace a negotiation, nor is it meant to bring the situation to an impasse," Mr. Sharon said, contradicting the published views of his close adviser and former chief of staff, Dov Weissglas.
"We do not wish to control millions of Palestinians who double their number each generation," Mr. Sharon said. "A democratic Israel will not be able to withstand such a thing," he said, then spoke directly to the Palestinians, saying: "We did not seek to build our country on your ruins. We were attacked and we protected our lives with our backs to the sea. Many have lost their homes and have become refugees. This is the way of war, but war is not God's order."
Tova Bar Shalom, 54, a founder of one of the Gush Katif settlements in Gaza, turned away at this point from the television set on which she was watching Mr. Sharon. "He doesn't represent anyone, he represents Arafat, not me," she shouted. "We only built, never destroyed. How can he say this sentence?"
Rachel Kabir, 56, watching with her, expressed disbelief. A resident of a Gush Katif settlement for 27 years, Ms. Kabir said, "I don't believe any of this will take place." She stood up and said: "It will not happen. It will not happen." Then she left the room.
A few miles away, in Khan Yunis, the Israeli Army was conducting a large operation to stop mortar shelling by Palestinians against Gush Katif, which was sparked in part by the Israeli killing of another two senior members of the militant wing of Hamas earlier in the week.
In the operation, which began Sunday night, 16 Palestinians have been killed, including an 11-year-old boy and as many as four other civilians, Palestinian medics said. Two Israeli soldiers have been seriously wounded in fighting involving antitank missiles, automatic weapons fire and explosives. More than 70 Palestinians were wounded. Should the Israeli settlements in Gaza and their 8,000 inhabitants be removed, the army will still be engaged to patrol Gaza's seacoast, air space and borders, including the international border with Egypt.
"It's the dismantling of settlements, which is why the left is going all the way with it," said Ari Shavit, an analyst with the newspaper Haaretz. "The fact that Ariel Sharon will dismantle 21 settlements is what matters. And nothing will be the same afterward."
In Parliament, Mr. Sharon received warm support from the Labor Party leader, Shimon Peres, who said, "I must say that the prime minister has faced reality, and anyone with eyes must realize that reality has changed." Speaking of the removal of the Sinai settlement of Yamit in 1978 in preparation for handing Sinai back to Egypt, Mr. Peres asked: "Does anyone think today that it would have been preferable to leave the settlements in Sinai and give up on peace with Egypt?"
But one of the expelled members of Parliament, former minister Efraim Eitam of the National Religious Party, said: "I believe Sharon is leading the country to a dreadful place" and vowed to try to stop "the uprooting of thousands of Jews from their homes, the giving of a great reward to terrorism, the turning of synagogues into mosques."
But as the debate wound through to a midnight adjournment, members spoke to a largely empty hall. The real debates were in the back rooms, with a vote expected Tuesday evening.
Rina Castelnuovo contributed reporting from Gush Katif for this article.
--------
Sharon Wins Cabinet Vote for His Gaza Pullout Plan
October 25, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25mideast.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Oct. 24 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won an important victory on Sunday as his cabinet easily approved a plan to compensate Jewish settlers who would be uprooted from the Gaza Strip under his withdrawal plan. It was the first of several crucial votes on the plan set for the coming days.
Mr. Sharon has faced strong challenges to his Gaza plan in recent months as the well-organized settler movement and right-wing politicians, including members of his own Likud Party, have lobbied hard to derail the proposed pullout.
But he triumphed in Sunday's vote as expected, and appears likely to win two votes of even greater importance in Parliament. This would give him significant momentum and a large measure of the political authority he needs to proceed with the Gaza evacuation, tentatively planned for next summer.
The cabinet voted 13 to 6 on Sunday in favor of a bill that would set the guidelines for compensating the roughly 8,000 settlers who would be removed from Gaza, along with several hundred who would leave the West Bank under Mr. Sharon's plans.
The compensation formula, which was outlined previously, calls for paying each family $200,000 to $300,000 for the value of their home and for helping them resettle elsewhere. The exact figure would be based on several factors, including the size of the home, the length of time the family lived in it and the family's income while in Gaza.
Under the measure, settlers who resist evacuation and clash with the security forces could face up to five years in jail.
The measure is to go to Parliament on Nov. 1. It is expected to pass, which would be an important step forward for Mr. Sharon.
"The law will, as much as possible, ease conditions for the settlers who are to be evacuated," he said at the beginning of the cabinet meeting.
On Monday, Parliament is to begin its single most important debate on the withdrawal, on whether to support it in principle. Lawmakers have set aside two days for what is sure to be a stormy discussion, and they plan a vote Tuesday night.
If Mr. Sharon wins backing for the general plan, it greatly improves his prospects in the later cabinet and parliamentary votes on the details.
"It certainly looks like he has a majority," said Mark Heller, a political analyst at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. "But a critical issue will be the margin of victory. If he can get a solid majority, he could dispel a lot of the doubts."
Mr. Sharon's aides say he expects to capture 66 or 67 votes from the 120 members of Parliament, which would give him a comfortable, though not overwhelming, majority.
He has lobbied hard for votes and has threatened to fire cabinet members who oppose the plan.
Nonetheless, close to half of the 40 Likud members of Parliament are expected to vote no on Tuesday, including some cabinet members. The plan appears likely to win approval based on support from the Labor Party, the main opposition.
The center-left Labor Party, headed by the dovish Shimon Peres, disagrees with Mr. Sharon on most issues, but says it will back the Gaza withdrawal.
While Mr. Sharon is looking for major political gains this week, he still faces potential obstacles to the Gaza plan outside of government.
Israeli opponents of a withdrawal plan to continue with protests, and Gaza remains the scene of substantial Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Mr. Sharon's "biggest problem is disarming the hard-core opposition, which is not going to be impressed by cabinet or parliamentary votes," Mr. Heller said, adding: "They don't believe this process can be legitimized by an earthly vote. They are answering to a higher authority."
A number of prominent rabbis have spoken out recently against the Gaza withdrawal, and some have urged Israeli soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate the settlers.
In his regular Saturday night sermon, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas Party, the largest ultra-Orthodox party in Parliament, called on its 11 lawmakers to reject the withdrawal plan.
"There is no question that you must vote against it," he said. "It is a real danger to the people of Israel."
But Rabbi Yosef said soldiers should obey orders. He supported the Middle East peace efforts in the mid-1990's, saying Israel could give up land if it led to peace.
In violence on Sunday, an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza killed two Palestinian militants and wounded several others, the Israeli military and Palestinian security officials said. Israel carried out the strike against a group of gunmen who were headed toward a Jewish settlement, the military said.
Israeli missiles fired from a pilotless aircraft killed a Palestinian policeman later in the day, Reuters quoted medics as saying.
In another development, a visiting team of Tunisian doctors examined Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, in the West Bank city of Ramallah and reaffirmed an earlier diagnosis by Egyptian physicians that Mr. Arafat was suffering from a bad bout of the flu. "The results of the Egyptian and Tunisian checkups are the same," Dr. Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of Israel's Parliament, told the Israeli Army's radio.
--------
Israel targets resistance fighters' kin
aljazeera.net
By Khalid Amayreh
25 October 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2DD5AFF2-CA31-43AA-93A4-718B754A8358.htm
Israel is increasing its attacks on the families of resistance fighters, according to rights organisations and anecdotal evidence.
In recent weeks, Israeli Apache helicopters have fired a number of Hellfire missiles at the homes of Palestinian resistance activists, killing and maiming several civilians.
In one incident, the brother of an Islamic Jihad activist was killed when a helicopter fired missiles at his family home. Nine other family members, including six children and two women, were badly burned in the attack.
On 21 October, another helicopter fired missiles at the home of a local Popular Resistance Committees member, destroying the building in Bait Lahya in the Gaza Strip. His family narrowly escaped.
Yehezkel Lien, international law expert at Israeli rights organisation Btselem Israel has on many occasions targeted the homes of Palestinian political leaders, killing civilians, including children.
However, until recently, the army refrained from targeting the families of Palestinian activists, ostensibly fearing undesirable international reaction.
No holds barred
Since the beginning of October, as many as 150 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians, have died and 100 homes in the northern Gaza Strip have been destroyed, leaving dozens of Palestinians homeless.
According to Gaza journalist Salih Naami, who writes for the London-based pan-Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awsat, Israel is adopting the "Russian style" in its war on virtually defenceless Palestinians.
Naami was referring to the "scorched-earth tactic" reportedly used by Russian forces in Chechnya.
Naami says the virtual absence of any meaningful international reaction to recent atrocities in Gaza has emboldened Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, assuring him that he can carry out disproportionately aggressive reprisals against Palestinians without fearing Western, especially US, reaction.
"I think Sharon feels he has obtained a green light from the US administration to murder Palestinian civilians in a more brazen and less subtle manner," says Naami.
"This is evident from the rampant death and destruction inflicted during the latest Israeli blitz in northern Gaza."
War crimes
Naami also accuses both US presidential candidates, President George Bush and Democrat John Kerry, for placating Israel.
"With the Arab world in a state of complete paralysis, the US in the fray of a contentious election where Bush and Kerry are vying to appease Israel irrespective of its crimes, and with the EU content with issuing polite calls for restraint, Sharon feels he is above the world and above international law and that he can do anything he wants with the Palestinians."
The targeting of non-combatants, including the families of resistance fighters, is considered a war crime under international law.
This is the view of Yehezkel Lien, an international law and human rights expert at the Israeli human-rights organisation Btselem.
He told Aljazeera.net that going after Palestinian fighters does not justify killing their families and children.
"It is a war crime. Targeting innocent people is a war crime," he said.
Israeli denial
The Israeli army refuses to say whether or not its forces target the families of resistance fighters.
A spokesman denied the army was deliberately targeting the families in order to kill them.
"We target the terrorists who happen to be inside these homes and in the process innocent people may get killed or injured," said Eitan Arusi, the Israeli army's Arabic-speaking spokesperson.
When asked why such attacks were carried out, Arusi said the army was sorry for causing injury to civilians.
"We have to kill the terrorists. If we don't eat them for lunch, they will eat us for dinner," he said.
-------- landmines
Colombia Destroys Stockpiled Land Mines
Associated Press
By DAN MOLINSKI
Oct 25, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=734&e=1&u=/ap/20041025/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_land_mines
BOGOTA, Colombia - In eight thunderous explosions, Colombia blew up its remaining 6,800 stockpiled land mines, winning the praise of Jordan's visiting Queen Noor who said the move took courage given that the nation is still fighting an internal conflict.
The military exploded the land mines Sunday in a rural area as the queen, Colombia President Alvaro Uribe, U.S. Ambassador William Wood and dozens of mine blast victims watched the event live on large screens from Bogota's main Bolivar Plaza.
Although Marxist Marxist rebels who have battled the government for 40 years are still using land mines, Colombia's government has committed to destroy eventually all its mines. The government still has 14,000 mines it already planted in the ground.
"It takes a lot of courage for the armed forces to take these kinds of decisions," said Queen Noor in an interview Sunday with The Associated Press. Colombia, she said, "is unique in the world for being (in conflict) and at the same time destroying its stocks of land mines."
The event ended with an appearance by Colombian pop star Juanes (news - web sites), who sang a song called "Dreams", which deals with the everyday life of a Colombian soldier.
Queen Noor on Monday travels to southwest Colombia to visit mine blast victims and meet with groups working to remove land mines.
The U.S.-born queen said she's hoping international land mine removal groups will begin to focus on Colombia's problem now, rather than waiting for the conflict to end. She is the widow of King Hussein of Jordan, who died five years ago.
Land mines have become a huge problem in Colombia, whose conflict pits government troops and right-wing militia fighters against two leftist rebel groups. All of the warring sides have planted land mines, making the Andean nation number four in the world for land mine victims, behind Chechnya (news - web sites), Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Cambodia.
About 560 people in Colombia have been killed or injured this year from anti-personnel mines, from just 29 in 1990, according to the office of Vice President Francisco Santos. Of this year's victims, 60 percent were government soldiers.
Colombia in 2000 ratified the Ottawa Convention that calls for banning and destroying all land mines worldwide by 2009. With Sunday's blasts, Colombia has finished the first phase of the agreement.
In the second phase to begin in February, Colombia's government said it will destroy thousands of government-planted mines that remain in the ground.
Col. Nelson Rocha, who oversees the Colombian military's mines, said the government has between 30 and 35 minefields in strategic spots around military bases and communications centers, as well as near electricity towers, a popular target for sabotage for Colombia's main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Each minefield has close to 500 individual mines, and he estimated total government-planted mines at about 14,000.
The Washington-based International Campaign to Ban Landmines estimates there are a total of 100,000 mines buried across the country.
The government says the FARC, a smaller rebel group and the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, are responsible for placing most of those mines.
-------- nato
US to keep small force in Bosnia after NATO-EU handover
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Oct 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041025154430.tn48rzgl.html
The United States is to keep a small contingent of troops in Bosnia-Hercegovnia after the handover of peacekeeping duties from NATO to the EU in December, NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Monday.
US ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns told his counterparts about the plans at a meeting of ambassadors from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union (EU) in Brussels.
The US ambassador "informed NATO and the EU in the meeting... that the US will keep a residual presence in Bosnia-Hercevonia," Scheffer told reporters at NATO's headquarters.
He gave no details of how big the force would be when the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) hands over to the EU on December 2. Currently the US contingent in the country comprises some 980 troops.
They will be stationed at Camp Eagle near Tuzla in the northeast of the country.
The EU is to take over a force of some 7,000 soldiers in Bosnia. NATO, which has led the SFOR force since the end of the 1992-95 war, decided to end its mission there in June.
NATO is also expected to maintain a small headquarters in Sarajevo, to help Bosnian authorities pursue defence reform and to keep up the manhunt for war crimes suspects still at large.
De Hoop Scheffer and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said that everything is in place for a smooth transition in December.
-------- pakistan / india
India's military commanders meet to revamp war doctrine
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Oct 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041025121749.c97gbtim.html
Indian commanders went into a huddle Monday to cobble together a new war doctrine which is likely to recommend the handover of control of nuclear-capable missiles to the military and call for an expensive upgrade of the navy, an official said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to address the Combined Services Commanders' Conference Tuesday while Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee will wind up the annual session on Friday, the official said.
"The changing scenario in India's neighbourhood and international issues such as the conflict in Iraq and rising fuel prices will be part of the discussions," the senior defence ministry official told AFP.
He said issues such as the induction of a newly-purchased Russian aircraft carrier and the refurbishment of some of the ageing fleet of the 137-ship Indian navy would be on the agenda.
The fine-tuned war doctrine is also likely to deal with the formation of smaller strike groups, modern measures to battle insurgencies and the modernisation of the infantry, artillery and armoured forces.
"The speedy induction (into the military) of nuclear-capable short and medium range missiles is very much on the agenda," the official said as the five-day brainstorming session began in the Indian capital.
India, which conducted a series of nuclear weapons tests in 1998, is currently racing ahead with an ambitious missile development programme to build a triad of delivery systems which involves the airforce and the navy.
India's political establishment holds the nuclear button but the million-plus army insists on controlling the ballistic missiles, some of which can strike deep inside neighbouring China.
The commanders will also mull proposals made last week by the first-ever conclave of ex-army chiefs for a special force to put down Islamic militancy in insurgency-wracked Kashmir.
Eight former army chiefs attending the conclave said such an exclusive force could guard Kashmir's turbulent borders to try to put the brakes on infiltration by rebels from the Pakistani-zone of divided Kashmir.
Despite an ongoing process to normalise ties, India accuses Pakistan of not doing enough to stem the flow of armed guerrillas into troubled Kashmir, where insurgency has claimed tens of thousands of lives since the anti-Indian uprising began in 1989.
India currently has some 60,000 combat troops on its borders with Pakistan in Kashmir and frequently the soldiers are called in to back paramilitary forces during clashes with militants in the Himalayan territory.
-------- prisoners of war
Abu Ghraib Guards Kept a Log Of Prison Conditions, Practices
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 25, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59556-2004Oct24.html
The military police soldiers who ran the high-security wing of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq kept an unofficial log of their daily activities, a diary of sorts that documents the conditions that gripped the prison during the months that detainees were abused in what would later erupt into an international scandal.
From Oct. 19, 2003, to Jan. 18, 2004 -- just days after digital photographs of soldiers mistreating prisoners were turned in to Army criminal investigators -- the members of the 372nd Military Police Company who ran tiers 1A and 1B at Abu Ghraib jotted their experiences in a light green ledger kept in a prison office. On the log's cover is printed in large, handwritten letters: "MI Wing." A copy of the log was obtained by The Washington Post.
Day after day, the log's more than 50 pages of handwritten notes and observations describe a spartan prison where some inmates inexplicably vomited after meals, a detainee regularly covered himself in his own feces, and others sharpened toothbrushes into makeshift weapons. There were fights, attacks on soldiers and riots.
"Note: No power. No water. Prison in state of lockdown," a soldier wrote on Nov. 17, 2003.
The Army soldiers, some of whom have been charged by the military with crimes for the abuses, logged a stream of mysterious and unregistered inmates held by unnamed U.S. government agents, a group of "ghost detainees" who were locked behind a row of 10 solid iron doors.
References to "OGA," for Other Government Agency, appear throughout the logbook, meaning agencies such as the CIA and FBI, which had operatives in Iraq looking for the highest-value targets. "We didn't know anything about them," said one MP from the 372nd, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of ongoing investigations. "We called them X-Men. They were there, but they weren't there."
The soldiers also wrote about unclear orders being passed down orally from military intelligence officials to "put pressure" on detainees of high intelligence value -- though none of the entries referred directly to the abuses made internationally infamous in digital photographs and in reports arising from multiple military investigations.
"MI handlers will be turning on heat to this one," reads an entry at 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 12, referring to inmate No. 152529, identified in investigative documents as Asad Hamza Hanfosh. In a statement, Hanfosh alleged that soldiers stripped him, beat him and left him shackled naked to his bed overnight. "Sleep management program was requested but paperwork has not been approved yet," the entry reads.
The Post obtained a digital copy of the logbook by e-mail and took several steps to verify its authenticity. Pentagon officials said the Criminal Investigations Division evidence tag on the log's back cover, dated Jan. 19, matches the tag placed on the original logbook. Army officials who reviewed a copy of the logbook said its contents appeared to be consistent with what investigators have learned about the prison.
Sgt. Hydrue S. Joyner, who testified in a preliminary court hearing that he started the logbook on Oct. 19, 2003, reviewed The Post's copy and said it appeared to be complete and accurate. Joyner declined to discuss the entries but pointed out his own handwriting and said he last saw the book when he gave it to a military Criminal Investigations Division agent Jan. 19.
The book shows that soldiers repeatedly counted the detainees, worked to get prisoners better food and clothing, and made sure those who were ill got to see the facility's medics. The MPs noted that some detainees had problems urinating, suffered from constipation or lacked proper medication.
"Inmate #20092 continues to refuse to eat anything," Joyner wrote. "He will have to receive another I.V. from medical."
These guard duties were performed by a unit untrained in detention operations, at a facility that came under frequent enemy attack. The soldiers were forced to improvise. Detainees who were hard to control or had mental problems were handcuffed to their beds or fully restrained.
One detainee kept trying to kiss the guards. One ate chicken bones. Some would secret away weapons, such as sharpened toothbrushes, razors, medical needles and guns.
"Conducted bed check and prisoner count," begins a Dec. 18 entry. "Note: Inmate #116451 was placed into isolation quiet room because night shift passed on that he attempted to burn the wood blocking his window. Once I came on shift I spoke to the inmate about the incident and he admitted to trying to commit suicide. . . . Note: After last night's incident, NO MATCHES are to be given to inmates."
None of the entries clearly states that military intelligence officials were asking the MPs to do anything abusive, as attorneys for some of the MPs have alleged. Numerous entries refer to military intelligence asking MPs to help keep detainees awake for long periods to break them down for questioning.
"The logbook certainly validates what Army investigators subsequently found about the environmental conditions inside the prison, the combat conditions outside the facility and the challenges the soldiers faced," said Col. Joseph G. Curtin, an Army spokesman. "It also validates that the behavior of these soldiers was unacceptable."
The logbook for the first time shows Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr. noting in his own words that he was unhappy receiving oral instructions from military intelligence personnel. Graner and six other MPs have been charged in the abuse. Two MPs have pleaded guilty, and the most senior of the soldiers, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick, was sentenced to eight years in prison last week.
"Per MI . . . unless told to put pressure on an MI inmate do not do so," reads an entry that bears Graner's name on Oct. 25, 2003, at a time when some of the most serious abuses were occurring. "I will now request everything to be in writting [sic] since it seems one MI handler does not know what the other one is requesting with verbal orders."
In an entry from Graner on Oct. 26, writing about three mysterious inmates brought in by U.S. agents: "It has been over three days since OGA inmates were placed in cells 8 and 13. When subjects were first placed on block verbal instructions were that both would be placed on a sleep plan of 20 hours up and 4 hours down. No paperwork has been issued to verify this. Until this is put down on paper, the sleep plan is stopping at this point."
Some Army officials said Graner's entries could very well be the work of someone covering their inappropriate behavior. There are omissions of events, such as the sexual humiliation that was captured on the soldiers' cameras. Graner did not return e-mail requests for comment, and Graner's civilian attorney did not return several calls to his office in Texas and to his cell phone.
Members of the 372nd have said privately that they were asked to put detainees through physical training to keep them awake during these sleep management programs, but that they were not told specifically what they could and could not do.
"Those who knew the rules and knew how to act, we just had them do things we would have done in basic training, like running and push-ups," said the soldier from the 372nd. "I could see how someone could misinterpret that into thinking they could do whatever they wanted."
Whatever the sleep programs encompassed, they were abruptly altered in January after the photographs surfaced, according to the logbook. A series of entries shows that standards for sleep programs "will be revised" and that such programs for three inmates would be suspended immediately. On Jan. 16, the log shows that all of the ghost detainees would be "taken out of their cells, processed, and given numbers."
Some of the ghost detainees were put on disruptive sleep programs and interrogated in a shower room and in a stairwell -- locations where some of the photographs of abuse also were taken.
Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, initially said there were only one or two such secret holds. Subsequent investigations revealed numerous such detainees, and the logbook shows that there were consistently three to 10 ghost detainees at Abu Ghraib from mid-October into January.
The inspectors general of the Pentagon and CIA "are working together to look into that specific issue," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
The final entry in the logbook, by Joyner on Jan. 18, shows that the prison leadership wanted things to change, and fast. Joyner, praised by inmates in investigative reports for helping them, has not been charged with a crime.
