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washingtonpost.com
Foreign Crises Stretch U.S. In Election Year


By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 8, 2004; Page A01


With Haiti`s drama and the flare-up of violence in Iraq, the United States faces an overload of crises that Republicans and Democrats agree will be even more difficult to deal with now that the presidential campaign is in full swing.

Rarely has Washington had such a large and diverse array of foreign policy problems to juggle as leaders of both parties hit the campaign trail. And rarely have those crises been so central to an election, evident in the scathing volleys between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) over the past week.

In the first presidential election since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration finds its foreign policy initiatives to defend the United States from the new threats becoming hot election issues -- and liabilities. "It`s fighting three wars: Iraq, Afghanistan and the global war on terror. It has to deal with everything from Colombia to Haiti, the Palestinians to North Korea, the World Trade Organization. If someone is arguing the administration has a lot on its plate and it is stretched, they`ve got a point," said Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a top foreign policy planning official in both Bush administrations.

But the broader question is whether the confluence of crises -- and the intense election debate they have spawned -- will crimp U.S. willingness or ability to focus on new problems or opportunities, leaving Washington instead reacting and on the defensive. Some Republican insiders have adopted a crisis-avoidance mantra for the election season: "No war in `04."

"It`s a very challenging time," said James B. Steinberg, Brookings Institution director of foreign policy studies and deputy national security adviser for the Clinton administration. "There`s a real temptation to play defense rather than to take these things on. But when you do that, you risk becoming a hostage of current fortunes and, rather than shaping the environment, you allow other people to drive the agenda and set the pace."

There are already signs that the Bush administration may be reluctant to tackle new hot spots, which Republicans and Democrats say is what happened during the uprising against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti`s controversial but democratically elected leader.

Washington resisted getting embroiled until the final days of the confrontation, despite long-brewing signs of trouble, because of "time and resources and focus and energy," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). With so many troops tied down in Iraq and elsewhere, "the last thing we need is another problem. So we try to get out on the cheap," he said.

The United States is guilty of outright neglect for its failure to act earlier, Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-N.Y.) told Secretary of State Colin L. Powell at a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week. "This was not an overnight crisis, and could we not have better supported the democracy in Haiti if we had been more generous with our assistance?" Serrano said.

Haiti is symptomatic of the dilemmas during an election season after 21/2 years of ambitious but controversial interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The next eight months is not a time for "discretionary commitments" that are "politically ambitious and costly entanglements," Haass said. "Iraq is a war of choice. It is hard to imagine more wars of choice in the foreseeable future."

White House officials deny that the administration is stretched thin or overburdened.

"This White House is the most calm that I`ve worked in. I was struck by this [at the end of February] as we were wrapping up six-party talks on North Korea and had Haiti and Iraq`s Transitional Administrative Law. The phones were ringing off the hook, but there was no sense of crisis in the White House. No one starts running a fever if there`s a crisis," said a senior administration official who has worked in top positions for several administrations.

Political strategist Karl Rove is not urging Bush to kick problems down the road to avoid tough choices, said William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and Vice President Dan Quayle`s chief of staff.

"Bush understands that it`s riskier in many cases to endlessly put off dealing with problems -- and that they`ll come back to bite you at a time not of your choosing," Kristol said. "Bush needs to go to the country on the basis of his foreign policy. That`s risky and some won`t like it. But he can`t say, `Elect me because of my foreign policy,` but then, this year, put everything on hold."

This White House also remembers the recent past. The first Bush administration adopted a "keep things calm" strategy in the 1992 campaign -- and voters decided it wasn`t needed to keep around to handle foreign policy, Kristol added.

Yet Republicans and Democrats note signs that crisis overload and campaign realities have already weakened the United States` ability to exert decisive leverage -- and given greater edge to players in the field.

In the Middle East, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is pressing a unilateral plan to separate Israel from the Palestinians, rather than the road map for a Palestinian state designed by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia -- aware of U.S. sensitivities about key pro-Israeli votes. (U.S. and Israeli officials say Sharon`s plan fits within the road map.)

After taking the lead in pressing Iran on its nuclear technology, Washington now defers to Europe to prod the Islamic republic into surrendering data on its program.

In Asia, North Korea is playing hardball with the United States and its allies over nuclear disarmament, aware that the Bush administration is unlikely in an election year to cede much in return.

With a controversial referendum this spring in Taiwan over independence, China may be tempted to raise tensions across the straits of Taiwan to quash nationalist stirrings, less inhibited than in past years because of the U.S. election.

Election years are always periods of "genuine risk" for U.S. interests abroad, because candidates view problems through "a political prism" and often make commitments "on the run" based on "quick information" rather than all facets of national interest, said Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic chairman of the House International Relations Committee and now director of the Smithsonian`s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "It`s very difficult to conduct U.S. foreign policy in the heat of an American election."

But the range of U.S. commitments abroad since Sept. 11 has left the administration with limited fiscal, military and political mobility, from the inventory of weapons to the number of deployable troops, and from mounting costs to the public appetite for more foreign adventures, said Foreign Policy magazine editor Moises Naim.

Administrations have difficulty juggling more than two or three major issues at the same time, added David Gergen, director of Harvard`s Center for Public Leadership and a White House adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. "This White House is already dealing with three. Any more than that and you`ll drop one. It`s too small a system and staff," he said.

Hagel added, "You can`t put more than 24 hours in Colin Powell`s schedule. The entire war cabinet can only have so much attention."

But the problems of being overextended may well last beyond the election, foreign policy experts warn.

"No matter who wins, the same reality will confront the next president in 2005 -- that we are severely overstretched and have to make a number of choices: whether to stop taking on new commitments, and if necessary discard some, or to increase the size of military forces and dramatically increase the defense budget," said Geoffrey Kemp, a National Security Council staff member during the Reagan administration who is now at the Nixon Center.

"This sort of notion that we are omnipotent and at a unipolar moment that allows us to knock off regimes we don`t like, it`s an idea whose time has passed," Kemp said.




© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Military Spending Sparks Warnings


By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 8, 2004; Page A01


A sharp jump in military spending under President Bush has lifted defense budgets to levels not seen since the height of the Reagan buildup of the early 1980s, prompting warnings by lawmakers and defense analysts that the surge may no longer be sustainable in a time of deepening deficits.

The military bills, which are approaching $500 billion a year, reflect an exceptional confluence of