"The new directive for the Tier 1 Wing is as follows: We count the inmates and feed them," he wrote. "No more sleep management, etc."
-------- un
U.N. tallies new security costs
October 25, 2004
United Press International
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041025-032539-6867r.htm
United Nations, United States, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed new security measures estimated at costing $97 million.
In addition to $35 million needed to bolster the safety of field offices around the world, nearly $28 million will have to be spent to upgrade the premises at the U.N. World Headquarters in New York, pay for more security officers and training, and install new access control measures, according to a cost report released Monday.
The budgets for similar improvements at the eight main U.N. offices are an estimated $16 million for Geneva; more than $3 million each for stations in Nairobi, Santiago de Chile and Addis Ababa; and more than $1 million each for facilities in Bangkok, Beirut and Vienna.
One-time expenditures such as physical improvements to buildings are expected to total $29.6 million.
Stepped up security for the world organization and its personnel have been called for since last year's bombings at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, the first of which cost the lives of 22 people.
-------- us
Army Captain Granted Reprieve After Suing U.S. Gvt. To Block Iraq Deployment
democracynow.org
October 25th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/25/1416253
A federal judge agreed that Army Captian Jay Ferriola will not have to report for duty today while the Army decides whether to approve his June resignation application. Ferriola sued the government last week to block his pending deployment to Iraq. We speak with his lawyer Stuart Slotnick. [includes rush transcript] A former U.S. soldier is suing the government to block his pending deployment to Iraq.
Army Captain Jay Ferriola resigned from the military in June after completing eight years of service but last week he received orders to report back to active duty and serve on an 18-month mission in Iraq. In the lawsuit, Ferriola said that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld unlawfully continues to exercise control over him even though he properly resigned and was asked to turn in his equipment.
The government agreed that Ferriola will not have to report for duty today while the Army decides whether to approve his June resignation application.
Yesterday in New York, an emergency hearing was held on Ferriola's lawsuit and whether he would have to go to Iraq. After the hearing, his lawyer Barry Slotnik addressed reporters outside the courthouse.
- Barry Slotnick, attorney for Jay Ferriola speaking outside the New York federal courthouse on Sunday.
- Stuart Slotnick, attorney for Jay Ferriola.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday in New York, I went down to an emergency hearing at the federal courthouse, held on Ferriola's lawsuit with federal judge Robert Sweet, determining whether Jay Ferriola would have to go to Iraq. After the hearing, one of his lawyers, Barry Slotnick, addressed the reporters outside the court house.
BARRY SLOTNICK: We are pleased that my client will not have to report tomorrow morning at 7:00 to go to Iraq. The government has asked for an adjournment. We have consented to it, the court has agreed. We will be hearing what the army's final determination with regards to our petition on or before next Monday. This is a major issue for all sides. The army is going to examine it. We are certainly preparing our assault, if in fact they refuse to accept his resignation. He has served his country well. He has served over eight years, and he fulfilled his contract and at this point, he now desires to go into civilian life.
AMY GOODMAN: Attorney Barry Slotnick outside the federal court where an emergency hearing was held yesterday in the case of Jay Ferriola who was an army captain and said he resigned from the military in June and that he does not want to go to Iraq. He was scheduled to go -- report for duty today, and on I believe it's Wednesday, was expected to report to Fort Dix and head out to Iraq. We're joined by his other attorney, Stuart Slotnick, welcome to Democracy Now!
STUART SLOTNICK: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk further about this case, the grounds on which you are saying that he should not report?
STUART SLOTNICK: It's very simple. Jay Ferriola is not a part of the army anymore. His commission expired in February of 2004, and he submitted his resignation after pondering whether he was going to continue or pursue a career with the military. And when he submitted his resignation, he gave it to his commanding officer, who signed off on the papers, and then submitted them. He turned in his gear. He stopped reporting to drill. He stopped being paid by the army, and he had not heard from the army. No one said where are you? He's no longer part of the army. He entered into private life as a civilian.
AMY GOODMAN: Did he have something in paper that acknowledged his resignation?
STUART SLOTNICK: The army never responded in writing acknowledging his resignation, however, army regulations clearly state that a properly submitted resignation must be accepted.
AMY GOODMAN: Is he a part of the individual ready reserve?
STUART SLOTNICK: No, he's not.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you end up being a part of, that and others don't and up being a part of that?
STUART SLOTNICK: I think that you are assigned to the individual ready reserve. He was not part of the individual ready reserve.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, what about the whole issue of stop loss orders that are -- while the Bush administration is making a very big deal about saying there is not a draft right now, and even going after those who dare to talk about draft like the group rock the vote, Ed Gillespie, head of the republican national committee sent them a legal cease and desist order saying that you cannot raise the issue of draft, because the president says there is no draft. How does it work? I mean, stop-loss, they're saying they're calling people back.
STUART SLOTNICK: Well, I think that stop-loss essentially prohibits people from resigning from the military. And this is a very different case. It's important to look at the specific facts of each case. In this case, his term had expired, and months later, he submitted his resignation. We don't believe that stop-loss applies to Jay Ferriola.
AMY GOODMAN: His immediate superior signed off on it, accepted the resignation?
STUART SLOTNICK: Accepted the resignation the same day Jay Ferriola put in his written resignation, he filled out a form that was signed in writing by his commanding officer, which was then submitted. It's important to know that now the government had asked for -- has asked for an adjournment of these proceedings, and they're going to review his resignation. We believe that the army should accept his resignation. It's the proper thing, and under the army regulations that's what they should do.
AMY GOODMAN: Reading through the court papers yesterday, reading the rationale, one of the reasons that you have given in your lawsuit is -- for him -- Jay Ferriola not having to go to Iraq, you talk about involuntary servitude. Why?
STUART SLOTNICK: That's one possible legal ground. We'll pursue any and all legal remedies to protect our client's rights?
AMY GOODMAN: What is involuntary servitude mean? STUART SLOTNICK: It's from the 13th amendment. It's essentially saying that they cannot take custody and control over him. And deprive him of due process and deprive him of his liberty.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Stuart Slotnick, the attorney for Jay Ferriola. The army captain served eight years in the military, says he resigned in June and he should not have to report for duty now, serving 18 months in Iraq. Yesterday in the hearing before federal judge Robert Sweet, the -- a letter was presented, though we didn't get to see it, reporters did not get to see it, of an agreement between the military and you, the lawyers, and Jay Ferriola. You can explain what that agreement is, what has the army, the date November 1, which is very close to November 2, election day, was -- it was said that's when the agreement -- you will review it.
STUART SLOTNICK: The letter, which was summarized by Judge Sweet, essentially said three things. It said that Jay Ferriola does not have to report this week as stated in the order that he received last week on Tuesday telling him, appear on Monday. The letter also said that the government was going to review this case, and come up with a decision, and that the hearings would be adjourned to November 1 which is coincidently or not the day before the election. This is very important to Jay Ferriola, and I think it is an important issue that the army has to look at. The most important thing that came out of yesterday's hearing, which was an emergency hearing in federal court, on a Sunday, was that Judge Sweet said that he had jurisdiction over this case.
AMY GOODMAN: Last month, and this is an important news date today, a judge ruled that an army reservist from North Carolina must report for active duty. The reservist, Todd Parrish, had argued that he had fulfilled his military resignation, sent the army a letter giving up his commission, but the judge agreed with the army that he could be recalled to duty because he failed to sign a resignation line on a letter asking for an update on his personal information.
STUART SLOTNICK: That's a case, and I'm not sure if Parrish had actually submitted his resignation, but that's the case where a temporary restraining order was initially granted to the soldier and -- that it went to a preliminary injunction hearing which was then denied, now it's being appealed.
AMY GOODMAN: So, November 1 is the day we will find out what the army is going to do, but it's been put off for a week.
STUART SLOTNICK: We may hear before then what the army is going to do. Certainly Jay Ferriola needs notice. If the army grants his resignation, then this case goes away, if not, some precedent may be established, legal precedent, which could have far-reaching national consequences to the army, and this government's policies.
AMY GOODMAN: Stuart Slotnick, thank you for joining us, attorney for Jay Ferriola.
--------
Military Fighter Jet Drops Errant Bomb
Associated Press
October 25, 2004
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_bomb_102504,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl
FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. - Military officials are investigating why a jet fighter accidentally dropped a 25-pound practice bomb on a hiking trail a mile from its intended target in southeastern Pennsylvania.
No one was injured when the grapefruit-sized, cast-iron bomb fell on the trail Oct. 13 during a training mission for a pair of A-10 Thunderbolts. The bomb created a crater about 6 inches wide in the trail along an abandoned rail line in Schuylkill County.
At least one hiker was close enough to hear the thud.
"It took a while for me to realize what had occurred," the hiker said in an e-mail to the state Game Commission. "Couldn't believe it! Retraced my steps. Still couldn't believe it!"
The plane that dropped the bomb was assigned to the 111th Fighter Wing at Willow Grove Naval Air Station, said Col. Chris Cleaver, spokesman for Fort Indiantown Gap, an 18,000-acre military training site managed by the Pennsylvania National Guard.
The plane has been grounded while officials investigate what caused the bomb to drop incorrectly. Investigators have ruled out pilot error as the cause, Cleaver said.
The dropped bomb is "a significant concern on all fronts," Cleaver said. "Whether it's in peace time training environment or on the front lines of war, when you have a bomb that hangs up, that is a significant safety concern."
The National Guard has been seeking permission to acquire 2,100 acres of Pennsylvania Game Commission land to act as a buffer zone for a new tank range. The base is located about 25 miles northwest of Harrisburg.
In 1997, officials closed a tank range after rounds ricocheted over the top of a mountain and fell on state game lands. A fisherman reported a near miss from one errant round from a tank gun.
-----
Veteran says modern draft would include elite
The Register-Guard
By Jim Feehan
October 25, 2004
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/10/25/b1.cr.draft.1025.html
The claims of President Bush, Sen. John Kerry and most other politicians notwithstanding, a military draft is almost certainly in the country's future, a disabled Vietnam veteran and anti-war activist told an audience at the University of Oregon on Sunday night.
"It's not a question of if, but when we have a draft," said Bobby Muller, president and founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.
A modern-day draft might not resemble conscription during the Vietnam War, which was biased toward the poor and "socially dis- enfranchised," Muller said.
Instead, the Selective Service System is looking at drafting medical personnel as old as 44 and nonmedical personnel up to age 33, said Muller, citing a New York Times article on the subject.
"In Vietnam, it was the poor and disadvantaged who became the cannon fodder," he said. "Now the elite will be called upon. It's a whole different ballgame."
A modern-day draft would focus on people with linguistic, foreign language and other specific skills. Unlike the Vietnam era, a draft today would also be likely to include women, he said.
Raised on Long Island, N.Y., Muller's commission with the U.S. Marines began the same day he received his business degree from Hofstra University in 1968. As a Marine lieutenant, he served as a combat infantry officer in Vietnam. He was leading an assault in April 1969 when a bullet severed his spinal cord and left him paralyzed from the chest down.
During rehabilitation at a Veterans Administration hospital, Muller said he experienced firsthand the problems of neglect, frustration and inadequate care given to wounded veterans. That spurred him to join the anti-war movement, enroll in law school and ultimately found the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.
In 1991, he co-founded the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines based on work he began in Cambodia. The campaign received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.
Despite the Pentagon's claim that a draft is not needed, Muller said today's Army is stretched to the breaking point and facing deteriorating retention and recruitment efforts.
Political instability in the Middle East and U.S. support for Israel in its conflict with Palestinians is fueling the need for a draft, Muller said.
The Middle East is a powder keg ready to explode if Muslim extremists overthrow governments in Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, he said.
"The real question is Pakistan where President Musharraf has survived several assassination attempts," he said. "A majority of Pakistanis support Osama bin Laden and the Taliban."
He called the war in Iraq "another quagmire."
"American prestige has been committed and we can't cut and run," he said.
A poll commissioned in August by Muller's foundation found that a majority of young people do not envision themselves heeding the call; 52 percent of draft-age U.S. residents said they would seek a deferment or exemption, while 40 percent of parents stated they would encourage their children to avoid or delay conscription.
Muller's 90-minute speech was directed at a small but rapt audience of about 20.
Logan Berner, 20, a UO student majoring in environmental studies, said his stepfather broached the topic of a draft 18 months ago when the United States invaded Iraq.
"He said, `Be aware, you may have to make a decision,' " Berner said.
If a draft was reinstated, Berner said he would file for conscientious objector status or flee to Canada.
"I do not want to fight an imperial war," he said.
Mark Bradford, 21, a UO business major, had a different take on Muller's talk.
"I felt the talk of a draft was a scare tactic used by Democrats," he said. "But now I can see how it can be used in an emergency situation."
--------
"Explosive" Revelations
The Bush administration's incompetence may have caused the deaths of American soldiers. This time, the media must draw attention to it.
10.25.04
By Michael Tomasky
The American Prospect
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8800
Now we know, via the stunning front-page report in Monday's New York Times, that the Bush administration's incompetence and arrogance has in all likelihood killed American soldiers. The questions now are: Will the media in general push this shocking story in the campaign's final week? Or will they cave yet again to administration pushback (which hasn't begun as I write these words but will surely commence soon) designed to make the whole issue dissolve into a story that's "too murky," with "both sides at fault"? Will they change the story line and decide that, in the final week of the most important presidential election in modern American history, we should instead be focused on whether John Kerry was right to wear camouflage fatigues, or on the danger to the republic posed by Teresa Heinz Kerry's off-the-cuff remarks?
If you don't know the story, the Times reports that nearly 380 tons of high-powered explosives are missing from an Iraqi storehouse called al-Qaqaa. The explosives went missing because the United States didn't secure the facility. This despite repeated and intense warnings from Mohamed ElBaradei and his colleagues at the International Atomic Energy Agency across many months before the start of the war that doing same was a major priority. The explosives are powerful: Less than 1 pound of one of the types of materials at al-Qaqaa, the Times notes, blew up Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. And -- here's the kicker -- in all likelihood, these explosives have been used in the many insurgent bombings in Iraq that have been killing Iraqi security forces, Iraqi civilians, and U.S. soldiers. All because of Bush administration incompetence.
And, for those who can still stomach a little irony, chew on this: The United Nations inspectors had indeed secured the al-Qaqaa facility and had safeguarded these explosives. The UN hauled some of the material away in 1996. Then, after they were kicked out in 1998, the inspectors discovered upon their 2002 return that the facility was missing about 35 tons of the explosives, called HMX, RDX, and PETN.
So, in other words: The war, which was supposed to correct the failings of the inspections process, turns out to have made matters far more dangerous than they were when the inspectors were in Iraq. The United Nations, that pusillanimous house of concession where detested France owns a veto over American designs, kept al-Qaqaa under comparatively well-monitored control. It took George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, the great hegemonic geniuses who are making the world "safer" every day through the brute exercise of unilateral power, for that dangerous spot to become a candy store for anti-American terrorist insurgents, a place beyond human control -- "Mars on Earth," in the unforgettable phrase of one military man quoted in the Times.
The administration has known about ElBaradei's concerns for a month, and it hasn't been too anxious to share this news with the American public for the obvious reason. There was a time in this country when a situation like that was exactly the point at which the media stepped in to ratchet up the pressure on government officials to explain themselves. God bless the Times for finally doing its part. (Despite its strongly anti-Bush editorial posture, the paper has not typically singed this administration with aggressive investigative reporting, which is more troublesome than editorials and takes more courage to produce.)
Now, in this campaign's final week, watching where this story goes will be fascinating. The war's architects in this administration have wriggled out of trouble time and again, and the media have let them do it, even though the list of crises that are the result of their incompetence and ideological arrogance is stunning. Just another small example we learned of over the weekend: The Associated Press moved a story on Sunday noting that, despite the breezy and expansive promises of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz about Iraqi oil revenues paying for the reconstruction, Iraq has generated just $17 billion in revenue, and a staggering 250 or so attacks on oil facilities and pipelines since the war's start have squandered somewhere between $7 billion and $12 billion in potential export revenue (money that had to be spent on infrastructure repairs). Meanwhile, the war continues at a cost of $177 million a day, $7.4 million per hour.
Holding a government's feet to the fire over such unforgivable errors is exactly what journalism was invented to do. But these days, journalistic demands for accountability are attacked as evidence of "bias." But if there's any bias in the Times story, it's a bias in defense of our nation's unnecessarily endangered fighting men and women, and a bias in favor of getting important information in front of voters before they make their decision. Those are biases journalism must defend, no matter how intense the pressure from an ideological cadre to do the opposite.
Will it?
Michael Tomasky is the Prospect's executive editor.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
TOUGH JUSTICE
Slow Pace of Pentagon's Courts Set Off Friction at White House
October 25, 2004
By TIM GOLDEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/worldspecial2/25gitmo.html?ei=5094&en=58b7290e38c35a6d&hp=&ex=1098676800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON - When hundreds of prisoners arrived at the American naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in early 2002, the Bush administration laid out a straightforward plan: once the men were interrogated, the worst of the lot would be prosecuted before special military tribunals devised to bring terrorists to justice quickly.
A year later, with no trials yet in sight, some officials at the highest levels of the Bush administration began privately venting their frustration about both the slow pace of the Pentagon's new courts and the soundness of their rules. Attorney General John Ashcroft, better known for his uncompromising stand against terror, was especially vocal.
"Timothy McVeigh was one of the worst killers in U.S. history," Mr. Ashcroft said at one meeting of senior officials, according to two of those present. "But at least we had fair procedures for him."
The administration invoked extraordinary wartime powers to set up the new system of military justice, arguing that the Sept. 11 attacks and the continuing threat they exposed justified the use of legal authorities that had not been exercised since World War II. But as officials sought to apply those powers to a very different kind of conflict, they became mired in problems they are still struggling to solve.
Although White House lawyers said they rushed to devise a new judicial structure that could handle serious Qaeda terrorists, many of the detainees sent to Guantánamo turned out to be low-level militants, Taliban fighters and men simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Pentagon's efforts to gather intelligence from more valuable prisoners were also deeply flawed, military intelligence officers said, complicating the prosecution of some detainees and all but paralyzing efforts to release others.
Interviews with dozens of officials show that the myriad problems ignited an often fierce behind-the-scenes struggle that set the Pentagon and its allies in the White House against adversaries at the National Security Council, the State Department and Justice Department. The friction among officials like Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice; and Mr. Ashcroft sheds new light on the internal dynamics of an administration that has shown a remarkably united public front.
In many cases, officials said, the battles were fueled by the discontent of military, foreign-policy and other officials who had been excluded from a role in shaping the policy after Sept. 11.
"Anytime you have a process which is not inclusive, you end up giving people a reason to be opposed to it," said Timothy E. Flanigan, a former deputy White House counsel who helped craft legal strategy. "That was certainly the case here.''
The Pentagon continues to defend military commissions, as the tribunals are called, as an important tool against terrorism. But in several instances, military officials said, Mr. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, resisted moving forward with prosecutions, in part because they felt many cases were too weak.
As prosecutors prepare to try their first two cases, now scheduled for December and January, the commissions have come under vigorous attack by the uniformed lawyers assigned to the defendants. Defense challenges have prompted the removal of half of the officers appointed to hear the first cases, and have called into question the independence of the presiding officer.
On Monday, Oct. 25, a federal district court judge in Washington is expected to hear arguments in a lawsuit by one of the defense lawyers challenging the commissions as unconstitutional. Already, White House and Pentagon lawyers are considering ways to revise the tribunals after Election Day, administration officials said.
As the Sept. 11 attacks have receded, political and diplomatic opposition to the administration's use of wartime powers has grown. Now, critics argue that the delays in moving forward with the commissions has weakened their legal justification as well.
"When commissions have been done in the past, they have either been authorized by Congress or done on the battlefield during declared wars," said Neal K. Katyal, a Georgetown University law professor who will argue the case in federal court. "But here, you have a commission set up unilaterally by the president, at a time when war has not been declared, thousands of miles from a battlefield and now more than three years after the attacks."
Hunting for Defendants
With American military, intelligence and law-enforcement efforts focused on Al Qaeda, officials expected to corner many of its members in Afghanistan, sweep up others around the world and start prosecuting the terrorists in a matter of months.
Mr. Rumsfeld had not been intimately involved in developing the plan for prosecuting terrorist suspects. But once the prisoners started to arrive from Afghanistan, he took a strong interest in Guantánamo's potential as a source of intelligence.
He was soon disappointed, several of his former aides said.
Experienced interrogators, analysts and interpreters were all in short supply. Few, if any, military intelligence officers had significant expertise on Al Qaeda or Afghanistan. Even plywood interrogation huts were scarce: One senior interrogator said he finally bribed some Navy Seabees with cases of beer to build two more.
"Guantánamo had been a backwater location for many years," said Gen. James T. Hill, who oversees the base as commander of the United States Southern Command. "Now, all of a sudden, we were involved in strategic intelligence-gathering from an enemy unlike any we've encountered on the battlefield before, in a Guantánamo environment that at the beginning was very austere. So all of this had to evolve."
It did not evolve fast enough for Mr. Rumsfeld, who ordered an overhaul of the intelligence effort in September 2002.
Three months later, he authorized the use of more coercive interrogation techniques, taking advantage of a decision by the White House that the detainees were not protected by the Geneva Conventions. Although Mr. Rumsfeld later disallowed some of the most severe methods, including the removal of clothing and the use of dogs to induce stress, disclosures about the harsh methods lent credence to charges of abuse leveled by former detainees.
But intelligence-gathering was only part of the problem. It quickly became apparent that few of the prisoners captured in Afghanistan were the sort of hardened terrorists the administration had hoped for.
"It became obvious to us as we reviewed the evidence that, in many cases, we had simply gotten the slowest guys on the battlefield,'' said Lt. Col. Thomas S. Berg, a member of the original military legal team set up to work on the prosecutions. "We literally found guys who had been shot in the butt.''
The reserve officer chosen by Mr. Rumsfeld to lead the intelligence operation at Guantánamo, Maj. Gen. Michael E. Dunlavey, was told after his arrival there in February 2002 that as many as half of the initial detainees were thought to be of little or no intelligence value, two officers familiar with the briefings said. He also found that the prisoners included elderly and emotionally disturbed Afghan men, including one tribal elder so wizened that interrogators nicknamed him "Al Qaeda Claus."
Barely a month after taking command, General Dunlavey flew to Afghanistan and Kuwait to complain directly to military commanders there. But while the commanders acknowledged that prisoner screening could be improved, they said they had no other place to put suspects who might be of some intelligence value or threat, a senior officer familiar with the meetings recalled.
"Basically, they said, 'General, please shut up and go home,' " the officer said.
The lack of solid information about the detainees undermined a basic step in the administration's legal plan. The order that established the military commissions on Nov. 13, 2001, authorized the Pentagon to hold and prosecute any foreigners designated by the president as suspected terrorists.
On Jan. 22, 2002, at the request of the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, Pentagon lawyers directed intelligence officers at Guantánamo to fill out a one-page form for each prisoner, certifying the president's "reason to believe" their involvement with terrorism, officials said.
But within weeks, intelligence officers began reporting back to the Pentagon that they did not have enough evidence on most prisoners to even complete the forms, officials said. By March 21, Defense Department officials indicated they would hold the Guantánamo prisoners indefinitely and on a different legal basis - as "enemy combatants" in a war against the United States.
"We are within our rights, and I don't think anyone disputes it, that we may hold enemy combatants for the duration of the conflict," said William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon's general counsel. "And the conflict is still going and we don't see an end in sight right now."
Emerging Divisions
As accounts of the problems at Guantánamo made their way to Washington in the spring of 2002, the question of how to deal with the detainees began to open a divide in the Bush administration.
In public, the administration continued to maintain that the prisoners were both frighteningly dangerous and a likely font of vital intelligence. "They may well have information about future terrorist attacks against the United States," said Vice President Dick Cheney. "We need that information." But at the State Department, diplomats were awash in complaints from foreign governments, many of them allies in the Afghan war, about the open-ended imprisonment of their citizens. F.B.I. agents and Justice Department officials were struck by how few strong prosecution cases there seemed to be, current and former officials said.
Officials said that C.I.A. officers who were trying to recruit some Guantánamo detainees as agents raised another fear: that the camp could become America's madrasa, or Islamic school, radicalizing prisoners by its harsh conditions, the indoctrination of militant leaders and the detainees' focused study of the Koran - the only book they were initially given to read.
"There was real concern that if detainees were harshly treated and deprived of due process, they were going to end up turning against the United States, if they had not already," said retired Gen. John A. Gordon, a former deputy director of the C.I.A. who became President Bush's deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism. "We were not making any converts."
Officials on the National Security Council staff were particularly uneasy. Ms. Rice, like Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, had been cut out of discussions that produced the Nov. 13 presidential order, officials said, an embarrassing slight given her role as a mediator on national security issues.
Mr. Bush later brought the council staff back into the process, assigning it to draw up a broader strategy to deal with the thousands of prisoners in Afghanistan. Two senior aides, Elliott Abrams and John B. Bellinger III, convened an interagency group to study the issue.
The men made an odd team: Mr. Bellinger, the council's legal adviser, was a measured former Justice Department official with a degree from Princeton and a taste for monogrammed dress shirts. Mr. Abrams, known as a bare-knuckled bureaucratic infighter, was making his return to government after being convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-contra scandal and later pardoned by the first President Bush.
"They were very persistent," one senior administration official from another agency said of the National Security Council aides. "They kept pressing: Did all the detainees really belong there? What was the plan to start transferring them out?"
The Defense Department was notably unresponsive. Requests by other agencies for information were answered slowly, if at all, officials said. Promised policy changes - new criteria to improve the screening of detainees being sent to Guantánamo, or proposed terms for their transfer home - were delayed repeatedly.
"We provided them with only the information that we, in our arrogance - or the arrogance of our leadership - thought they needed," one former Pentagon official said. He added that he and others went into interagency meetings on Guantánamo with a standard script, dictated by their superiors: "Back off - we've got this under control."
The National Security Council officials were notably unsuccessful in pushing for a major public diplomacy effort to counter the widely seen images of detainees shackled in orange jumpsuits and sometimes strapped to gurneys as they were moved around the base.
Members of Congress, journalists and others were eventually allowed to visit the base on tightly controlled tours. But the Pentagon, citing security concerns, refused to release even the most basic information about the prisoners, including their names and nationalities. Nor would military officials say publicly what the men were accused of having done.
"Rumsfeld was very clear that he wanted the Department to be driving this bus," said a former Army secretary, Thomas E. White, who was closely involved in the Guantánamo policy. "He reigned supreme in the government. The vice president backed him up, and that was his power base."
Documenting the Problems
Stymied by the Pentagon, National Security Council aides eventually began playing their own game of hardball.
In August 2002, at what officials said was the council's request, the C.I.A. dispatched a senior Arab-speaking intelligence analyst to assess the detainees and talk to intelligence officers at the base. He produced a top-secret report of about 15 pages that, according to several officials who read it, described many of the detainees as having no meaningful ties to Al Qaeda.
It also hinted that the harsh conditions, lack of reading materials and, in some cases, extended isolation bordered on abusive and might prove counterproductive, those officials said.
Back in Washington, administration officials said, the report made its way to Ms. Rice, who began building an alliance of dissenters within the administration's national security team.
She turned first to Mr. Powell, officials said. Her staff also sought out the president's Homeland Security adviser, Tom Ridge, and set up an off-the-record dinner at which he debriefed General Dunlavey, the Guantánamo commander, who was a friend of Mr. Ridge's from his days as a lawyer in Erie, Pa.
Ms. Rice also found a powerful ally at the Department of Justice.
Early on, Justice had seemed firmly with the administration's hard-liners. In December 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft defended the president's military order before the Senate, going so far as to warn those who saw an assault on civil liberties, "Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."
But by the fall of 2002, some senior Justice Department officials were uneasy with the Pentagon's handling of the detainees, the slow progress of the military commissions and the seemingly improvised nature of decisions about how to prosecute suspected terrorists.
The administration had used the federal courts to convict John Walker Lindh, a young California man captured by the military in Afghanistan, but ordered the transfer to military custody of Jose Padilla, a young American arrested by the F.B.I. in Chicago. The Justice Department had insisted on trying Zacarias Moussaoui, a French-born member of Al Qaeda arrested in Minnesota. But the Pentagon had held onto Yaser E. Hamdi, an American-born Saudi captured in Afghanistan, eventually moving him from Guantánamo to join Mr. Padilla in a naval brig in South Carolina.
"There was not a real process for determining who was an enemy combatant," said Viet D. Dinh, a former Justice Department official who worked on terrorism issues under Mr. Ashcroft. "And the ad hoc nature of that process gave a lot of power to the Pentagon."
With the federal courts starting to consider cases involving detainees, a split developed over whether to allow Mr. Hamdi and Mr. Padilla, in particular, some access to lawyers. Behind the disagreement was a philosophical difference about how best to achieve the shared goal of strengthening presidential power. A more reasonable position, many argued, would avoid review and possible reversal by the courts. Others, led by the vice president's influential counsel, David S. Addington, advocated taking the most aggressive stance they felt they could defend, officials said.
"Addington's position was, 'We think what we're doing is right - why should we stop doing it?' " a former White House official said. "If the courts tell us we're wrong, we'll stop then."
A spokesman for the vice president's office said Mr. Addington would not comment.
Officials of the Justice Department's criminal division, who worked closely with the F.B.I., were grappling with other questions. They saw the Guantánamo detentions as a source of cascading problems: angry foreign allies, a tarnishing of America's image overseas and declining cooperation in international counterterrorism efforts.
"This was an issue of basic fairness," one former official involved in the discussions said. "The never-ending detentions were creating a lot of animosity among our allies. We pushed hard for them to move quicker. The attorney general pushed hard for it. They didn't, and there was an immense amount of frustration."
Dissenters Make Gains
Eventually, the critics began to gain ground. At Ms. Rice's initiative, several officials said, members of the cabinet-level "principals' committee" on national security matters were called to a meeting about the Guantánamo situation on Friday, Oct. 18, 2002.
"We are not serving the president's interest; we are not serving the interests of the country," one senior official quoted her as saying. "Security has got to be paramount, but we have got to work better with other countries, and we have got to have better procedures."
Mr. Powell echoed the call for the release or transfer of less-important detainees. "He wanted to get down to the hard-core element that needed to be detained," a senior official who attended the meeting said, "and he realized that there was a body of people we needed to move."
As for the most discussed of the elderly Afghans - Faiz Muhammad, or "Al Qaeda Claus" - Ms. Rice told the Pentagon: "Just get rid of this guy," one senior official said. A week after the meeting, Mr. Muhammad flew back to Afghanistan with three other detainees.
Several officials said Mr. Rumsfeld did not seem to appreciate his colleagues' growing involvement, but was also impatient with Guantánamo's problems.
"Certainly Don was ambivalent," another senior administration official said. "That phrase, 'I don't want to be the world's jailer,' that was one of the expressions he used."
The chief Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said the defense secretary grew tired of hearing "that at lower levels, there was this anxiety or that anxiety" about Guantánamo, and ordered a series of briefings to keep his cabinet-level counterparts informed about operations there.
But several officials said that with preparations for war in Iraq moving forward and the Guantánamo intelligence issues unresolved, Mr. Rumsfeld's enthusiasm for the military commissions had waned.
By late 2002, officials said, secret plans for the tribunals cited prospective defendants including several men identified as high-level Qaeda figures and thought to be held by the C.I.A.: Abu Zubaydah, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi and Ramzi bin al-Shibh. But with both the C.I.A. captives and more important Guantánamo detainees, interrogation was given priority over prosecution, officials said.
At a Pentagon briefing on Oct. 19, the day after the interagency gathering, Mr. Rumsfeld instructed his lawyers to clear their prosecution plans with other top national-security officials. While Defense Department officials said it was partly intended to be a show of openness, it effectively postponed action on the tribunals for months.
At Ms. Rice's urging, Mr. Rumsfeld also agreed to give comprehensive briefings on Guantánamo to cabinet-level national-security officials and their deputies. Officials said the higher-level presentation was delivered on Jan. 16, 2003, by Marshall S. Billingslea, a 31-year-old acting assistant secretary who was a favorite of Mr. Rumsfeld.
"It was basically a sales job: 'What we are doing down there is valuable, it's producing results,' " a former Pentagon official who viewed the briefing said. "They were factual reports, but they were also very much a public-relations job."
Tweaking the Policy
In late 2002, partly in response to the mounting pressure, the Pentagon began to make some significant changes in its detention policies. By the time they took effect, though, many of the difficulties at Guantánamo were becoming harder to solve.
According to Pentagon documents reviewed by The New York Times, Mr. Wolfowitz approved several new measures on Dec. 26, 2002, including revised criteria for sending prisoners to Guantánamo, a policy to transfer detainees back to their home countries and a requirement to periodically assess whether those who remained at Guantánamo should stay.
Oddly, the Defense Department made no mention of what it called the "combatant-commander review" process. The internal struggle over the prisoners' fate began to play out in dysfunctional weekly meetings at which officials from across the government assembled by secure video link to consider individual detainees put forward by the Pentagon for outright release or transfer to the custody of their home governments.
At Mr. Rumsfeld's insistence, the group tried to resolve the cases of at least 10 Guantánamo detainees a week, but that almost never happened. Information on the prisoners was often inconclusive. And while foreign-policy officials emphasized the diplomatic costs of the open-ended detentions, none of the officials wanted to take responsibility for releasing a potentially dangerous prisoner.
"There was tremendous concern in the interagency process about letting someone go who might come back to haunt us," Mr. White, the former Army secretary, recalled. The desire to release men who might be innocent, he added, "was a fairly small upside, compared to the possible downside of misjudging some guy who then goes out and commits some terrible act."
The process, some officials said, turned upside down not only any presumption of innocence but the American justice system's traditional premise that it is preferable to free a guilty man than to wrongly convict one who is innocent. It was also ineffective: by early 2004, the Pentagon had managed to transfer only a dozen prisoners overseas.
"We don't want to be in a situation where we're reckless,'' the under secretary of defense who oversaw detainee issues, Douglas J. Feith, said in an interview. "But if you're unwilling to take risks, then you can't transfer people and then you wind up creating other risks.''
Some other senior officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that was just what happened for the better part of a year.
"There were lots of factors that needed to be weighed - not just the risks," one administration official involved in the process said. "It can hurt us if we let the wrong guy out. But it can also hurt the country and hurt the president if people think we are holding people who should not be held, that we don't have fair procedures, or that we are mistreating them."
Even when the Pentagon was willing to release prisoners, it had trouble persuading foreign governments to take over their custody because of its rigid rules. According to administration officials and diplomats, the Defense Department initially demanded that foreign governments adopt the Bush administration's wartime legal framework, taking custody of the detainees as "enemy combatants," and promising to hold them "until the end of hostilities" by terrorists against the United States. It also insisted that Washington be able to retrieve the detainees at any subsequent time if they were needed for intelligence purposes.
"The rest of the world failed to see this as a real war, rather than a law-enforcement situation," said Lt. Col. William K. Lietzau, a war-crimes expert who worked extensively on the detainee policy in the Pentagon general counsel's office. "When we went to another country and told them, 'We need you to hold onto these people,' they looked differently at which laws applied."
Pressure for Action
At a White House meeting in late February 2003 - more than a year after the presidential order that created the commissions - Mr. Ashcroft finally lost his patience.
"When are those commissions going to get moving?" officials quoted him as demanding.
Pentagon officials pledged to get started by the end of March, and began a flurry of preparations that included hiring commission lawyers, fine-tuning procedures and even building a provisional courthouse at Guantánamo.
Defense Department officials had been searching for cases that would be easy to win in a system that still had kinks to be worked out. But they did not expect that one of those kinks would be public opinion overseas.
The officials settled on two British-born detainees at Guantánamo, in whom the Justice Department had taken a particular interest. The men, Feroz Abbasi and Moazzam Begg, spoke English, cooperated with interrogators and had ample dossiers in the data banks of British intelligence, several officials said. Neither ranked as a senior Qaeda operative, but both had enticing connections.
Mr. Abbasi, then 21, told his captors in Afghanistan that he had traveled there with a man whom the F.B.I. later identified as Earnest James Ujaama, an American convert to Islam who later pleaded guilty to illegally supporting the Taliban.
Officials said that Mr. Begg, 35, had drawn the interest of American and British counterterrorism officials since at least 1999, in part for what they said was his relationship with Abu Hamza al-Masri , a militant cleric at the Finsbury Park mosque in London..
Lawyers for both Mr. Abbasi and Mr. Begg denied that they were involved in terrorism and insisted that any confessions they were said to have made had probably been coerced.
In a letter dated Oct. 16, 2002, Michael Chertoff, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, asked the Pentagon to allow federal prosecutors to try the two British detainees or, after their trial by military commission, let them use the men as witnesses against Mr. Ujaama and Mr. Masri. Eight months later, Defense Department officials said, they won agreement from the British government on a series of secret terms for the military trials, including diplomatic access to the men and a promise that they would not be subject to the death penalty. On July 3, 2003, Mr. Bush designated the two men and four other defendants for the first set of tribunals.
News of the men's prosecution became public in Britain just as Prime Minister Tony Blair was beginning a major public relations campaign to overcome his unpopular support for the Iraq war. Within days, he was under renewed attack in Parliament, this time over the detainees, and promising that any tribunals would follow "proper international law."
Mr. Blair's critics saw his inability to regain custody of a total of nine British detainees at Guantánamo as proof of his subjugation to Washington. After meetings with Mr. Blair the next week, Mr. Bush agreed to negotiate.
Neither government has disclosed details of the talks that followed. According to the accounts of several officials involved, American representatives grew distressed as the talks dragged on for months with the chief British negotiator, Attorney General Peter Goldsmith. Officials said Lord Goldsmith, who was himself under fire in Britain for his support of the Iraq war, would not budge from a basic demand: that verdicts of the military commissions be reviewed by civilian courts.
Bush administration officials argued that such a change would have rendered the commissions unworkable. Instead, they made a remarkable counteroffer, promising to send any convicted British defendants home to serve their sentences - a step that would almost certainly set off a review of the cases by British courts.
"We knew what that meant," one United States official said. "They would be released as soon as they set foot back there."
Yet even that proposal was rejected by Lord Goldsmith, officials said. During a state visit to Britain in late November 2003, Mr. Bush finally agreed to shelve the cases of the two British suspects for the foreseeable future, American officials said.
Losing Control
As the commissions moved toward their first trial this year, the Defense Department's control over the process began to falter.
The collapse of negotiations with the British government and a decision by the Supreme Court to hear a case challenging the detentions at Guantánamo prompted yet another push by the Pentagon to get the commissions going. A retired Army lawyer with a reputation for independence, Maj. Gen. John D. Altenburg Jr., was hired to supervise the tribunals process, and refinements to the rules continued.
What was more difficult to manage was the handful of scrappy military lawyers who had been appointed as defense counsel for the prisoners.
"They expected us to stay within the box they designed for us - accept the rules, accept the process and just fight on the facts," said Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel, a Navy lawyer who was hired in March 2003 as one of the first two members of the defense team. "That was never going to happen."
One of their first moves was to file a "friend of the court" brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Guantánamo detainees. Another was to challenge the Defense Department on speaking to the news media. When their blistering brief drew wide attention, Commander Sundel said, "We made it clear that if they tried to keep us gagged, we would sue."
It worked. The Pentagon relented and the lawyers used their new platform to attack the commissions process as unfair, unconstitutional and worse. In April, another member of the defense team, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, filed suit in Federal District Court to block the commissions altogether.
While the defense was gaining momentum, the office of the commission prosecutors was in turmoil. The chief prosecutor, Col. Frederick L. Borch, left the commission and two prosecutors were reassigned after a dispute that officials said involved the supposed "hand-picking" of the commission panels.
Still, officials said, the resources of the prosecution team substantially outweighed those of the defense, and as the first hearings drew closer, the defense counsel complained that a series of new procedural regulations were further stacking the deck against them.
While the defendants had a right to remain silent, they noted, information from coercive interrogations was determined to be admissible. The commissions were supposed to presume the innocence of the defendants, yet senior military officials had repeatedly branded the Guantánamo detainees as dangerous terrorists. And although the commissions were to judge guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt," the rules of evidence allowed for evidence that, as one of the lawyers put it, "would be laughed out of any other court."
General Altenburg said in an interview he understood that public perceptions of the fairness of the commissions would be vitally important. But when preliminary hearings for the first four cases began in late August, neither he nor his subordinates seemed ready for the scrutiny.
The impartiality of the retired Army lawyer presiding over the trials, Col. Peter S. Brownback III, was impugned by the defense, which pointed to his long friendship with General Altenburg. Other military officers on the panel, which combines the functions of judge and jury, were challenged for conflicts of interest or inexperience. Even the court interpreters were criticized for mistranslating key statements into Arabic for some of the defendants.
Weeks later, with most of the lawyers in the prosecutors' office demanding Colonel Brownback's removal, the chief prosecutor asked whether he could impartially continue. Colonel Brownback declined to step down, but General Altenburg removed two panel members and an alternate in response to the defense challenges.
That left only three members, the minimum needed to hold a commission - and two fewer than the number required to hear a felony case in a regular military court-martial.
An Uncertain Future
Nearly three years after Mr. Bush signed his military order, senior officials have begun to acknowledge privately that the fate of both Guantánamo and the military commissions is uncertain.
At Guantánamo, military officials say construction is soon to begin on a second permanent prison unit, a $24-million compound that will house 200 high-security detainees. Another, $31 million unit, able to hold 100 detainees in supermax security, opened in April.
Yet in Washington, a senior legal official acknowledged that the administration still had "a major decision" to make about the base's future after the Supreme Court on June 28 upheld the right of the detainees to petition the federal courts for their freedom.
"Do we want to take them to Guantánamo?" the official asked in an interview. "Maybe not. Maybe Guantánamo is no longer a viable option."
In the meantime, the administration is redoubling efforts to broker agreements with foreign governments willing to take over custody of many of the roughly 560 prisoners still being held.
"We're making an effort,'' said Mr. Feith. "We're not eliminating the risks, we're managing them."
But even after long and complex negotiations with an assortment of foreign governments, the outcome of some of the 56 transfers has so far been less than promising.
In June, Russian prosecutors abruptly freed seven former Guantánamo prisoners whom other Russian officials had promised to prosecute upon their return. United States officials said they did not receive so much as a warning.
In another case, a 31-year-old Dane was sent home last February after signing an agreement to refrain from further militant activity. But last month, he said in an interview that he was on his way to Chechnya to fight with other Muslims, and invited Americans to use his earlier pledge "as toilet paper." (The man later retracted those statements, and Danish officials promised to keep him under close watch.)
In recent days, Pentagon officials have also confirmed reports that nine Afghans and a Pakistani who were formerly held at Guantánamo have rejoined militant forces after being freed outright. After refusing for months to discuss such mistakes, Defense Department officials now cite them as a sobering justification for the security concerns that have dominated their approach at Guantánamo.
The Pentagon has also put in place its third successive system to evaluate the prisoners' continuing status as enemy combatants. Administration officials hope that the latest version - at which the detainees may plead their case with the help of a military aide, but without access to lawyers, witnesses or exculpatory information - will help to persuade the court that the men have been given adequate review.
But critics insist that the changes the Pentagon has made at Guantánamo and to the military commissions amount to half-measures that will not fix a system that is fundamentally at odds with the country's legal values.
"As soon as the process was set up, it started to become something they never wanted it to be," said Philip Sundel, a military lawyer representing detainees. "But it is astounding that a small group of people could create an entirely new judicial process - without many of the due-process guarantees we expect - and think it could survive real challenges.''
Don Van Natta Jr. contributed reporting for this article.
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Anti-War Protesters' Trial Is Thursday
The Associated Press
October 25, 2004
http://www.thechamplainchannel.com/news/3846467/detail.html
BRATTLEBORO, Vt. -- Seven peace activists are scheduled to go to trial this week for refusing to leave a Vermont Army National Guard recruiting headquarters.
The demonstrators were part of an anti-recruitment team called the Peace Guard when they staged their protest in March 2003. That was just two days before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
They each face a charge of trespassing, which is a misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail or a $500 fine. Their trial before a jury is scheduled to begin Thursday in district court in Brattleboro.
-----
Soldier who sued not required to report for duty
CNN From Susan Chun
October 25, 2004
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/10/25/iraq.soldier.injunction/
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The U.S. Army captain who filed an injunction to block his deployment to Iraq will not have to report for duty Monday, and the military has one week to decide whether to approve his resignation.
Capt. Jay Ferriola, 31, appeared in court for an emergency hearing Sunday to decide his fate. Ferriola says he resigned from the Army Reserve in June after eight years of service, including four years of active duty.
Ferriola received orders last week to report for active duty with the 306th Military Police Battalion in Uniondale, New York. The lawsuit says the unit will serve in Iraq for a year and a half on a "dangerous mission in Iraq."
Ferriola filed a lawsuit against the government, claiming lack of due process, involuntary servitude and breach of contract.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Judd Lawler asked the court to delay action until the Army can decide if it will approve Ferriola's resignation. U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet agreed to hold the next hearing November 1.
According to his lawyer, Barry Slotnick, Ferriola decided he did not want a career in the military and wanted to pursue opportunities in civilian life.
The lawsuit acknowledges Ferriola never received a response from the Army on his resignation, but he was told to turn in his equipment.
Ferriola would not speak to reporters after the hearing, but Slotnick said he was "optimistic" the Army would approve the resignation.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Senators Offer Intelligence Plan
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 25, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59784-2004Oct24.html
The chairman and the ranking Democratic member of the Senate conferees on the bill to restructure intelligence gathering said yesterday that a House Republican compromise proposal fails to provide the needed authority to a new national intelligence director and called for acceptance of their bipartisan counteroffer.
"The bipartisan counterproposal the Senate conferees unanimously offer the House answers the most critical question raised by the 9/11 commission: Who is in charge of the intelligence community?" Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said yesterday in a statement.
The two were responding to proposals presented late Friday by GOP House conferees as the two sides tried over the weekend to reach agreement on just the first title of the complex intelligence bills that passed earlier.
Key members of the conference are returning to Washington today with the belief that if a compromise is not reached on powers for the national intelligence director (NID) and a National Counterterrorism Center by tomorrow, no bill will be passed before Election Day.
"It would take three days to get Congress back for a vote, so if there is no quick agreement, then it won't happen," a senior Democratic staff member said yesterday.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters yesterday in Alamogordo, N.M., that President Bush had asked GOP leaders in the House and Senate to work out differences and produce the legislation. Both House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) "let him know they were working the issue very hard," McClellan said.
The key issue is who will have authority over the budgets of the major Pentagon-based intelligence-collection agencies: the National Security Agency, which collects electronic intelligence; the National Reconnaissance Office, which develops, builds and operates intelligence satellites; and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which processes imagery from satellites.
The Senate wants those budgets to be decided by the national intelligence director, who would also be responsible for their implementation. The House would continue to have the money flow through the defense secretary, and its conferees have not been willing to give the final say over spending to the national intelligence director.
Collins and Lieberman said their proposal "does not change the Defense Department's control over the tactical intelligence assets of the military services." They said the three collection agencies would remain "housed at the Department of Defense and under the day-to-day supervision of the defense secretary."
"The question," the Democratic staff member said, "remains whether the Defense Department can block the NID's budget decisions."
Collins and Lieberman put it a different way: "Who is in charge of the intelligence community?" Their answer is that the House proposal does not "adequately answer that crucial question."
The House and Senate also differ on counterterrorism center powers, on a proposed independent privacy and civil liberties oversight board in the executive branch and on proposals in the House bill covering immigration.
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Bush Asks Leaders of Congress to Pass a 9/11 Bill Quickly
October 25, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/politics/25panel.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - After pleas from the Sept. 11 commission and victims' families that President Bush press Congress to enact the commission's findings, the White House said Sunday that Mr. Bush had telephoned the Republican leaders of the House and Senate to urge them "to get the intelligence reform legislation to him as quickly as possible.''
Despite the report of separate calls from Mr. Bush to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader from Tennessee, House and Senate negotiators reported little progress in talks this weekend in a conference committee intended to produce a compromise bill before the Nov. 2 elections.
The Senate negotiators disclosed Sunday that they had rejected a Republican-written House proposal that like the original House bill would sharply limit the power of a new national security director to coordinate the work of the nation's 15 spy agencies. The creation of the job of a powerful national intelligence director was the central recommendation of the independent Sept. 11 commission.
In a joint statement, the chief Senate negotiators, Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said "the House bill would create a weakened intelligence director, which 9/11 commission chair Tom Kean has said would be worse than no intelligence director at all.''
Mr. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, was among the commission members who called on Mr. Bush to intervene to try to rescue the bipartisan Senate bill, which has been endorsed by members of the commission and by the White House.
The Senate bill would grant far more sweeping budget and personnel authority to the national intelligence director than would its House rival. The House bill would preserve much of the authority of the Pentagon, which now controls almost 80 percent of the government's intelligence, to determine how the intelligence budget is distributed.
The White House offered no details about the telephones calls placed by the president to Mr. Hastert and Dr. Frist. Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Bush had "expressed his hope that Congress will be able to work out their differences and get the intelligence reform legislation to him as soon as possible.''
Congressional leaders had urged the conference committee to try to reconcile House and Senate versions of the bill before Nov. 2, enabling Mr. Bush to sign the bill before Election Day. Several members of the Sept. 11 commission, as well as many lawmakers, have said that the political pressure needed to pass such a sweeping piece of legislation will evaporate after the election.
But lawmakers have said there has been little sign of compromise since the negotiations began in earnest on Wednesday, with Senate negotiators, Republicans and Democrats alike, determined to preserve provisions in the Senate bill that would create a powerful national intelligence director.
House Republican negotiators appear equally determined to preserve wording in the House bill that would limit the authority of a national intelligence director over Pentagon spy agencies, and to retain other provisions from the House bill that would grant new law enforcement and immigration powers to the government.
House Republicans say that by taking too much intelligence authority away from the Pentagon, the creation of a new national intelligence director could endanger the lives of soldiers on the battlefield.
Their argument was bolstered by a letter sent to the House last week by Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who contradicted the White House and offered his support for provisions of the House bill to restrict the powers of the intelligence director.
Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat who is a member of the conference committee, said in a statement that it was "easy to reject the House offer'' made this weekend.
"Our response was unanimous,'' he said of the Senate negotiators. "We're trying hard to effect an agreement, but the fact of the matter is that it has been rough sledding all the way. General Myers's letter does not help reach a consensus. In fact, it hardened the attitude of those in the House.''
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
Operation Desert Fraud
How Keith Idema marketed his imaginary Afghan war.
newyorkmetro
By Stacy Sullivan
October 25, 2004
http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/people/features/10121/index.html
In January 2002, As U.S. Forces in Afghanistan were hunting down Al Qaeda suspects, the CBS news show 60 Minutes II got its hands on some sensational footage: seven hours' worth of videotape showing Al Qaeda terrorists training in an Afghan camp. The source of the tapes, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith Idema-known familiarly as Keith-was more than a little dubious. Idema claimed to be working as an adviser to the Northern Alliance, but he was also an ex-con who had served three years in federal prison for wire fraud and had a criminal record in three states. He was, in addition, a serial litigator who had once sued CBS. But the tape's content-featuring masked men in a bullet-scarred compound training to assassinate and kidnap world leaders-proved a TV producer's dream.
It may have also proved too good to be true. Mary Mapes, who famously vouched for the documents purporting to show that George W. Bush was given preferential treatment by the Texas Air National Guard, was the producer of the segment. CBS News arranged for Dan Rather to fly to Kabul for an interview with Idema. 60 Minutes II touted its footage with the promise that it was "the most intimate look yet at how the world's deadliest terrorist organization trains its recruits and what it wants them to do to the West."
Special Forces soldiers, other journalists, and Army Intelligence immediately questioned the tapes' authenticity. Tracy-Paul Warrington, formerly a chief warrant officer with U.S. Special Forces who now advises American police forces on counterterrorism, says the tapes are not an intimate look at anything-except clumsy military playacting. "Eighty-five percent of terrorists' attacks in the last decade have been bombings," Warrington says. "In this film we see raids. This was a method that went out in the seventies, when Idema was in the Army. I was looking at seven hours of tape of something that Al Qaeda doesn't do." Another retired Special Forces soldier, and a longtime acquaintance of Keith Idema's, contacted CIA sources and learned the agency had similar concerns about the tapes' authenticity. "The CIA ran voice analysis on the tapes and concluded they were staged," he says, adding that the agency didn't publicize its findings because it "didn't want to waste its time on someone it considered harmless." Contacted about this claim, CBS spokeswoman Kelli Edwards said the network "showed the tape to three former British Special Forces officers, who verified the tactics being practiced in the video were consistent with those of Al Qaeda, and to a top U.S. military official in Aghanistan, who told us that, in his opinion, the video was authentic." In the terror-charged atmosphere of early 2002, in any event, there was no public outcry over the piece's authenticity.
That could well change soon, as many things concerning the life and career of Keith Idema already have. Among other things, it is now clear that Idema was anything but harmless: On September 15, an Afghan court sentenced Idema to a ten-year prison term on charges of entering the country illegally, running a private prison, and torture. Idema had been accused of operating a detention-cum-interrogation center in concert with another former U.S. soldier and a TV cameraman, who were sentenced alongside him the same day. When Afghan police arrested the trio on July 5, they said they saw a smaller-scale version of the gruesome prisoner-abuse photos from the Baghdad interrogation cells in Abu Ghraib. Early press reports indicated that three prisoners found in Idema's custody during the raid were blindfolded and beaten and strapped to the ceiling by their feet; five others were tied to chairs with rope in a small, dark room down a hall that was littered with bloodied clothing. All of the prisoners in Idema's custody were subsequently released; none was shown to be connected to Al Qaeda. Intelligence experts analyzed the CBS tapes and "determined they were staged," one source says.
Just days before Idema's arrest, CBS News received a video feed from this same Kabul house of horrors, featuring Idema in U.S. Army fatigues and brandishing an assault rifle as he arrested supposed terror suspects. "Idema had been in regular contact with Dan Rather since 2002," says Idema's lawyer, John Edwards Tiffany, of Bloomfield, New Jersey. "Rather was planning to go over to Afghanistan to interview Idema again before his arrest because he hoped to get access to the Al Qaeda suspects my client was capturing." Tiffany insists you can distinctly hear Rather's voice over a cell phone in footage of Idema discussing network coverage; for its part, CBS says that one of its technicians in Kabul transmitted the feed to CBS News, but denies that there was any ongoing relationship between Idema and the network.
But the question still remains: How does a freelance torturer claiming false military credentials turn up in American living rooms as an expert on the war on terror? The short answer is that, like other con men, Keith Idema made a very powerful impression. Even in that 2002 broadcast, Rather allows, in his voice-over, that Idema is "controversial" but goes on to claim that his most troubling quality-his "murky past"-is what "makes him perfectly at home in Afghanistan's freewheeling Wild West atmosphere." The anchor might also have added that Idema has made himself at home in all sorts of places: on military bases, at the head of a fictional company, in Lithuanian police-training camps, in dealings with U.S. embassies, and-as Idema now alleges-with American military officialdom. And at every stop along the way, Keith Idema increased his mastery of the fine art of press manipulation.
This is where the longer answer comes in. The war on terror has been a "Wild West" insofar as a loose-and growing-cohort of freelance military subcontractors is concerned. To this day, many veterans are in Afghanistan in the employ of private companies, as volunteer U.S. forces have been depleted or reassigned to Iraq. Even for uniformed soldiers, it can be difficult to tell who is and is not working for the government.
Keith Idema was in many ways tailor-made to exploit this sort of confusion. His time in the Afghan docket came at the end, not the beginning, of a very long and colorful career as a free agent at the strange intersection of paramilitary enterprise and sensational, on-the-scene media. And regardless of whether Idema's claims of government complicity in his actions prove true, they overlook the crux of this complicated saga: The Keith Idema story is a fable of fame, macho swagger, and opportunism in the age of terror, fueled most of all by the craving for ever more vivid and dramatic kinds of media attention. It's the kind of tale that Joseph Conrad might concoct if he were reincarnated as a screenwriter for Fear Factor or The Apprentice.
Much about Idema's life and times is disputed. But this much is clear: Well before he became a pariah, he was a military enthusiast and a media hound. When he was 12, he was inspired to become a soldier after seeing John Wayne in the movie version of Robin Moore's best-selling 1965 novel, The Green Berets-a stirring, heroic account of how Special Forces soldiers in Vietnam were vanquishing the communist enemy. By the time Idema, a Poughkeepsie native and only son of a Marine who served in World War II, was old enough to join the military in 1975, the Vietnam War was nearing its end. Recruits for Special Forces-a.k.a. the Green Berets-were thinning, and despite his diminutive height (five foot nine) and bad eyesight, the young man was accepted. But military records do not indicate that Idema was all that special a soldier. One particularly harsh evaluation, written by Captain John D. Carlson near the end of Idema's three-year tour, read: "[He] is without a doubt the most unmotivated, unprofessional, immature enlisted man that I have ever known."
His post-enlistment career was none too distinguished either. He entered the Army Reserves and then drifted around Poughkeepsie. Eventually he founded a counterterrorism-training school in the upstate town of Red Hook. After numerous run-ins with Red Hook authorities over camp noise and alleged zoning violations, Idema pulled up stakes and moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, near Special Forces headquarters at Fort Bragg. He set up shop as a supplier of nonlethal military equipment and began organizing Special Operations trade shows. He'd display new equipment and technologies while circulating among the show's regulars: active Special Forces personnel, Defense ministers and police chiefs from abroad, together with mercenaries and paramilitary hangers-on of the Soldier of Fortune stripe.
It was one such trade show that led Idema to his first contact with a subcontractor who set him up with a job training police forces in the former Soviet republic of Lithuania. In 1993, not long after his arrival, Idema claimed to have stumbled onto a Russian Mafia plot to smuggle nuclear material out of the country. He briefed contacts at the Pentagon and the FBI about the conspiracy, but refused to provide them with the names of his sources.
Idema emerged from this episode with a renewed sense of his importance in global military affairs. Unfortunately, he was losing his grip on his civilian life. Returning Stateside to find his business in serious financial trouble, Idema devised an ingenious, albeit illegal scheme to set up a dummy company to procure additional supplies that he never paid for. In 1994, federal prosecutors convicted him of fraud, over Idema's loud protests that the FBI had set him up in retaliation for his refusal to name his Lithuanian sources.
Idema began what would be a three-year term in federal prison, but a Soldier of Fortune contributor named Jim Morris, a former Special Forces major, soon took up his cause in the pages of the magazine. A Soldier of Fortune convention, meanwhile, spurred the national news media to dig into Idema's original allegations about the Lithuanian nukes traffic. Ted Kavanau, a retired TV-news executive who was one of the founding partners of CNN, spoke with some conventioneers about Idema. Kavanau brought the story to Andrew Heyward, then executive producer of CBS's Eye to Eye With Connie Chung, and now the president of CBS News.
Heyward sent one of CBS's award-winning investigative reporters, Gary Scurka, to conduct his own jailhouse interview with Idema. Scurka told Idema that in exchange for the inmate's cooperation, he intended to air Idema's claim that the FBI had him framed. Chasing down some leads of his own, Scurka eventually helped coordinate a joint 60 Minutes-U.S. News & World Report inquiry into the Lithuania story, which netted an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award in 1995. But this coup for Scurka was an enormous disappointment for Idema: Scurka says network executives nixed any Idema-related footage. Mindful of the slight, Scurka later gave the ex-con a leg up in journalism shortly after he was released in 1997.
Scurka and Idema soon scored a 48 Hours assignment from CBS to consult on a story about retired Green Beret Colonel George Marecek, who they believed was falsely convicted of the murder of his wife. But the network released Scurka and Idema in a dispute over their advocacy on Marecek's behalf, and the two men started a Web site called Point Blank News (PBN) and posted information on Marecek's case. In 2001, Scurka and Idema won a National Press Club award for online journalism in recognition of their coverage of the Marecek story. Scurka, meanwhile, continued to try to work up interest in a film account of Idema's alleged framing by the FBI, budgeted at $600,000, a project bearing the grandiose working title "Any Lesser Man: The Keith Idema Story." According to an aid director, Idema announced that his aim in the country was "to kill every Afghan I see."
Idema pursued a host of side projects-including a string of lawsuits against U.S. News & World Report and 60 Minutes (among others) in relation to the Lithuania story, and a plagiarism suit against DreamWorks, the studio behind the George Clooney-Nicole Kidman movie The Peacemaker, which Idema contended appropriated material from the treatment for "Any Lesser Man." That was the state of things on September 11, 2001.
According to Scurka, Idema called him a few weeks after the terror attacks and announced he was going to Afghanistan to do humanitarian-aid work. Idema was intending to work with Knightsbridge International and the Partners International Foundation, two aid groups run by former military personnel. (Each group now says that Idema misrepresented the reasons he was going to Afghanistan to gain their cooperation.)
Scurka says that "[Idema] asked if I wanted to go, and it seemed like a great story to me-a former Green Beret working with a humanitarian-aid group, combining talents so that they could be the first aid group into Afghanistan to help the refugees." Scurka pitched the story to National Geographic's TV division, claiming he fully disclosed Idema's criminal past and his own friendship with the subject, and National Geographic decided to do the story.
Idema and Scurka arrived in Afghanistan in November 2001, together with a cameraman and a Special Forces vet named Greg Long, who was planning to deliver medical equipment to Afghan hospitals. Yet Idema, catching the whiff of military action-and mindful that he had his own cameraman in tow-sped rather quickly past the humanitarian work that National Geographic was hoping to document. Instead, says Long, Idema's behavior "changed 180 degrees"; he set about tracking the movements of the Northern Alliance troops then fighting the Taliban and gave little input in discussions of medical care and food supplies. According to Ed Artis, the former Army sergeant who heads Knightsbridge, Idema curtly announced on his arrival that he wanted "to kill every fucking Afghan I see."
Idema was more than simply obsessed with the Afghan war-he was, as other journalists on the scene have recounted, absurdly keen to capture dramatic war footage, even if it meant fudging the record of events. On November 11, Idema and his three companions, Scurka, Long, and the cameraman, were scouting for war footage on a hill near the Taliban front lines. Idema left the group, again hoping to find Northern Alliance troops to hang out with. In the meantime, Idema's entourage, which had met up with reporter Tim Friend, then with USA Today, and a freelance TV journalist named Kevin Sites, started drawing fire from the Taliban. Scurka was hit with shrapnel in his right leg. As the group helped Scurka down the hill, and set about dressing his wound, Scurka's cameraman was capturing the scene on film. And this was when Idema returned, trailing clouds of camera-ready military glory: "Just when we finished [dressing Scurka's leg], Keith runs up screaming," Friend recalls. "He rips off the bandages and redresses the wounds. Basically, he was acting in front of the camera."
When Scurka returned Stateside to recover from his injury, Artis contacted him to say he would withdraw his consent from the National Geographic project if Idema were pictured in any footage featuring Knightsbridge workers. So Scurka finished still another documentary including no footage of Idema or his exploits. The publicity-hungry soldier on the make was suddenly adrift in a war zone without a cameraman. But with his usual brio, he reinvented himself again. He began calling himself Jack and telling journalists that he was working as an adviser to Northern Alliance troops; he also described himself as a Green Beret and claimed he was helping Special Forces round up Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects. Back in New York, Ted Kavanau, the TV producer who had originally put Scurka onto Idema's Lithuania story, set him up with an appearance on "The Barry Farber Show," a syndicated conservative talk-radio program.
Before long, Idema was turning up regularly, via satellite telephone, on American television. He would occasionally call himself a Green Beret, clearly implying he was on active duty. And sometimes he would claim, falsely, to be working for Partners International, which, like Knightsbridge, had severed all ties with Idema. Mainly, though, he characterized himself in tellingly vague terms, even as he boasted about his high-octane military credentials: "You must be held in high regard," he told Fox News host Linda Vester via sat phone in November 2001. "Because I think you're the only person ever to get an interview with a Special Forces-qualified guy inside this country."
While Idema was thumping his chest in this fashion, officials from Knightsbridge and Partners International tried to warn American authorities that they had a rogue operator on their hands. One letter from Knightsbridge to the chief of public affairs for Army Special Operations Command said that Idema was a threat both to senior Knightsbridge officials and to "the over all mission of the United States and the Coalition" in Afghanistan. Both aid groups say the alarms they raised went unacknowledged.
But Jack Idema, in his new incarnation as quote-ready ground warrior, was about to hit the media jackpot, in a moment of serendipity that would seem utterly implausible in a work of fiction. Robin Moore, the bard of the Green Berets, arrived in Afghanistan in December, and Idema wasted little time in tracking him down and nominating himself as a source for Moore's new book, to be titled The Hunt for Bin Laden. Moore-in his seventies, and debilitated by Parkinson's disease, moving slowly across Afghan war zones with the aid of a cane-was shadowing a group of Special Forces called A-Team Tiger 02, which was preparing to seize the Taliban stronghold of Mazar-e-Sharif in concert with the Northern Alliance.
Moore and Idema didn't spend much time in the field together-it behooved Idema to keep a low profile among active Special Forces, for obvious reasons. Instead, Idema focused on ingratiating himself to other reporters, who had descended on Afghanistan en masse. He boasted to war correspondents about the many Al Qaeda suspects he had apprehended, and embroidered his banter with tales of Special Forces daring in Central America. And it was more than just his speech that was growing too colorful for its own good. One heated argument over war coverage at a party ended with Idema's firing a pistol at Dallas Morning News correspondent Tod Robberson and barely missing his left arm. Many reporters began to regard Idema as a fraud and a menace. Still, he was quoted in many major newspapers as a Special Forces operative or a Green Beret. And come January 2002, when he produced the Al Qaeda training videos, all appeared to be forgiven: Under representation from the photo agency Polaris, Idema sold the footage to 60 Minutes II for a undisclosed fee-and the rest of the press corps-including NBC's Dateline and the Today show-scooped up the sensational footage in the network's wake.
Idema had to return to the United States in June 2002, after his mother died in Poughkeepsie. It was then that he made his most fateful contact with Robin Moore, who was also Stateside, trying to work the manuscript for The Hunt for Bin Laden into shape for his publisher, Random House. Moore interviewed Idema extensively for additional background, and says the information "checked out very well." Moore's writing assistant, Chris Thompson, says that Moore brought on Idema as a "technical adviser," to help ensure the book's accuracy.
Moore's agent at the time, Marianne Strong, gives a very different account. She claims that Moore "conceptualized" the book but that he and Thompson turned in a rambling, dull manuscript. "Jack came along and rewrote the entire thing," Strong says. "He came up with terribly exciting, excellent copy." Moore wound up contributing only "a few pages" to the finished product, she claims, and Thompson only edited.
One thing is certain: Regardless of who claims ultimate authorship of the book, The Hunt for Bin Laden teems with characterizations of Idema as a titanic military presence in the Afghan war. It asserts outright that Idema was the only Green Beret gathering intelligence on the ground. And Idema routinely storms to the center of the book's action to perform heroic feats of bravery. It is as though, given the chance to influence a Robin Moore book, Idema had to cast himself in a 21st-century sequel to The Green Berets. Here is one only slightly purpler-than-usual passage:
"In January, Jack uncovered an al-Qaida plot to kill President Clinton. In March, standing in the middle of a Kabul street armed with a Russian assault rifle and six hundred rounds of ammunition, Jack held off Islamic fundamentalists for four hours as they tried to take eighteen foreign citizens hostage, keeping them at bay until Engineer Ali and the Northern Alliance arrived to back him up. By the end of March, Jack was in a Northern Alliance helicopter on his way to the Nahrin earthquake, where the Associated Press photographed the lone American rescuing a little girl. She wasn't the first child he would save, or the last."
How Idema became a virtual army of one in the pages of The Hunt for Bin Laden remains a hotly disputed subject. Strong says that the book's portrait of him fully accords with her own impressions: "He is a wonderful man, very brave and charismatic." Moore and Thompson, meanwhile, maintain that Idema overtook the narrative because Random House wanted it that way. The publishers "wanted an action hero in the book," Thompson says, "so they asked us to thread Idema all the way through." Moore says that it was also Random House's decision to put Idema on the book's cover.
The next promotional twist concerning The Hunt for Bin Laden was either poetic or perverse, depending on one's view of the publishing world. Having at the very least finagled a portrait of himself as the prime mover in the Special Forces' Afghan war, Idema now was tapped to stand in for the Parkinson's-weakened Moore in bookstore readings and media appearances for the title. In each radio interview he gave, he was described-as he is in the book's pages-as a Green Beret working as an adviser to the Northern Alliance. At times he was so bold as to offer policy advice to Pentagon brass. "We in Special Forces have been lobbying for a lighter, faster Army," he lamented to an interviewer for Bend, Oregon's Classic Rock 98.3. "But General [Tommy] Franks isn't listening."
Moore's book-the first allegedly insider account of the Afghan war-rocketed up the best-seller lists. But early reviews were harsh, and some called the book's reliability into question. Moore was troubled by the claims and asked some Special Forces officers to review it for corrections in later editions. He forwarded the proposed fixes to his editor, Bob Loomis, but the publishing house did not alter the text. Random House will not comment on why the book is not being revised, but spokeswoman Carol Schneider denies that the publisher insisted that Idema take center stage in the narrative. "It was not our intention to make [Idema] the main character," Schneider says. "We didn't even know who he was until Robin Moore introduced him to us."
When Idema got wind of Moore's efforts to change the text, he retaliated in what was becoming a reflexive fashion: He issued a press release and filed suit. The release declared that a shadowy group of Special Forces soldiers, jealous of the attention lavished on Idema, "allegedly threatened and coerced 77-year-old Robin Moore, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, into submitting the changes to the already copyrighted bestseller." Idema also sued the aid groups Knightsbridge and Partners International, claiming that they had also pressured Moore into changing The Hunt for Bin Laden. Idema initially alleged that the two aid groups had injured his reputation by causing Fox News to drop him as a regular commentator-but he was also suing Fox, on much the same grounds. Most of the suits were thrown out of court.
Moore and Thompson say they soon learned that they were victims of financial chicanery as well as what appeared to be an enormous media scam. The Hunt for Bin Laden contained an appendix encouraging readers to donate funds to assist Special Forces and their families and Afghan civilians. Moore says that Idema included an entry for the training camp he had founded in upstate New York, the US Counter-Terrorist Group. In the appendix, the group's stated mission was "to help the Northern Alliance and to fight al-Qaida."
Flush from the book's success, Thompson and Idema (who had since relocated to Fayetteville) formed a promotional company, The Hunt for Bin Laden, LLC. As he worked in closer business quarters with Idema, Thompson says, he saw the man's behavior grow increasingly erratic. In a deposition, Thompson said that Idema destroyed the interior of his own house with a samurai sword, that he choked his girlfriend in a fight, and that he forged a letter on Fox News stationery for use as evidence in his lawsuit against the network. A subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's office also arrived, followed by a letter from North Carolina's postal inspector, charging Idema with mail fraud for using a post-office box registered to the company to solicit funds for the US Counter-Terrorist Group. Thompson says that after he noticed $18,000 from the company had gone missing, he drove down to Fayetteville to close the company bank account; he says that Idema followed him there and threatened to kill both him and his girlfriend.
Moore, meanwhile, learned that Idema had ordered hundreds of copies of The Hunt for Bin Laden from Moore's account with Random House and never paid for them. "He got [the books] from my account and sold them at full price," Moore says.
But, as ever, Idema met mounting adversity by going on the offensive. In March 2004, when Moore, Thompson, and Moore's girlfriend were having lunch at Manhattan's Metropolitan Club, a bike messenger showed up to serve Thompson and Moore's girlfriend with papers for yet another Idema-filed lawsuit, seeking $4 million in damages.
A month later, Idema was back in Afghanistan. He set up shop in a rented house in Kabul, telling the landlord he intended to start a rug-exporting business. Instead, he founded a paramilitary outfit called Task Force Saber 7, complete with its own fatigues and military insignia. Once more he had a former soldier, Brent Bennett, and a TV cameraman, Eddie Caraballo, in tow. They hired four Afghans, and began rounding up Afghan civilians to interrogate about ties to Al Qaeda. On at least three occasions, nato forces assisted Idema in his raids. On at least one occasion, troops took into custody a suspect Task Force Saber 7 had apprehended.
Idema's new Afghan campaign was all the more brazen, since Knightsbridge and Partners International had greatly stepped up their efforts to alert American authorities-from the embassies to the CIA to the State Department-that Idema was anything but the crusading soldier he pretended to be.
But Idema came to serious notice only when he committed the same oversight that the guards at Abu Ghraib did. On April 30, he e-mailed several Stateside friends with news of Task Force Saber 7's efforts. The e-mail included jpeg photos of Idema and company in interrogation mode, some of which were extremely graphic. One recipient was very disturbed by the images and forwarded the e-mail to American authorities. This time, there was a response: By mid-May, wanted posters were plastered across Kabul bearing Idema's name and image and charging him with interference in sanctioned military operations. Finally, Afghan police forces surrounded Idema's house on July 5, when, they claim, they discovered the infamous chamber of civilian abuse within.
At his trial in Kabul, Idema repeatedly denied that he had tortured anyone and alleged that he had been operating with the American military's full knowledge and consent. Court officials and the press dismissed these claims. But at least some of the evidence Idema's defense team presented hinted that there might be some truth to what Idema said. One videotape purports to show Idema talking with officials from General William Boykin's office about an impending assault on a terrorist cell.
The tape could, of course, have been faked-Idema's other exploits certainly cannot rule out such an explanation. But the presiding judge at his trial in Afghanistan, Abdul Baset Bakhtyiari, gave it only a cursory hearing before pronouncing Idema guilty. This was the pattern with most defense evidence throughout Idema's trial-a practice that drew no protest from the U.S. government, which normally monitors trials of American citizens abroad.
John Tiffany, the New Jersey defense attorney representing Idema, has filed an appeal. "It's unconscionable. The government announces $25 million rewards for terror suspects, then acts surprised when people run over to Afghanistan to hunt them. People like Keith Idema are indispensable to this war."
This may be truer than any official of the U.S. government or military cares to admit-Afghanistan is rife with military subcontractors of no particular, or fixed, affiliation. Idema's troubles may stem largely from mistaking the warrior-for-hire model of combat for the real thing.
Then again, wars like this one are also indispensable to people like Keith Idema. Long before he arrived on the scene in Afghanistan, Idema was in destructive thrall to notions of solitary, Rambo-style heroism. It seems clear as well that as Idema plied his peculiar brand of combat make-believe before more and more media outlets, the stakes became incalculably higher. Even when he began to realize his cross-media strategy of self-promotion was unraveling as The Hunt for Bin Laden came in for serious critical scrutiny, Idema did not run for cover, as more sensible con men might. Instead, he replenished his morale with another tour of far more dubious duty on the Afghan fronts. There's a certain tragic symmetry in Idema's goading himself into ever greater and more reckless acts of self-dramatizing valor; in that sense, Idema was very much his own worst enemy.
But then, when one reviews the performance of Idema's many enablers in the press and the publishing world, the affair shrinks into a signature brand of media-driven American farce. Here, too, Idema's attorney Tiffany supplies a fitting (if unwitting) comment as he insists the military had to know of Idema's conduct: "My client was all over the media. He was an expert on news programs. He was on the cover of a best-selling book." In Keith Idema's war, that may indeed be the ultimate grounds for exoneration.
-------- propaganda wars
Security Council members deny meeting Kerry
October 25, 2004
By Joel Mowbray
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041025-020600-3030r.htm
U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.
An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred.
At the second presidential debate earlier this month, Mr. Kerry said he was more attuned to international concerns on Iraq than President Bush, citing his meeting with the entire Security Council.
"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator.
Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."
But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.
The former ambassadors who said on the record they had never met Mr. Kerry included the representatives of Mexico, Colombia and Bulgaria. The ambassador of a fourth country gave a similar account on the condition that his country not be identified.
Ambassador Andres Franco, the permanent deputy representative from Colombia during its Security Council membership from 2001 to 2002, said, "I never heard of anything."
Although Mr. Franco was quick to note that Mr. Kerry could have met some members of the panel, he also said that "everything can be heard in the corridors."
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico's then-ambassador to the United Nations, said: "There was no meeting with John Kerry before Resolution 1441, or at least not in my memory."
All had vivid recollections of the time frame when Mr. Kerry traveled to New York, as it was shortly before the Nov. 7, 2002, enactment of Resolution 1441, which said Iraq was in "material breach" of earlier disarmament resolutions and warned Baghdad of "serious consequences as a result of its continued violations."
Stefan Tafrov, Bulgaria's ambassador at the time, said he remembers the period well because it "was a very contentious time."
After conversations with ambassadors from five members of the Security Council in 2002 and calls to all the missions of the countries then on the panel, The Times was only able to confirm directly that Mr. Kerry had met with representatives of France, Singapore and Cameroon.
In addition, second-hand accounts have Mr. Kerry meeting with representatives of Britain.
When reached for comment last week, an official with the Kerry campaign stood by the candidate's previous claims that he had met with the entire Security Council.
But after being told late yesterday of the results of The Times investigation, the Kerry campaign issued a statement that read in part, "It was a closed meeting and a private discussion."
A Kerry aide refused to identify who participated in the meeting.
The statement did not repeat Mr. Kerry's claims of a lengthy meeting with the entire 15-member Security Council, instead saying the candidate "met with a group of representatives of countries sitting on the Security Council."
Asked whether the international body had any records of Mr. Kerry sitting down with the whole council, a U.N. spokesman said that "our office does not have any record of this meeting."
A U.S. official with intimate knowledge of the Security Council's actions in fall of 2002 said that he was not aware of any meeting Mr. Kerry had with members of the panel.
An official at the U.S. mission to the United Nations remarked: "We were as surprised as anyone when Kerry started talking about a meeting with the Security Council."
Jean-David Levitte, then France's chief U.N. representative and now his country's ambassador to the United States, said through a spokeswoman that Mr. Kerry did not have a single group meeting as the senator has described, but rather several one-on-one or small-group encounters.
He added that Mr. Kerry did not meet with every member of the Security Council, only "some" of them. Mr. Levitte could only name himself and Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of Britain as the Security Council members with whom Mr. Kerry had met.
One diplomat who met with Mr. Kerry in 2002 said on the condition of anonymity that the candidate talked to "a few" ambassadors on the Security Council.
The revelation that Mr. Kerry never met with the entire U.N. Security Council could be problematic for the Massachusetts senator, as it clashes with one of his central foreign-policy campaign themes - honesty.
At a New Mexico rally last month, Mr. Kerry said Mr. Bush will "do anything he can to cover up the truth." At what campaign aides billed as a major foreign-policy address, Mr. Kerry said at New York University last month that "the first and most fundamental mistake was the president's failure to tell the truth to the American people."
In recent months, Mr. Kerry has faced numerous charges of dishonesty from Vietnam veterans over his war record, and his campaign has backtracked before from previous statements about Mr. Kerry's foreign diplomacy.
For example, in March, Mr. Kerry told reporters in Florida that he'd met with foreign leaders who privately endorsed him.
"I've met with foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly," he said. "But, boy, they look at you and say: 'You've got to win this. You've got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.' "
But the senator refused to document his claim and a review by The Times showed that Mr. Kerry had made no official foreign trips since the start of 2002, according to Senate records and his own published schedules. An extensive review of Mr. Kerry's domestic travel schedule revealed only one opportunity for him to have met foreign leaders here.
After a week of bad press, Kerry foreign-policy adviser Rand Beers said the candidate "does not seek, and will not accept, any such endorsements."
The Democrat has also made his own veracity a centerpiece of his campaign, calling truthfulness "the fundamental test of leadership."
Mr. Kerry closed the final debate by recounting what his mother told him from her hospital bed, "Remember: integrity, integrity, integrity."
In an interview published in the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Mr. Kerry was asked what he would want people to remember about his presidency. He responded, "That it always told the truth to the American people."
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Kerry says social justice would guide presidency
October 25, 2004
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041025-011431-5595r.htm
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry said a broad vision of social justice, including care for the poor and those without health insurance, is at the root of his religion and would guide his presidency.
The Massachusetts senator sought to win over remaining undecided voters with a speech that advisers said would explore "his sense of faith" and how it would affect his decision-making process as president.
He cited Matthew 25:40 - "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do unto me" - and said Jesus' admonition should determine the moral obligation everyone in society has to each other.
"The ethical test of a good society is how it treats its most vulnerable members," he said, arguing that the government has an obligation to protect the environment, fight AIDS, reduce poverty and defeat terrorism.
He did not give a moral defense of his pro-choice stance on abortion and his support for embryonic stem-cell research, but he acknowledged the contentious debate within the Catholic Church about his public role in these matters.
"I love my church, I respect the bishops, but I respectfully disagree," Mr. Kerry said, to one of the wildest ovations of the speech.
"My task, as I see it ... is not to write every doctrine into law. That is not possible or right in a pluralistic society," he said. "But my faith does give me values to live by and apply to the decisions I make."
Afterward, audience member Jeff Schuster said the applause reflected the audience's belief that Republicans don't have a lock on Christianity.
"The church isn't right on every decision, and a lot of people respectfully disagree," said Mr. Schuster, 43.
President Bush has been clear on the role of his Protestant Christian faith in guiding him, saying in the third presidential debate that "prayer and religion sustain me." Mr. Kerry has been more reluctant to talk about his religious practice, yesterday talking about prayer as something he learned as a child and practiced as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam.
If elected, Mr. Kerry would be only the second Catholic president in the history of this nation of 60 million to 65 million Catholics. The only Catholic president of the United States to date was John F. Kennedy.
Despite the candidate's solemn approach to his speech yesterday, the audience of about 2,000 people treated it as more of a rally, at one point interrupting Mr. Kerry's call for prayers for whoever wins the election with chants of "No more Bush."
It was partly a reiteration of his Democratic National Convention speech about how he learned his values while fighting in Vietnam, and partly the themes from his standard campaign speech, with Biblical verses added.
At less than 30 minutes, the speech was far shorter than most of his major speeches or even his standard remarks at rallies, and several Republicans said it didn't live up to its billing.
"Senator Kerry managed to give 'a major speech on faith and values' today without mentioning either one in any detail," said Republicans Reps. Eric Cantor of Virginia, Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida and Jim Ryun of Kansas.
"John Kerry himself has quoted Scripture and pointed out that 'faith without works is dead.' The same can be said about empty political speeches about faith and values that ignore a 20-year record of voting against both in the United States Senate," said the three congressmen, who are Jewish (Mr. Cantor), Catholic (Mr. Diaz-Balart) and Protestant (Mr. Ryun).
And Massachusetts state Rep. Brian Golden, a Democrat and a Catholic, said in a statement that Mr. Kerry's record of opposing a ban on partial-birth abortion matters most.
During yesterday's speech, Mr. Kerry was interrupted by a man who shouted, "End the war, end the war, John."
"It's a very legitimate concern, and it's a part of faith," Mr. Kerry responded. "What that cry about the war means to me - what all the complaints we hear from people mean to me - is that you have to hold and have a vision of society that is concerned about the common good, where individual rights and freedoms are connected to our responsibility to others."
Campaign adviser Mike McCurry said Mr. Kerry's decision to talk about his religion so late in the campaign was aimed at voters just tuning in now.
"The question that many of those who are still undecided are asking is, 'Can I put my faith in John Kerry the person?' and I think helping make that decision by giving them a sense of who he is personally is very important at this stage of the campaign," Mr. McCurry said.
Before the speech, Mr. Kerry attended Mount Hermon African Methodist Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where Pastor John F. White said God's work will be done through voters' selecting Mr. Kerry, as it was through Moses' leading the Israelites out of Egypt.
"There's one who can divide the Red Sea for us and we can cross over to dry ground," Mr. White said.
Mr. Kerry pointed to a list of 10 "Christian principles in an election year" created by the National Council of Churches USA (NCC), printed on the back of Mount Hermon's worship program, which the council said Christian voters are to keep in mind.
The first principle was that "war is contrary to the will of God," and it went on to call on politicians to "reject policies that abandon large segments of our inner city and rural populations to hopelessness."
The NCC list did not mention abortion or marriage, and a statement on the group's Web site said that was deliberate because there wasn't agreement on those issues.
Mr. Kerry attended Mass on Saturday at St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Anthony, N.M., taking Holy Communion, though he may have violated the fasting period that Catholic teaching requires before receiving it.
Reporters traveling with Mr. Kerry said he appeared to be munching chips and salsa and drinking iced tea throughout his stop at the Red Rooster Cafe, which he left five minutes before the beginning of the 6 p.m. Mass. He took Communion 50 minutes later, at about 6:45 p.m.
Catholic canon law says that those who are to receive Communion must "abstain from any food or drink, with the exception only of water and medicine, for at least the period of one hour before Holy Communion." This rule actually relaxed the requirements from when Mr. Kerry was an altar boy. Overnight fasting was required then.
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Breyer Cites Doubt About Impartiality of Election Vote
Associated Press
Monday, October 25, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59552-2004Oct24.html
STANFORD, Calif. -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer said he is not sure he was being truly impartial when the high court was asked to settle the disputed 2000 presidential vote in Florida.
Breyer -- named to the court 10 years ago by President Bill Clinton -- cast one of the dissenting votes in the 5 to 4 decision that canceled a controversial recount in Florida, sending Republican George W. Bush to the White House instead of Democrat Al Gore.
Breyer dissented in 2000 ruling.
"I had to ask myself: Would I vote the same way if the names were reversed?" Breyer said Saturday at Stanford University Law School. "I said 'yes.' But I'll never know for sure -- because people are great self-kidders -- if I reached the truthful answer."
Breyer, a 1959 Stanford graduate, made the comments at a seminar on judicial activism with California Chief Justice Ronald M. George and federal Court of Appeals Judge Pamela Rymer.
The three said most jurists depend on the rule of law and legal precedent to make decisions -- guidelines they acknowledged are subject to interpretation.
"Precedent and rule of law. They don't answer everything but they do give us a clue," Breyer said. "Judges whom I've met by and large try to find the answer. They come to different conclusions, but they try."
Breyer also said many jurists, himself included, take into account contemporary matters raised by the public, citing briefs from organizations defending affirmative action.
"Do I read the newspapers and try to see which way the political wind is blowing?" he said. "No. But we do decide through briefs that are submitted. . . . They are people trying to tell us of the impact of our decisions in their bit of the world."
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THE BELIEVER
Paul Wolfowitz defends his war.
newyorker
2004-10-25
by PETER J. BOYER
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?041101fa_fact
On the night of October 5th, a group of Polish students, professors, military officers, and state officials crowded into a small auditorium at Warsaw University to hear Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, give a talk on the subject of the war in Iraq. It was an unusually warm evening for October, and every seat was filled; the room seemed nearly airless. Wolfowitz began by joking that his father, a noted mathematician, would have been proud to see him in this academic setting, even as he was saddened that the younger Wolfowitz had pursued the political, rather than the "real," sciences. After a few minutes, Wolfowitz's voice, which normally has a soft tremble, grew even more faint, and his aspect became wan. For an instant, he seemed actually to wobble.
It had been a tiring day, preceded by an overnight flight from Washington. This was to have been a routine official trip for Wolfowitz-a visit with soldiers in Germany and some bucking up of Iraq-war allies in Warsaw and London. The bucking up, however, was made a bit more complicated by developments within the Administration. The previous afternoon, as Wolfowitz was preparing to board his plane at Andrews Air Force Base, an aide had handed him a report containing some vexing news. Wolfowitz's boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, had just delivered a speech in New York and, in a question-and-answer exchange afterward, had declared that he had not seen any "strong, hard evidence" linking Al Qaeda with Saddam Hussein's regime. Rumsfeld's unexpected remark-undercutting one of the Administration's principal arguments for going to war-had already prompted press inquiries at the Pentagon, suggesting a bad news cycle ahead. Meanwhile, the Washington Post was preparing to report that L. Paul Bremer, the former administrator of the American-led occupation of Iraq, had faulted the U.S. postwar plan for lacking sufficient troops to provide security-affirming a principal contention of the Administration's critics. In addition, the government's Iraq Survey Group, headed by Charles Duelfer, was about to release a final report on the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; already the report's substance was being summed up in headlines as "report discounts iraqi arms threat." And the Times had learned of a new C.I.A. assessment casting doubt on links between the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Saddam's regime-undermining yet another of the Administration's rationales for the war.
Wolfowitz has been a major architect of President Bush's Iraq policy and, within the Administration, its most passionate and compelling advocate. His long career as a diplomat, strategist, and policymaker will be measured by this policy, and, more immediately, the President he serves may not be returned to office because of it. The Administration had been divided over Iraq from the start, and new fissures seemed to be appearing. The Poles sitting in the Warsaw audience, "new" Europeans who had cast their lot with America, might understandably have been concerned. The government in Poland, where public opinion has shifted against the war, faces elections next year, and will probably reduce its forces in Iraq in the coming months.
After his faltering start, Wolfowitz, nearing the midpoint of his speech, began to find his voice. He recounted the events of Poland's darkest days, and the civilized world's acquiescence to Hitler's ambitions which preceded them. When Hitler began to rearm Germany, Wolfowitz said, "the world's hollow warnings formed weak defenses." When Hitler annexed Austria, "the world sat by." When German troops marched into Czechoslovakia before the war, "the world sat still once again." When Britain and France warned Hitler to stay out of Poland, the Führer had little reason to pay heed.
"Poles understand perhaps better than anyone the consequences of making toothless warnings to brutal tyrants and terrorist regimes," Wolfowitz said. "And, yes, I do include Saddam Hussein." He then laid out the case against Saddam, reciting once again the dictator's numberless crimes against his own people. He spoke of severed hands and videotaped torture sessions. He told of the time, on a trip to Iraq, he'd been shown a "torture tree," the bark of which had been worn away by ropes used to bind Saddam's victims, both men and women. He said that field commanders recently told him that workers had come across a new mass grave, and had stopped excavation when they encountered the remains of several dozen women and children, "some still with little dresses and toys."
Wolfowitz observed that some people-meaning the "realists" in the foreignpolicy community, including Secretary of State Colin Powell-believed that the Cold War balance of power had brought a measure of stability to the Persian Gulf. But, Wolfowitz continued, "Poland had a phrase that correctly characterized that as 'the stability of the graveyard.' The so-called stability that Saddam Hussein provided was something even worse."
Finally, Wolfowitz thanked the Poles for joining in a war that much of Europe had repudiated, and continues to oppose. His message was clear: history, especially Europe's in the last century, has proved that it is smarter to side with the U.S. than against it. "We will not forget Poland's commitment," he promised. "Just as you have stood with us, we will stand with you."
Wolfowitz, who is sixty, has served in the Administrations of six Presidents, yet he is still regarded by many in Washington with a considerable measure of puzzlement. This is due partly to the fact that, although his intelligence is conceded by all, and his quiet bearing and manner suggest the academic that he used to be-at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies-he has consistently argued positions that place him squarely in the category of war hawk. He began his life in public policy by marshalling arguments, in 1969, on behalf of a U.S. anti-ballistic-missile defense system. Like his mentor at the University of Chicago, the late political strategist Albert Wohlstetter, Wolfowitz was skeptical of a U.S.-Soviet convergence, embraced a national missile-defense system, and argued for the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.
But most puzzling to some, perhaps, is the communion that Wolfowitz seems to have with George W. Bush. How can someone so smart, so knowing, speak-and even apparently think-so much like George Bush? Except for their manner of delivery-Wolfowitz speaks in coherent paragraphs and Bush employs an idiom that is particular to himself-the language used by the two men when discussing Iraq is almost indistinguishable. It is the stark tone of evangelical conviction: evil versus good, the "worship of death" and "philosophy of despair" versus our "love of life and democracy." Alongside Bush himself, Wolfowitz is, even now, among the last of the true believers.
Earlier on the day of his speech, Wolfowitz had toured the old city of Warsaw. In ceremonies attended by a Polish military honor guard, he laid wreaths at a memorial commemorating the Warsaw uprising and the monument to the Warsaw ghetto heroes. He laid a wreath, too, at the Umschlagplatz Memorial-the point of departure for some three hundred thousand Warsaw Jews who were transported to the Nazi death camp at Treblinka. Wolfowitz had pillaged the Pentagon library for a copy of "Courier from Warsaw," the memoir of Jan Nowak, a Catholic who was among the first Warsaw-uprising witnesses to reach the West and testify to the Nazi horrors. In Warsaw, Wolfowitz asked to meet with Nowak, who is ninety. They spoke about the scale of the Holocaust, and about "how terrible it was for the Poles during the sixty-three days of the uprising. Three thousand Poles were killed every day-a World Trade Center every day."
Wolfowitz told me that he had never before visited the memorials, and that, other than a quick stopover, this was his first trip to Poland, even though his father, Jacob Wolfowitz, had been born in Warsaw. He managed to emigrate during Poland's brief interwar independence, unlike many other family members, who did not survive the Holocaust. It is probable that some of Wolfowitz's relatives made their way through the Umschlagplatz, although not much is known. Wolfowitz said that he had learned little about Warsaw life, or the fate of his lost relatives, from his father. "He hated to talk about his childhood," Wolfowitz said. As a boy, Wolfowitz devoured books ("probably too many") about the Holocaust and Hiroshima-what he calls "the polar horrors."
After his meeting with Jan Nowak, Wolfowitz's conversation in the following days kept returning to what he had heard. "He told about how the ghetto was walled off from the rest of the city, but there was one streetcar that had to cross it," Wolfowitz said. "And every day he would see bodies laid out, covered with newspaper, because that was all they had to cover them with, and people who'd starved to death and died of typhoid." Nowak told Wolfowitz that in secret wartime meetings with Britain's top officials, including Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, he had reported the plight of the Warsaw Jews; yet, when he later examined the minutes from these meetings in the British archives, he found no mention of the Jews. "Nowak said it was wartime inconvenience." Wolfowitz paused, then added, "There are some parallels to Iraq. One is that people don't believe these things. First, they don't know it, because the world doesn't talk about them. It may be for different reasons, although some of it is 'wartime inconvenience.'"
Wolfowitz said that he was astonished by the argument of some war critics that, with no imminent threat from Iraq, the overturning of Saddam was unwarranted-an argument that he believes implicitly accepts Saddam's brutality. A corollary phenomenon is the relative lack of opprobrium directed by the international community and the press toward the insurgents in Iraq, whom the Administration brands as terrorists. "It's amazing," he said. "If you said the insurgents were terrible, then you couldn't go on and on about all the mistakes that Bush has made."
Perhaps, but the other side of that coin is the Administration's shift in rhetorical emphasis after Baghdad was taken. Given the lack of weapons of mass destruction or proven ties between Iraq and the terror attacks of September 11th, the liberation rationale acquired a primary importance that it had not had in the Administration's public argument for war.
In turn, the developing insurgency, which eclipsed the parades and the cheering throngs, prompted renewed focus on the Administration's geopolitical strategy-the transformation of the region-as a war rationale. This grand idea of liberalizing the Middle East one country at a time, beginning with Iraq, was associated particularly with Wolfowitz. The State Department was, and is, skeptical, and it is said that Rumsfeld harbored doubts as well.
Wolfowitz's critics accuse him of naïveté, of setting out a vision that fails to consider fully the complex and unpredictable regional dynamics of tribal loyalties, honor, revenge, and Arab pride in Iraq and in the region generally. They argue that the invasion and the subsequent insurgency have undermined American authority throughout the world and have led to more, not fewer, jihad-minded terrorists. Wolfowitz often responds to critics by drawing an analogy to Asia, where skeptics once argued that Confucian tradition was a barrier to the development of democracy. He has said, "This is the same Confucian tradition that more recently has been given a substantial share of the credit for the success of the Korean economy and many others in Asia."
En route to Poland, Wolfowitz made a brief stop in Munich, where he met with two men who had helped to shape his view of Islam. One was Anwar Ibrahim, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, who was in Germany for medical treatment. Ibrahim had been a nineteen-seventies-era student activist who entered politics and became, in the eyes of Wolfowitz and other Westerners, the embodiment of the moderate Muslim ideal-at once devoutly religious and tolerant, and eager to move his country into the modern world. He was widely expected to succeed his mentor, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, but in 1998 Mohamad had Ibrahim arrested, on charges of corruption and sodomy (a crime in Malaysia), and he was sentenced to a nine-year jail term. Three years later, just after the September 11th attacks, Ibrahim, still in a Malaysian jail, wrote an impassioned essay condemning the attacks as an abomination and lamenting the Muslim world's failure to address "the suffering inflicted on the Muslim masses in Iraq by its dictator as well as by sanctions." He was freed in September.
Wolfowitz also met with Abdurrahman Wahid, the former President of Indonesia. Toward the end of the second Reagan Administration, Wolfowitz, who was then Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, was offered the Ambassadorship to Indonesia. Wolfowitz had spent more than a dozen years in the policy grind of Washington, and he and his wife, Clare, were eager to get away. Clare Wolfowitz had a particular interest in Indonesia-she'd been an exchange student there in high school, spoke the language, and had made Indonesia her academic specialty; she holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology. (The couple are now separated.) People who have spent much time with Wolfowitz eventually notice that Indonesia is the one subject guaranteed to brighten his mood. "I really didn't expect to fall in love with this place, but I did," he told me earlier this year. "I mean, I don't think I made the mistake of forgetting which country I represented, or overlooking their flaws, but there was so much that was just enormously appealing to me."
Wolfowitz's appointment to Indonesia was not an immediately obvious match. He was a Jew representing America in the largest Muslim republic in the world, an advocate of democracy in Suharto's dictatorship. But Wolfowitz's tenure as Ambassador was a notable success, largely owing to the fact that, in essence, he went native. With tutoring help from his driver, he learned the language, and hurled himself into the culture. He attended academic seminars, climbed volcanoes, and toured the neighborhoods of Jakarta.
At the time, Wahid was the leader of Indonesia's largest Muslim group, which eventually morphed into a political party and brought Wahid to the Presidency, the nation's first in a free election. (Not long after, however, he was impeached by the Indonesian parliament.) Wolfowitz found Wahid to be urbane, witty (his translation of a book of Soviet black humor became a best-seller in the Suharto era), and broadminded. Islam arrived late in Indonesia, and is less deeply rooted there than it is in many Arab states. The constitution protects other religious faiths, and Wahid, who is deeply devout, took that tolerance a step further, advocating total separation of mosque and state. "He's a remarkable human being," Wolfowitz said. "I mean, there's the leader of the largest Muslim organization, and he's an apostle of tolerance. How can you not admire him?"
Wolfowitz and Wahid became lasting friends, and, inevitably, one of their shared interests was the subject of Iraq. Wolfowitz told me that Wahid had studied in Baghdad, and that he was an early witness to the Baath Party's atrocities. Wahid had described how Saddam's regime "left the bodies hanging so long, the necks stretched," Wolfowitz said. "It was in the main square in Baghdad, to send a message, to say, 'This is who you're dealing with from now on.' And he said his teacher was taken away, the body was brought back in a sealed coffin, and they were told not to open it. They went ahead and opened it, and they found he'd been horribly tortured."
At the reunion in Munich, Wahid, who is nearly blind and has been enfeebled by strokes, made his way slowly down a hotel corridor and embraced his old friend. Wahid is an acquaintance of the Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, upon whom the future direction of Iraq may largely depend. Sistani, who does not openly engage with Americans, is believed to oppose the creation of an Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq, and his influence has been instrumental in reining in the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Wahid indicated that he might visit Iraq soon, and, as a Sunni who knows Sistani, he'd like to help improve relations between Sunnis and Shiites.
Another influence on Wolfowitz's thinking is an Arab feminist named Shaha Ali Riza, with whom he has become close. Riza, who was born in Tunisia and reared in Saudi Arabia, studied international relations at Oxford and subsequently became a determined advocate of democracy and women's rights in the Islamic world. She is now a senior official at the World Bank, where she works on Middle Eastern and North African affairs.
Wolfowitz says that his hopes for a democratic Iraq now are modest. He claims that he never expected a Jefferso-nian democracy, as some of his critics have derisively asserted. What he wishes to see is something stable, and more liberal than what came before. "It is something of a test," he told me one day this summer, regarding the Iraqis. "We can't be sure they'll pass. And they're not going to pass with an A-plus. I mean, if they do Romanian democracy and the country doesn't break up that'll be pretty good."
The morning after his speech at Warsaw University, Wolfowitz flew to London, for meetings at 10 Downing Street and at the Ministry of Defence. That evening, he hosted a gathering of British writers at Annabel's, in Mayfair, and their questions quickly turned to the subject of Rumsfeld's remark earlier in the week that he'd seen no hard evidence of an Al Qaeda-Iraqi connection. This had prompted hurried defensive strategizing at the Pentagon, and Rumsfeld put out a clarification of his statement. Still, the issue lingered. The C.I.A.'s latest assessment, based on information gathered since the end of major combat, cast further doubt on the connection, and was now in circulation.
Wolfowitz often prefaces his response to questions about this issue, as he did at Annabel's and at the Aspen Institute earlier this year, by posing a question of his own. It's a sort of parlor game that he plays. He asks, in a professorial whisper, "How many people here have heard of Abdul Rahman Yassin, if you'd raise your hand?" In a room of two dozen people, no more than two or three will raise their hands.
Wolfowitz notes the meagre tally, allows himself a slight smile, and then explains that Abdul Rahman Yassin was one of the men indicted for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six people and injured a thousand others. He remains a fugitive, the only one of the indicted perpetrators of that attack still at large.
Then Wolfowitz turns to the September 11th attacks. They were planned, he reminds his audience, by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef, was a nephew and close associate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. "These are not separate events. They were the same target. They were the same people." And Abdul Rahman Yassin, the fugitive from the first event? He fled to Iraq. "It would seem significant that one major figure in that event is still at large," Wolfowitz says. "It would seem significant that he was harbored in Iraq by Iraqi intelligence for ten years."
Many intelligence analysts believe that the presence of Yassin in Iraq was not particularly meaningful. Not long after his arrival there, Yassin, who grew up in Baghdad, was detained by the Saddam regime, and in 2002 he was even interviewed by "60 Minutes" in an Iraqi holding cell; if he was being "harbored," the argument goes, it was only as a detainee that Saddam hoped to use as a bargaining chip with the United States. Furthermore, during the run-up to the war the Administration didn't make Yassin a major issue.
Neither Wolfowitz nor the other intelligence analysts can say unequivocally what Yassin was doing in Iraq. Wolfowitz's purpose in raising the issue is to illustrate the uncertain nature of intelligence analysis. He believes that there is important unexamined evidence regarding Yassin, yet, he says, when he broaches the matter with members of Congress his arguments are often met with resistance. "Every time you try to raise it, people say, 'But there's no proof Saddam was involved in 9/11.'"
The issue illustrates Wolfowitz's own deep and abiding suspicions about the inviolability of the intelligence community's culture and processes, a skepticism that dates back to his earliest days in government service. In 1973, Wolfowitz was a young new hire at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, his first foray into the national-security side of government. It was the era of the salt talks with the Soviets, and one of the first reports that Wolfowitz saw was the "big prize" itself-the National Intelligence Estimate of Soviet capabilities. Wolfowitz read the estimate, but he was struck, he says, more by a cover letter that accompanied it. The letter said that it was a credit to the report that, on such an important subject, it contained hardly any footnotes. In that world, footnotes were the means by which differing opinions were indicated. Wolfowitz was amazed, and appalled, that the C.I.A. boasted about not presenting dissenting views.
Some years ago, after Wolfowitz had left Washington for Jakarta, he consented to an interview with the C.I.A., which was reassessing its analysis processes. "The idea that somehow you are saving work for the policymaker by eliminating serious debate is wrong," Wolfowitz told his interviewer. "Why not aim, instead, at a document that actually says there are two strongly argued positions on the issue? Here are the facts and evidence supporting one position, and here are the facts and evidence supporting the other, even though that might leave the poor policymakers to make a judgment as to which one they think is correct."
Wolfowitz wanted to reëxamine national-security intelligence, and to avoid what he considered the groupthink inclinations of the intelligence professionals ("the priesthood," he calls them). Eventually, he came to be known for his ability to recognize threatening patterns and capabilities that others had been unable to see. When the common wisdom held that the Soviets would slow the development and deployment of their intermediate-range missiles, Wolfowitz predicted, correctly, that the Soviets meant to modernize and enhance them. When the conventional view held that Saddam Hussein would not invade another Arab nation, Wolfowitz said that we shouldn't rule out the possibility that he might cross the border into Kuwait-and a decade later Saddam did just that.
In 2001, the Defense Department set up a small in-house operation called the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, whose purpose, according to its creators, was not, as its critics have charged, to cherry-pick raw intelligence in order to justify the invasion of Iraq but to connect the dots between terrorist groups and countries that harbored them. Wolfowitz had his aides run a software program called Analyst Notebook, which, like a wiring diagram, could show links between disparate pieces of information. As a result, all manner of putative links were made, in much the same way that Wolfowitz connects the dots in his little parlor game. This is one way in which the connection between terrorism and Iraq became a fixed idea.
After the session at Annabel's, Wolfowitz flew back to Germany. The next morning, he began the day by visiting Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, near Ramstein Air Base, which serves as the American military's hub hospital for an area stretching from Europe to Southwest Asia. As Wolfowitz walked down the facility's long corridors, he was accompanied by its commander, Colonel Rhonda Cornum. She is a physician, and a pilot-in the Gulf War, she was captured and briefly held by the Iraqis-and she had an agenda. The hospital was running at a high capacity, with some sections-orthopedics, the psych ward-completely full. Since the start of the global war on terror, nineteen thousand people had been admitted, many of them within twelve hours of being wounded in Iraq. But because the Administration continues to categorize the war as a "contingency" operation, she said, she was not able to add permanent staff. This meant having temporary medical staff who were rotated in and out of the facility from other military hospitals around the world, and it added stress to an inherently stressful operation. Wolfowitz accepted her neatly prepared PowerPoint report, and handed it to an aide.
Then he stepped into the room of a young sergeant named Jeron Johnson, from Bowman, South Carolina. Johnson was connected to several I.V.s and monitors, but he was awake, and alert. Wolfowitz walked to his bedside, leaned in, and asked, "What happened?" In a quiet, raspy voice, Johnson, who had just reënlisted before being wounded, told him that he had been on a mission with his unit in Baghdad, when his convoy got hit. "It was a V.B.I.E.D.," Johnson explained. An I.E.D., or improvised explosive device, is the military's term for a roadside bomb, a favored weapon of the insurgents. Car bombs are called vehicle-borne I.E.D.s.
"I saw this big burst," Johnson calmly recounted. "I said, O.K., I got hit. . . . I called the guys over-I said, 'My leg's broke.'" Johnson suffered two broken legs, and several lesser injuries.
Another soldier entered the room and approached Johnson's bedside. "I wanted to stop by," he said. The soldier, slight and wiry, was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. A long scar zigzagged down the right side of his neck, and much of his left arm was missing, replaced by a prosthesis that ended in two curved steel hooks. He was Adam Replogle, a twenty-four-year-old sergeant from Denver. He addressed Johnson directly: "I got hit with an R.P.G. in the chest. I stopped by here on the way through. I wasn't conscious like you, but I know what you're going through." Replogle had been a gunner on an Abrams tank, and his unit came under attack by insurgents in Karbala in May. He was evacuated to a field hospital, then to Landstuhl, where he was stabilized before being sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington. Wolfowitz, who regularly visits the hospital, came to know him there. (When Wolfowitz is asked if he ever wonders about the war's costs, he answers, "Every time I visit Walter Reed.") The Army flew Replogle back to Germany for a reunion with his unit, which had recently returned from Iraq, and he wanted to stop by Landstuhl to offer encouragement.
Replogle said, "You hear about Karbala? That's where I got hit. Where were you hit?"
"Baghdad."
"Sadr City?"
"No. Five South."
"We ran into some smack back in Sadr City a while ago," Replogle said. "They got a lotta radicals out there. Al-Sadr keeps them around."
This aroused Sergeant Johnson. "It's amazing," he said. "You see these kids around you, 'Mister, mister, give me water! Give me food!' And you dig around, tryin' to give it to 'em, and you give it to 'em. And then, when you're done, they throw rocks at you. You think, Hey, you little bastard!"
"They don't know how to act, man," Replogle replied. "They got their freedom, they don't know how to act. You can't really blame 'em for it. It's frustrating over there. I'll tell you one thing, man. Just maintain. You can feel a couple of different ways about Iraq. You can feel bad. But when people ask you questions, man, you just tell 'em. They gotta know about the good things we did. We're not down there smackin' people around."
Johnson said that he'd sometimes had difficulty convincing his own soldiers of the utility of their mission. "There's this long street, we clean it up. Couple of weeks later, it's trashed up again. I get a lotta guys that go, 'What are we doing out here?' I say to 'em, 'We'll come back here, let 'em see our work.''Sarge, they'll tear it up again.''Well, that's our job. Get the trash outta the street, clear the street, make this place a little better.' But they don't understand."
Wolfowitz stood by Johnson's bed, listening. An aide handed him a copy of Time, the issue that featured the American soldier as Person of the Year. Wolfowitz signed it to a "true American hero," and then leaned over the hospital bed and looked Johnson in the eye. "I'll tell you, no matter what people think about the war, ninety-eight per cent of them love our soldiers," he said. "Period. It's really the truth. So don't confuse the fight about the policy for the people. I'm sure we're going to win, and one day people will feel about you guys the way we feel about the guys who won World War Two. The world didn't look so great in 1945-46. It took a little while to get it done. You're getting it done.''
And so it went, room by room, unit by unit. In one darkened room, a soldier with the build of an offensive lineman lay unconscious, his bare feet extending from the sheet covering his gurney. His wife stood at his side. When Wolfowitz entered the room, she smiled and reported the latest update from the doctors. Then she began to talk about her husband's long deployment, growing more emotional as she spoke. "Six months is one thing," she said, "but a year, which usually becomes thirteen or fourteen months, is just too much." As she began to cry, an aide closed the door, and Wolfowitz spent several minutes with her privately.
Later that day, Wolfowitz flew by helicopter to Wiesbaden, for a ceremony marking the return of the 1st Armored Division. It was a large and clamorous event, attended by, among others, the American Ambassador to Germany, Daniel Coats; the Army Chief of Staff, General Peter Schoomaker; and the V Corps commander, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. Such homecomings are always cause for celebration, but the return of the 1st Armored Division bore special significance. Old Ironsides, as the division calls itself, is perhaps the most put-upon unit in the war. It had rolled into Iraq just after the end of major combat operations, and was assigned the tough sectors of Baghdad, among them Sadr City. When the division's yearlong deployment ended, last spring, some of its units were packed and were waiting at the airfield for the flight back to Germany. Then the division's commander, Major General Martin E. Dempsey, broke the bad news: the sudden upsurge in fighting required more force, and the division's deployment had been extended. Everyone knew what that meant: some of the men who had made it through a year in Iraq now stood a chance of not returning home whole, or at all. Adam Replogle was one of those soldiers.
Wolfowitz made one other stop that day. It was in Würzburg, at the headquarters of the 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One). The division's commander, Major General John R. S. Batiste, had been Wolfowitz's military adviser at the Pentagon, and is currently deployed in Iraq. Wolfowitz had visited Batiste in January, before the division moved out, and the atmosphere had been pointedly gung ho. Batiste had adopted as the division's motto a quote from F.D.R., which he felt captured the Big Red One's attitude toward its coming mission in Iraq: "When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until it has struck before you crush him."
"The Secretary will love that quote," Wolfowitz had told Batiste.
Wolfowitz had seen Batiste again in June, this time in Iraq, at the division's forward post, near Tikrit. The mood was more subdued then, and Batiste had adopted a new motto, this one, as it happens, from Gerald Ford: "There is no way we can go forward except together, and no way anybody can win except by serving the people's urgent needs. We cannot stand still or slip backwards. We must go forward now together.'' The words reflected the then emerging exit strategy, which was to set up an Iraqi government and an Iraqi security force to fight the insurgency, allowing the Americans to pull back and, eventually, to withdraw.
Now, in Würzburg, the headquarters staff was reduced to a skeletal rear detachment. Still, at a luncheon given in Wolfowitz's honor, the large ballroom was packed, filled with the spouses and family members left behind. Following the custom of their tightly insular culture, the women betrayed no indication of anxiety over their men "down-range," as they refer to the battlefield of Iraq. They chatted gaily about the food, catered by a favorite local restaurant, and talked about their children. Wolfowitz showed them a video recorded by the First Lady, and they reacted with a standing ovation. Then he took questions. One woman asked whether anything could be done about the long deployments. The Pentagon is working on it, Wolfowitz assured her. Finally, someone asked, How will this war be won? What will victory look like?
Wolfowitz responded that in January Iraq will hold elections. The resulting transitional government will write a permanent constitution. That government will run Iraq for a year, until elections at the end of 2005 produce a permanent, fully independent government. By then, he said, American forces will have trained several Iraqi Army divisions and, equally important, fifty or more battalions of the Iraqi National Guard, the domestic stability force. Reaching down to the table and knocking wood, Wolfowitz mentioned recent progress in regard to the National Guard, noting the Iraqis' participation in the wresting of Samarra from the insurgents' control.
While the retaking of Samarra was indeed a welcome event, it may not be a wholly accurate measure of the progress being made by Iraqi forces. The key Iraqi unit in Samarra, the 36th Battalion, was the same one that in August prevailed in Najaf, and it was the only Iraqi unit that did not flee during the Falluja uprising last spring. The 36th Battalion, however, is exceptional. It is composed of fighting forces loyal to various political factions, mostly Kurdish, and it was American policy for much of the first year of the occupation to discourage the development of such units, for fear of losing control of them.
Wolfowitz spoke of the September visit to Washington by the interim Iraqi Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi. He quoted at length from Allawi's optimistic speech to a joint session of Congress, which Wolfowitz said had been characterized by some members of Congress as one of the best speeches ever delivered on the floor of the House.
Wolfowitz did not discuss a meeting between Allawi and President Bush during that visit, in which the Iraqi Prime Minister had been less optimistic. Allawi had spoken to the President about the conundrum facing him and the coalition: the insurgency required forceful action, but any forceful action by coalition troops would underline the negative impression of an occupation, thus fuelling the insurgency. Allawi asked the President to provide more training of Iraqi troops and more equipment.
The day after Wolfowitz left Washington on this trip, Allawi had sent, via the American Embassy, a letter to Bush. In it, he again spoke insistently about the situation in Iraq on the ground. The American training program, he said, was fine, but it was proceeding too slowly; the bulk of trained and equipped Iraqi forces would not be ready until well after the January elections, Allawi said, "which is simply too late." Allawi said that he and the coalition needed an expanded plan for Iraqi forces, "to be implemented now." He said that Iraq had to make a visible and effective show of force, and reminded Bush of what he had told him in Washington-that Iraq needed at least two trained and equipped Iraqi mechanized divisions. It was a huge request.
American commanders have been hesitant to provide Iraqis with tanks, arguing that the Iraqis are not yet ready for them. Wolfowitz, noting that American forces are glad to have the armored-tank protection for themselves, has said that he thinks the Iraqis will get at least a mechanized brigade fairly soon.
In his letter, Allawi asked Bush to convene a summit this month in Baghdad, with an American delegation headed by Wolfowitz. Such a high-profile meeting just weeks before the American election was unlikely, and the proposal may simply have been Allawi's way of prodding the Administration. In any case, he was visited in Baghdad the following week by Donald Rumsfeld, who was in the region for a meeting with his commanders.
After leaving Iraq, Rumsfeld travelled to Romania for a NATO meeting. Discussing Allawi's request for tanks, he proposed a characteristically Rumsfeldian solution. The new members of nato-those countries which Rumsfeld once called the "new Europe"-had been members of the old Warsaw Pact, which had a surplus of Soviet weapons. One way they could help, Rumsfeld suggested, was by supplying their Soviet-era tanks to the fledgling Iraqi Army.
The big miscalculation underlying the American-led intervention in Iraq was that the enemy would recognize defeat, and submit. When the Administration was faced with an insurgency, a new calculation-one that was advocated by Wolfowitz-was made: putting an Iraqi imprimatur on the mission would defuse the insurgency. The first step was the hastened transfer of sovereignty, last June. Yet the insurgency rages on, and Allawi worries about appearing to be an American puppet. Although he assured President Bush in his letter that he had "absolutely no intention" of changing his convictions or policies, he warned, "I am concerned by the concerted effort by some Iraqis and foreigners to paint my government as too close to the US and her allies." He went on, "This is likely to get worse as elections approach, and makes it harder to rebuild political unity and to isolate the insurgents." Now the Bush war policy depends upon a final calculation-that an Iraqi security force can be made strong enough, soon enough, to allow the mostly American multinational force to recede.
Wolfowitz seems more confident about this prospect than Allawi does. Speaking in Germany to the spouses of the 1st Infantry Division's soldiers, Wolfowitz said, "I think you're going to see a major change over the course of the next six months or a year." He said he hoped that progress with the Iraqi force might go even faster than expected. "At the moment, we're just planning for the worst," he said. Then he added, "But a lot of good should happen this coming year."
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Carter Tells Paper Bush Exploited 9/11
(AP)
October 25, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4574166,00.html
LONDON - President Bush has exploited the Sept. 11 attacks, and a timorous American press has not held him to account, former President Jimmy Carter said in an interview published Monday.
Carter was asked by the Guardian newspaper why he failed to win re-election in 1980 against Ronald Reagan after Iranian radicals held U.S. citizens hostage for 444 days, while Bush may win re-election despite misgivings over the Iraq war.
``The basic reason is that our country suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack ... and George Bush has been adroit at exploiting that attack, and he has elevated himself, in the consciousness of many Americans, to a heroic commander in chief, fighting a global threat against America,'' Carter said.
``He's repeatedly played that card, and to some degree quite successfully. I think that success has dissipated. I don't know if it's dissipating fast enough to affect the election. We'll soon know.''
Carter said Bush has the advantage of being commander in chief in a time of war.
``And it's just become almost unpatriotic to describe Bush's fallacious and ill-advised and mistaken and sometimes misleading actions,'' Carter said.
``The press have been cowed, because they didn't want to be unpatriotic. There has been a lack of inquisitive journalism. In fact, it's hard to think of a major medium in the United States that has been objective and fair and balanced, and critical when criticism was deserved.''
Carter criticized Bush for abandoning arms control efforts pursued by previous U.S. administrations.
``All of those long, tedious negotiations that were done by Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Nixon and me and Reagan, to control the spread of nuclear weapons have been abandoned by Bush,'' Carter said.
Carter was defeated in a landslide in 1980 by Reagan, and the feeling of national humiliation over the Iranian hostage drama undoubtedly played a part. The Iranian hostage-takers waited until the day of Reagan's inauguration to release their captives.
Carter asserted that the hostage crisis was less damaging to U.S. interests than the recent war in Iraq.
``The entire Islamic world condemned Iran,'' Carter said, while today he said there was massive Islamic condemnation of the United States ``because of the unwarranted invasion of Iraq ... which was a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements, and the lack of any effort to resolve the Palestinian issue.''
-------- voting
Suppression, Fraud and Breakdown:
Voting Problems Emerge in States Across the Country
democracynow.org
October 25th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/25/1416245
Voters in states across the country have already begun to vote as millions more prepare to head to the polls next week to vote in the 2004 presidential election. We take a look at voter suppression and fraud with a lawyer with the Voting Rights Project, focusing on voter protection, a journalist with the London Independent and an international monitor who was part of a team that has prepared a Pre-Election report. [includes rush transcript] Voters in states across the country have already begun to vote as millions more prepare to head to the polls next week in what many are calling one of the most important presidential elections in U.S. history.
Four years after the battle for Florida in 2000, the country is hoping to avoid another post-election stalemate and with the latest polls showing George W Bush and John Kerry in a statistical dead heat, every vote counts.
But while this election looks likely to be extremely close, the voting system is far from flawless. Voting machines have already begun to break down, accusations of systematic voter suppression and fraud are rampant, and lawyers have flocked to half a dozen states to cry foul.
In addition, a team of international observers who are monitoring the elections for the first time in American history, released a pre-election report that calls for major reforms in the process to promote confidence the voting system.
Today we take a look at voter suppression, intimidation and harassment in the 2004 election.
- Jon Greenbaum, director of the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
- Andrew Gumbel, Los Angeles based reporter the London Independent. His latest piece is titled "Portrait of a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown." He has a new book coming out next spring called "Steal the Votes" about the dysfunctions in America's election system.
- Irene Baghoomians, international monitor with the Pre-Election Observation Delegation that has compiled a report on the election system in the U.S. She is a human rights lawyer and a professor at the University of Sydney Law School. She joins us on the phone from Australia.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: Today, we look at the issues of voter suppression, intimidation and harassment in this election. We begin with Jon Greenbaum, director of the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Welcome to Democracy Now!
JON GREENBAUM: Good morning, Amy. How are you?
AMY GOODMAN: Good. It's good to have you with us. Why don't you give us at this point an overview of what you see the key problems are right now.
JON GREENBAUM: We're part of a group called Election Protection that involves many civil rights, civic, legal organizations that are -- have been brought together to insure that eligible voters are able to register and participate in the process. Right now, we're seeing a number of problems in the process, a lot of them related to the registration, and I'll give you one example from Arkansas, where a number of people took forms from the public library, registration forms, filled them out, sent them in and have been told by the registrars that because they used old forms, that they're not entitled to register to vote on those forms. Another example is early voting in Broward County, Florida, where there have been several problems using the voting machines early on, including voting machines not working, voting machines that had not been set back to zero at the appropriate time. That's just a small idea of the number of problems that we're being confronted with right now.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about some of the legal cases that you have been involved with, Jon Greenbaum, that you have actually litigated?
JON GREENBAUM: Well, very early this year, we brought a case on behalf of students at Prairie View University, a historic Black college outside of -- about 40 minutes outside of Houston, Texas, Waller County, Texas, in which the district attorney actually threatened students with felony prosecution if they voted, claiming that because they were students they weren't residents of the county. We filed a lawsuit basically to get him to retract that position, which he quickly did.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about -- and what ultimately has happened now for these students?
JON GREENBAUM: Well, interestingly enough, I mean, what happened for the students is that they were actually a couple of students running for office, including one for the board of commissioners in the primary that year -- or earlier this year, and that student ended up winning the election, winning the primary by roughly 38 votes. So, we certainly felt like that lawsuit and then a second lawsuit that we filed to insure that students were able to vote early, which was vital because most of the students were on spring break during the actual primary day, we felt like our lawsuits made a difference there.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the latest news about Ohio with the election, quote, "monitors" being deployed for election day?
JON GREENBAUM: Well, I mean, that's one of the things that we have -- that, you know, we certainly expected because we have been hearing it all year was that there are going to be people that are going to be sent out to challenge voters at the polls. So, it's something that we have certainly been preparing for in terms of making sure that the process works. Most states will allow political parties and others to make challenges at the polls, and the issue really is not so much whether or not there's a right to challenge, it's how the challenges are done. Are the challenges done based on personal knowledge? Is there some attempt to narrow the challenges to the people that you have a legitimate basis for challenging, or is it an all-out attempt to challenge huge groups of people and be disruptive the at polling place? If it's the latter, we will be prepared to ask to have such challenges removed, and if the people at the polling place or the county election officials won't do it, we'll have to go to court, if necessary.
AMY GOODMAN: What does it mean to say that the republicans have challenged the voting eligibility of 35,000 registered voters in Ohio already?
JON GREENBAUM: Well, right - are you talking about the registration challenges that are expected to happen this week?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
JON GREENBAUM: Yes. That's another issue. And once again, we have got to see what the actual facts are, as opposed to, you know, making blanket allegations. That's something else that we're preparing for. If you are going to challenge groups of voters, you better have a good reason for doing so. We're very suspicious when anybody says that they're going to challenge a large group of voters. I'll give you another example, smaller example of something like that, which is going on in Atkinson County, Georgia, where basically the -- there in Georgia you have racial identification registration, and a few people in the county went down to the registrar's office, got the names of all of the Hispanic voters who had registered, and they have challenged most of the Hispanic voters in Atkinson County, Georgia, based on citizenship grounds. Once again, that sort of thing makes us suspicious when you're challenging large groups of voters without having personal knowledge, necessarily, as opposed to more narrow challenges where do you have personal knowledge of why somebody might be ineligible to vote. So hearing that they're contemplating, any group is contemplating challenging 35,000 voters makes us very suspicious.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to break for a minute. We'll come back to Jon Greenbaum, director of the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. We'll also be joined by Andrew Gumbel, who is a Los Angeles-based reporter with the London Independent. His latest piece, "Portrait of a Country on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." We'll also talk to an international election monitor. A group of such monitors has come out with a report of recommendations for the U.S. elections.
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest on the line is Jon Greenbaum. He is the lawyer with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. We are also joined by Andrew Gumbel. Andrew Gumbel has written a piece, "Portrait of a Country on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." Andrew Gumbel, why the title?
ANDREW GUMBEL: Well, the reason for saying that this just because everybody has been asking themselves whether or not this year we're going to see another meltdown along the lines of Florida in 2000. Obviously, we don't know that yet, because it's going to depend on the arithmetic that comes out as the results are announced. So what we do know is, everything is in place for everything to go very badly wrong. Even if the margins of victory in each state are large enough to avert Florida, we're not going to get a free and fair election. That's been well establish by a number of people, including the various international election monitors who already have been coming to the country and having a look at what the provisions are in place for the reasons that you have been talking about already on the program. Voting machines don't work. They're susceptible to tampering. They're all of the incredible, massive problems to do with provisional voting, absentee ballot voting, there's all the various rulings by - apparently part of them motivated the secretaries of state in the different states. Jimmy Carter has come out and said that he wouldn't certify an election in Florida, and Florida is only one place where there's problems. There's a sense that the things could go horribly wrong. So there's that sense that the country is on edge, but there's also the real sense in which the meltdown is not something that the people have to worry about possibly happening. It's really already here in terms of the integrity of the voting system.
AMY GOODMAN: You have also specifically written about electronic voting, and you're writing a book on this issue that will be coming out in the coming months, but we're not just talking about what will happen next week. We're talking about what is happening. Cause in dozens of states, people are already at voting booths, and they are voting for example, in Florida.
ANDREW GUMBEL: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what's happened so far?
ANDREW GUMBEL: Well, the experience -- the other thing that's worth underlining is that the experience is varied across the country. One place where I spent some time and was actually pleasantly struck by how well things are working is Arizona. They have a lot of very progressive measures in place to have elections work well. There are problems, too, especially with the issues of felons and ex-felons voting, but in terms of for example, absentee ballots, they call it mail-in ballots, they don't like to call it absentee, because they want you to be more included. You can apply very simply by a single phone call or you can fill out a very straight-forward, single-sheet application. It arrives the very next day at your house and I have asked around every conceivable group as to if there are problems, the answer was no. So it is possible to get this stuff right. And forgive me, I didn't hear the whole of the first section, so I don't want to repeat too much of what's going on, but in terms of early voting and problems, Florida they started early voting the beginning of last week. There were breakdowns in the internet links apparently between laptop computers linked to the voter registration databases so people couldn't find out if they were eligible to vote. That caused hours of delay. In Duval County in Florida, the head of elections there, who is the one who is responsible for disenfranchising thousands of predominantly core, predominantly black, predominantly Democrat-voting voters in 2000, suddenly decided to resign on the very first day of voting, throwing them into complete pandemonium. He cited it where health reasons. There had been accusations that he wasn't providing sufficient early voting facilities in black areas of Jacksonville, which is the main town in Duval County. His successor is now going some way to remedy that. Then there are various legal challenges that are going on everywhere over early voting and specifically over the issue of provisional voting. And forgive me, I don't know if you have already discussed this but there are in a lot of states, Florida being one, Ohio being another, there are many others as well, there's this question of what happens if you don't know where to go vote, because you have either recently moved house or your precinct has moved, and you may or may not have been informed because the information flow is not as sufficient as it should be. And in some cases as one can suspect information flow is deliberately slowed down. There is discussion of where do you go vote. A lot of voting rights groups and in the states where they feel like it's to their advantage, the Democratic party has well have been pushing to allow people to vote in any precinct near where they live on the understanding that, of course, if the voting ballot that they receive is then going to be inaccurate for the local races, and that they would be restricted to voting for president and Senate and Congress and whatever races they are eligible to vote for. This has been a subject to rulings by Secretaries of State, by court hearings, by court appeals and things are in sort of a state of flux. But what I can tell you from my reporting on the ground is Florida is that this is a very, very important issue in certain places. This other places where things are organized better, it's less important, but where you have a situation where you have a large immigrant population. A large student population, a large population of people who may not have steady jobs where they're moving around a lot and specifically because of these population flows where the precincts keep changing and where in some cases the district boundaries keep changing, the whole thing is mired in tremendous confusion and this is not a trivial point at all. One can imagine tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of votes being affected in any given state.
AMY GOODMAN: I'd like Jon Greenbaum to expand further on this issue of provisional ballots. A federal appeals court panel Sunday put on hold a judge's order requiring some provisional ballots in Michigan to be counted even if they're cast in the wrong precinct, the panel's second ruling in two days against Democrats seeking to ease voting restrictions. Six U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Cincinnati issued a stay of the lower court ruling that reversed Michigan's policy for counting provisional ballots, saying it will hear on appeal on the issue quickly. On Saturday, the same three-judge panel rejected a similar ruling out of Ohio. Can you talk further about these provisional ballots and their significance?
JON GREENBAUM: Well, we're very concerned about that. Provisional ballots were something that were required in the Help America Vote Act. But the one thing that the act did not directly address is setting the standards for when they should be counted or when they shouldn't be counted. What's disturbing about the way the states have -- some of the states have applied provisional ballots and now the courts interpreting state law and the Help America Vote Act, is that you have a situation where you're going to have voters who are eligible voters who are eligible voters in the county in which they vote. They go down and cast a provisional ballot. They think that ballot is going to count and then it turns out not to. It turns out not to because they didn't go to the right precinct. And in most situations, whether or not you go to precinct A in one count county or whether or not you go to precinct B shouldn't matter for most of the offices on the ballot. For example, it shouldn't matter for president, it shouldn't matter for U.S. Senator, it shouldn't matter for any county-wide office or any state-wide office. And the end result is a lot of people are going to get disenfranchised. Good example of that was in Chicago earlier this year, in the primary election in Illinois where there were over 1,000 voters in Chicago, who lost their vote this way. They saw it when they went down to the polls, and they were -- they were given this provisional ballot. They thought that ballot was going to count. It turned out it didn't. You are giving people the expectation that their vote is going to count, then you take that -- you're taking that away.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk, Jon Greenbaum, about Broward County in Florida and what you have found there?
JON GREENBAUM: Well as I mentioned before, we have already found some problems. We have a hotline, 1-866-OUR-VOTE. And people are calling in to the hotline and telling us about problems that they're having when they're trying to vote in Broward County, including waiting in long lines because machines are down, including machines that don't appear to have been properly set up in advance, including machines that weren't tested prior to being put out in the field. It's very troubling. Because once again, we have a situation where it's hard to have full confidence that people are going to be able to participate in the way they should be able to participate in the system.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Jon Greenbaum, who just shared the phone number of people calling in if they have problems with voting, 866-OUR-VOTE. Jon Greenbaum, director of Voting Rights Project, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Andrew Gumbel, whose latest piece in The London Independent is called, "Portrait of a Country on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." We're also are joined by Irene Baghoomians, who is part of a pre-election observation delegation that compiled a report on the whole system here of elections, a pre-election report. Human rights lawyer and professor at the University of Sydney Law School, part of this international delegation that's observing the U.S. elections, in the same way that observers go out to other countries to observe, and she will be coming back for the actual elections. Welcome to Democracy Now!
IRENE BAGHOOMIANS: Hello, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Hi. As you listen to the discussion and having been here, can you share your observations, your observations and recommendations in this pre-election report and who were you with?
IRENE BAGHOOMIANS: I'm sure. Let me start from the latter question. This entire project is organized by Global Exchange, which is a human rights organization based in San Francisco, but the project basically organized as a stand-alone project involving initially for the phase one, comprising 20 delegates from five continents. We basically focused on five states, including Ohio, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, and Missouri, and they were each chosen for a variety of reasons. I don't know whether you are interested in -- in me mentioning quickly why they were chosen.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
IRENE BAGHOOMIANS: Arizona was chosen primarily because of the clean system of, you know, politics, the publicly financed campaigns that they have. Florida, I think is self-explanatory because of the widely publicized irregularities during the constitutional crisis of 2000. Georgia was selected because it is one of the two states that will vote uniformly on DRE's, direct recording electronic ballots. Missouri also experienced serious troubles on election day and Ohio, because it's a battleground state and Bellwether. These were the reasons why the five were chosen. We went there for -- four-member teams went to each of these five states during September and we spent a week prior to going to the states speaking and meeting with experts in Washington, and then going to the states, and we spent one week in each state, and we met with kind of a variety of groups. We met with civil society groups as well as election boards, and wherever possible we met with Secretaries of State and staff. We were unable to actually meet with any of the secretaries themselves, but we tried to meet with the staff as much as possible. So, after that, we went back to San Francisco and compiled the report, which was released two days ago.
AMY GOODMAN: What did you find?
IRENE BAGHOOMIANS: The report basically contains as number of recommendations. It's divided into both state reports, but generally, there are recommendations basically are divided into kind of short term and medium and long term ones. The immediate term ones are that election officials at all levels really should open the electoral process to a non-partisan observers from both the United States as well as from overseas countries. And the medium and long term recommendations include to eliminate partisan administration of the electoral apparatus, and move towards a non-partisan electoral management as well as modifying or replacing the DRE machines to provide all voting equipment with a voter verified re-countable paper record. Also, to try to restore as much as possible the franchise to excellence, because we did find as part of our consultations that there were a number of states, including Florida, that deny the franchise to excellence, and last, but not least, to adopt public campaign financing to help level the political playing fields. Thereby avoiding perceptions of corruption and try to raise voter confidence. So, these were our general recommendations, but then we have specific recommendations for each of the five states.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you going to be certifying or not these elections?
IRENE BAGHOOMIANS: No. We are only observers, so we don't have a mandate to intervene. And as we currently stand, unfortunately, we have not been given permission to attend the actual polling stations in a number of counties that we'll be visiting. If you are interested, I can actually mention that really briefly.
AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds.
IRENE BAGHOOMIANS: Okay. Basically in Missouri we have been given permission to attend tabulation centers in polling booths in Columbia and St. Louis. In Ohio, in Cleveland County, we only have been given permission to attend the tabulation centers and we're waiting to see if we can attend polling stations, and in Florida, we have only been given permission by Leon County to attend both the polling stations and tabulation centers. We're waiting hopefully to hear from Ft. Lauderdale, Broward and Miami Dade.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us. We will certainly continue to follow this issue, and I just wanted to ask Jon Greenbaum very quickly, how many calls have you gotten on this voting problems line, 866-our-vote?
JON GREENBAUM: We're getting several hundred a day at this point and actually, we anticipate that on election day, we're going to be getting tens of thousands. We have planned for it.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us. Irene Baghoomians, part of the pre-election observation delegation that has been put together by Global Exchange talking to us from University of Sydney Law School, and also Jon Greenbaum, director of Voting Rights Project, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. That voting hotline is 866-OUR-VOTE. And Andrew Gumbel with The London Independent who is covering our elections for The Independent. Thanks to all for being with us.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Schwarzenegger Opens Stop on 'Hydrogen Highway'
REUTERS
October 25, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27827/story.htm
LOS ANGELES - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dedicated a pioneering hydrogen fueling station last week, calling it the first stop in a "hydrogen highway" that would someday stretch across the nation's most populous state as drivers switch to the cleaner-burning fuel.
Schwarzenegger rolled into the station at Los Angeles International Airport in a metallic blue prototype hydrogen-powered Hummer loaned to California by General Motors Corp. as a promotional tool.
Schwarzenegger, who famously drove the first Hummer designed for civilian use, had pledged to convert the gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle to hydrogen power and build the nation's first network of stations where drivers could fill up on the clean-burning fuel.
"We will not just dream about the hydrogen highway or hydrogen fueling stations. We will not just dream about hydrogen cars," he said. "We will build them."
Schwarzenegger, who in April signed an executive order creating a partnership to build a network of hydrogen stations across California by 2010, said he wanted to end the "chicken and egg debate" in the industry over which would come first -- fueling stops or cars to use them.
Though there are other hydrogen fueling stations in the state, the one dedicated last week was built to resemble the gas stations that Californians already frequent.
Officials say the station will initially serve a small fleet of hydrogen-powered cars used at the airport but will open for business to the public within five to ten years.
Dave Barthmuss, a GM spokesman, said that automakers consider cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells their "Holy Grail," since they would release only water as emissions and could end America's dependence on foreign oil.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Bush Administration Backs Solar Development on Public Lands
October 25, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO, California, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-25-03.asp
A new federal policy to encourage the development of solar energy resources on America's public lands was announced during the Solar Power 2004 conference on Thursday in San Francisco.
"Our quality of life and economic security are dependent on a stable and abundant supply of affordable energy," said Rebecca Watson, assistant secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management, as she announced the new policy. "Encouraging the production and development of renewable energy on our public lands, including solar energy, is part of the president's National Energy Policy."
But the National Energy Policy was announced in May 2001, and the Bush administration is just now getting around to encouraging solar power. In fact, the Bush budget request to Congress for Fiscal Year 2002 cut $49.8 million from the solar energy resources program level funded under the Clinton administration.
The McDonnell Douglas Aerospace (now Boeing) dish Stirling System operating at Southern California Edison Solar One test site, March 2000. The system is currently being commercialized by Boeing and Stirling Energy Systems. (Photo courtesy Sandia/NREL) For Fiscal Year 2003, the budget requests for solar, geothermal and biomass development under the Department of Energy were cut back again in favor of hydrogen and nuclear programs.
For Fiscal Year 2004, the Bush administration cut solar solar energy programs by another $3 million.
Now the Bush administration is going to make it easier for private developers to place solar installations on public lands.
The new Solar Energy Development Policy establishes a framework for land managers to use in processing right-of-way applications for solar energy development projects on public lands administered by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management.
The solar energy resources in the southwestern United States are some of the finest in the world, said Watson.
Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management Rebecca Watson (Photo courtesy Interior Department) "The Solar Energy Development Policy is a nationwide framework for authorizing commercial solar facilities on public lands," Watson said.
"This is a way for the BLM to be proactive in responding to changes in solar technology while protecting the environment. It also supports an initiative by the Western Governors Association and the Department of Energy to explore the feasibility of developing 30,000 megawatts of clean energy in the West by 2015."
While domestic production of renewable energy is growing, Watson said, experts forecast that renewable energy alone cannot fill the gap between domestic energy production and demand in the foreseeable future or in the next 20 years.
Renewable sources supply two percent of U.S. energy today, and that percentage is expected to grow to 10 percent by 2025 according the Energy Information Administration, a federal agency.
More than 261 million acres of land, primarily in the West, are managed by the BLM. Unlike parks and wildlife refuges, BLM managed lands are managed for multiple uses, including fossil fuel and renewable energy development.
A 2003 report by the BLM and the U.S. Department of Energy assessed the potential for renewable energy resources on public lands managed by the BLM in 11 Western states.
The report identified areas in Arizona, Southern California, Nevada and New Mexico as the most promising areas for solar energy development on public lands. Parts of Texas, Utah and Colorado also have excellent solar resources.
The 2003 report identified the top 25 BLM areas with high solar energy development potential. "I have requested the BLM use this information in current and future land-use planning to prepare for development of solar energy on public lands," Watson said.
The Dangling Rope Marina photovoltaic/hybrid power system, in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area at Lake Powell, Utah, is the largest solar energy system in the National Park Service. It is estimated to save over $2.3 million in fuel and maintenance costs over a 20 year period. (Photo by Warren Gretz courtesy NREL) Solar resources existing on Time Sensitive Plans currently involved in the planning process were identified as:
Concentrating solar power in the Jack Morrow Hills of Wyoming, Farmington, New Mexico planning unit, the California Desert Amendment North & East Colorado Desert, California Desert Amendment North & East Mojave Desert, and the California Desert Amendment West Mojave Desert.
There is potential for photovoltaic solar cell development in the Black Rock/High Rock National Conservation Areas of Nevada, the California Desert Amendment North & East Colorado Desert, the California Desert Amendment North & East Mojave Desert, the California Desert Amendment West Mojave Desert, and the Santa Rosa National Monument.
BLM Field Offices will consider and authorize commercial solar facilities as rights-of-way (ROWs) under the authority of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, Watson said. Construction can proceed after approval of a Plan of Development and the environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act.
ROW applications are identified as high priorities in the Field Office workload and will be processed in a timely manner, using sound business practices, on a first-come basis, Watson said.
Real estate appraisals will be used by BLM managers to calculate rental payments. Rental payments will be phased in over a three-year period and updated annually using an index.
All concentrating solar power systems and photovoltaic installations must comply with the planning, environmental, National Environmental Policy Act review and right-of-way requirements that the BLM uses to evaluate all proposed commercial uses of public lands.
The policy also encourages the installation of renewable power sources, including solar systems, at BLM facilities.
Find out more about solar power technologies online at: http://www.nrel.gov/clean_energy/solar.html The BLM Solar Energy Development Land Authorization Policy is outlined in an instructional memorandum online at: http://www.blm.gov/nhp/efoia/wo/fy05/im2005-006.htm.
-------- genetics
California Puts Stem Cells to a Popular Test
$3 Billion Plan Would Bypass Bush Policy
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59696-2004Oct24?language=printer
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- In size and scope, no initiative on any ballot this year comes close to California's Proposition 71.
Crafted by a group of parents, scientists, Hollywood stars and venture capitalists, the proposal to spend $3 billion on embryonic stem cell research is a virtual end-run around the Bush administration that would put this huge state far ahead of most other nations in a promising -- and controversial -- new field of medicine.
While President Bush and his Democratic rival, John F. Kerry, squabble over whether to invest $25 million or $100 million of federal money in the field, Californians are considering a radically different course. In defiance of Bush's limited national policy, Californians are being asked to pour 10 times as much money into a state program, letting voters for the first time decide whether to invest tax dollars in a specific type of research.
If approved, supporters say the bond measure would revolutionize the fledgling science -- with California and its legions of academic laboratories and biotech firms at the epicenter. The payoff, proponents say, could be treatments for chronic conditions such as diabetes, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injury.
But the price is high, opponents counter, in both financial and moral terms. To pursue those treatments, scientists must destroy 5-day-old embryos, a process Roman Catholic leaders here call a "direct attack on innocent human life." Payments on the bonds would cost the state nearly $6 billion over 30 years, a sum many say California cannot afford.
The creators of Proposition 71 have assembled a powerful cast of advocates -- from Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to Nobel Prize winners, from the head of the Bush administration's stem cell task force to the late actor Christopher Reeve, who appears in a commercial taped shortly before his death. Other supporters include the California Chamber of Commerce, actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson's, and George P. Shultz, secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan.
On the other side is a collection of unlikely allies -- feminists who fear the demand for embryos will create "egg farms," fiscal conservatives and evangelical Christians. They are short on famous names and even shorter on cash.
Although national polls show more than 70 percent of Americans endorse embryonic stem cell research, recent state polling puts support for the bond proposal at about 50 percent. By historical standards, that would not bode well for passage because late-deciding voters tend to oppose initiatives, but a deluge of pro-initiative ads could tip the balance.
"The fact that this is on the ballot at all is a stunning testimonial to the power of citizen advocacy," said Mary Woolley, president of the nonpartisan Research America, which promotes public investment in science.
Yet what Woolley and proponents hail as democracy in its purest form, others see as an abuse of the electoral process -- a small, well-funded constituency using emotion to sell expensive, unproven science. "This is taking billions of dollars from desperately needed health care to support this science project," said H. Rex Greene, medical director of the cancer center at Mills-Peninsula Health Services in San Mateo. "If this ever leads to cures, it will be decades away -- if ever."
Proposition 71 was born out of frustration, hope and, detractors would say, greed.
It started here in the shadow of Stanford University, in the nondescript office where Bob Klein has made millions as a real estate developer and where he drafted the initiative.
"I have a 14-year-old son with diabetes, and my 87-year-old mother is dying of Alzheimer's," said Klein, seated at a conference table strewn with legal pads, cell phones, tissues and packets of vitamins -- telltale signs of the final days of an exhausting campaign. "I see a tremendous amount of suffering at both ends of the age spectrum."
To patients and families, embryonic stem cells offer a spark of hope. They speak in urgent tones of not having time to waste on political haggling. Scientists are enthusiastic about cells taken from embryos because they have the unique ability to morph into almost any type of tissue or cell, potentially replacing diseased or damaged tissue with healthy, self-renewing replacements, in some cases grown from a patient's own cells.
To date, researchers mostly used "spare" frozen embryos that would otherwise have been discarded by fertility clinics. Proposition 71 would allow California scientists to use state funds to work with such embryos or to create new ones in a laboratory in a process called nuclear transfer technology, or therapeutic cloning.
In August 2001, Bush decided to limit federal support to only the cell colonies, or "lines," that had been harvested -- touted to be more than 60 at the time, but in reality just a couple dozen viable lines. His compromise reflected an attempt to balance "good science with good ethics," he said recently.
Lynn Fielder, a 42-year-old mother who takes half a dozen pills every three hours to manage her Parkinson's, sees the ethical dilemma differently. "It would be absolutely irresponsible to not be pursuing something like this," she said. "What can be more moral than saving the lives of people who exist and easing the burden on their families?"
Researchers complain that the Bush policy, and proposed GOP legislation to criminalize treatments using embryonic stem cells, has put a chilling effect on the scientific community.
"I got into this because I really see a threat, particularly when it is based on ideology or religion," said Paul Berg, a Nobel winner at Stanford. "Proposition 71 is our way of saying, 'We're not gonna take it any more.' We have the wherewithal, and the citizenry is backing us to move forward with this opportunity."
A few other states have passed "safe harbor" legislation allowing embryonic stem cell research, and New Jersey is poised to spend $5 million a year on it, but none approaches the ambition of the California measure. Klein designed the bond proposal so that the state would not make payments for the first five years, an approach that helped sway Schwarzenegger.
With Klein's $2.5 million as seed money, the group Cures for California has raised more than $24 million, with large checks from wealthy donors such as Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates and Sen. Jon S. Corzine (D-N.J.), advocacy groups such as the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and numerous venture capitalists.
Opponents, who have raised less than $200,000, describe those donations as a thinly veiled financial grab by special interests. "A group of venture capitalists spent about $5 million to access $6 billion in taxpayer money," said Tom Bordonaro, a former state lawmaker who has had to use a wheelchair since a car accident 27 years ago. "That's a pretty good return on investment."
The California Catholic Conference has distributed "homily notes" for every Sunday in October, detailing arguments against the initiative. The notes draw analogies to abortion, urging parishioners to defend "innocent life" by voting no.
The umbrella group Doctors, Patients and Taxpayers for Fiscal Responsibility, focused on fiscal issues. It calls the initiative "a blatant taxpayer rip-off that lines the pockets of a few large biomedical corporations" at a time when the state is "teetering on the edge of bankruptcy."
This weekend, on television sets across the state, Reeve delivers the final appeal for the initiative. The spot is introduced with a message from his family explaining they "wished to honor his memory by airing this, his last recorded message." From his wheelchair, the paralyzed actor urges: "Please support Prop. 71 -- and stand up for those who can't."
About 3,000 miles away, on the Bethesda campus of the National Institutes of Health, views are mixed. James Battey, chair of the NIH stem cell task force, is an enthusiastic supporter who says Proposition 71 could "transform" stem cell research.
NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, taking pains to note he was not present when Bush devised his stem cell policy, said the initiative could "complement" his agency's work, but he offered a cautionary note about voters setting research priorities.
"You can see what is politically attractive can take precedence over what's important from the standpoint of public health," he said. "In the long run, I don't think the nation should make decisions in that manner."
-------- health
Illinois Governor Seeks Vaccine Abroad
October 25, 2004
By MONICA DAVEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/national/25flu.html?pagewanted=all
Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, one of several leaders of state efforts to buy prescription drugs from outside the United States, says he has found at least 30,000 doses of flu vaccine in his conversations with overseas drug wholesalers and wants permission from the federal authorities to buy the doses for elderly residents of his state.
With reports of people in Illinois and around the country waiting hours in lines for flu shots and even driving to Canada for the vaccine, Governor Blagojevich, a Democrat, will ask the Food and Drug Administration today for permission to buy the added doses through European wholesalers at a rate he says he has already negotiated - $7 a dose.
The request is certain to raise new questions about a vaccine shortage that has left the nation with about half its normal supply: how quickly will the F.D.A. decide whether it is safe to import doses of the vaccine, and is it the role of state or local officials to find extra doses and buy them for their own residents?
Yesterday, Mr. Blagojevich's aides said he intended to send the 30,000 extra shots - perhaps more - to the state's most vulnerable residents, those in nursing homes. Without the extra shots, his aides said, the federal authorities have promised only 35,000 flu shots, all told, to Illinois's nursing homes, which have about 100, 000 residents.
"The flu season is nearly here, and based on the supply offered to us by the federal government, thousands of senior citizens and others in Illinois would be forced to brave the winter without a flu shot," Mr. Blagojevich said in a news release. "It's dangerous to expect them to do that."
Nearly 3,000 Illinois residents died of flu and pneumonia-related causes in 2002, and nationwide some 36,000 die annually from the flu.
In a letter to be faxed today to Dr. Lester M. Crawford, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Mr. Blagojevich asks for a swift answer to his request to buy the flu vaccine.
"In light of the critical importance of this matter to the public health, I urge you to give this request the highest priority and to expeditiously direct the officials at F.D.A. to take whatever steps necessary to give the State of Illinois the necessary authorizations to make this drug available to its citizens," the letter says.
Mr. Blagojevich requested that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allow Illinois to use federal money to buy the extra shots. But if the C.D.C. refuses, the state will cover all costs itself, he said.
Reached at his home yesterday, Dr. Crawford said his agency had received many leads on extra doses of the flu vaccine and was already in negotiation with three countries for five million additional doses.
"We're looking all over the world for flu shots," he said. "What we need to make sure, first, is that it's safe. And the shots he is talking about may already be among the ones we've located, I don't know."
He said he needed to know the full details of Mr. Blagojevich's request before responding. "If he's got something, he should let us know," Dr. Crawford said. "We'll be very happy to follow up on it."
Abby Ottenhoff, an aide to Mr. Blagojevich, said the 30,000 doses Illinois wanted were produced by Aventis Pasteur's plant in Lyon, France, and had been intended for use by people in Europe and Canada.
Aventis Pasteur, with a plant in Pennsylvania, is already providing the bulk of this nation's supply this year, 55 million shots. Some 46 million additional doses to be provided by a second company, Chiron, were condemned because of concerns about bacterial contamination at the company's factory in Liverpool, England,, leaving the authorities here scrambling to find more.
Ms. Ottenhoff said Illinois officials believed that the 30,000 doses they hoped to buy from the French plant were similar to those already being used in the United States and supplied by Aventis here. "It protects against the same strains of the flu as the one here is and it seems to be the same," she said.
For months, Mr. Blagojevich, along with a handful of other governors from the Midwest and elsewhere, has engaged in a simmering war with the Food and Drug Administration over whether to allow Americans to order their prescriptions from Canada and Europe. Mr. Blagojevich, who has started a buying program for residents of Illinois, says that the drugs from overseas are safe and far cheaper than those available in this country; the drug agency, meanwhile, bars such purchases and contends that the drugs may not be safe or genuine.
Ms. Ottenhoff dismissed any notion that the request for the vaccine was part of Mr. Blagojevich's political fight with the agency over broader questions of drug importation.
"Illinois is - as is every other state in the country - scrambling to make sure it can get flu vaccine for its most vulnerable residents," Ms. Ottenhoff said. "This is a real government crisis. And thanks to the relationships we have made outside the United States with our prescription drug program, we have found these supplies."
"If we have more than we need to meet the most critical needs of Illinois, he is more than willing to share," Ms. Ottenhoff said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Protesters make their case outside court
Brattleboro Reformer
By MIKE KALIL
October 25, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8862~2490291,00.html
WEST BRATTLEBORO -- Just because the court says the area protesters who were arrested for invading the local National Guard office can't claim defense of necessity, doesn't mean they can't try to prove it anyway.
Expert witnesses spoke Sunday during "Bearing Witness: The Unauthorized Testimony of the Peace Guard" in defense of the eight area protesters who demonstrated in the National Guard office as the Iraq war loomed. The protesters say their action was out of necessity -- similar to breaking into a burning house to save a life.
Sunday's event was a chance to present what won't be allowed in court.
Testimony broke out in song, and attendees were subject to sing-a-long. Sunny Miller, executive director of Traprock Peace Center in western Massachusetts, kicked off her talk on the dangers of depleted uranium munitions with a peace chant.
"Peace is like a flower unfolding -- the way I see it," she said.
Demonstrating in the office, the protesters say, was an attempt to prevent casualties that the Iraq war would bring on. The Windham District Court says differently: the protesters faced no emergency, and cannot reasonably claim their actions would prevent harm to anyone.
Calling themselves the Peace Guard, the group of protesters will be tried Thursday for criminal trespass. Since the arrests, one man, Erik Schickedanz of Guilford, had the charge against him dropped, and another protester, Kenny West of Brattleboro, will be tried separately on a different date.
"It's kind of a mixed feeling," said protestor Laura White, of Williamsville, of the upcoming trial.
On Sunday, experts laid out reasons why their defense is valid at the Village Meeting House, saying the Iraq war could not have caused anything but harm to U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. The audience included Socialist Vice Presidential Mary Alice Herbert of Putney and Peter Diamondstone, Vermont's Liberty Union candidate for governor.
Michael True, a professor at Assumption College in Worcester, Mass., went through the history of civil disobedience, laying the claim that it is necessary for change. Cherie Rankin, a former Red Cross volunteer who served as a civilian in the Vietnam war, spoke of atrocities, dodgy recruiting methods and sexual assaults against men and women.
"Atrocities happen all the time in wars," Rankin said. "Nobody is prepared for that."
She said new soldiers are transformed through war. At first, the men can be clean cut and shaven and give good eye contact. That persona shifts from what they witness, making it no longer possible for them to look a person in the eye.
The teenagers who are recruited are vulnerable, needy and lack a sense of belonging, she said. A good chunk of them are poor or minorities or both, she said, and military recruiters exploit that.
Chris Doucot, a Hartford Catholic Worker who has traveled to Iraq, said the country has given up on the United States, saying the sense of "good will" he saw before the war has been depleted. Some Iraqis thought the United States would enter the country, remove Saddam Hussein and repair everything that Americans had destroyed for over a decade.
The last time he was in Iraq was in February, he said, and he has no plans to go back. Before the war, he said, he didn't feel in danger being in the country. That's no longer the case.
"That's one of the reasons I'm not going back there in the foreseeable future," he said. "I'm an American. I'm a target."
The six protesters who face trial Thursday are Betsy Williams of Westminster West, Louis Battalen of Ashfield, Mass., White and Brattleboro residents Sara Longsmith, Doris Lake and Leo Schiff.
The group entered the National Guard recruiting office on Elliot Street on March 17, 2003, and refused to leave. They wanted to place informational posters in designated areas to give prospective enlistees a chance to review all the consequences of joining the Guard.
A National Guard sergeant asked them to leave, but the group refused. The protesters then told Brattleboro Police Officer Peter DiMarino their intention to stay put and transform the office into a "National Peace Office" for the day.
"It's a very different case than typically happens in Brattleboro," White said, calling it a "political" trial.
Schiff said Sunday that the defense will likely try to defend the protesters' intent and bring up free speech. The office was public property, he said, paid for by tax dollars, and the demonstrators were there during business hours.
"We'll be pursuing other avenues to explain why we did what we did," he said.
That office has since closed; at the time, National Guard officials said it was because the location no longer made fiscal sense. Instead, perspective recruits are encouraged to sign up at area armories, the closest being in Westminster, where Company B of the 2nd Battalion, 172nd Armor Regiment are stationed.
Mike Kalil can be reached at mkalil@reformer.com.
--------
Group Assists Anti-War Tax Protesters
Associated Press
October 25, 2004
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2476021&nav=0Ra7SMj3
(North Manchester) - When pacifists get in trouble for refusing to pay taxes to support a war, they turn to a group of people in North Manchester for help. The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund helps people who refuse to pay the portion of their income taxes earmarked for the military budget.
Members of the Fund's mailing list chip in to help people pay fines and penalties assessed by the Internal Revenue Service. For example, if $300 is needed, each of the 300 members would be asked to contribute $10.
The Fund has received about $250,000 since 1982. This year, it's received requests for about $16,000, according to The Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne.
The Fund was founded by members of the North Manchester chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an international interfaith group devoted to nonviolence.
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------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
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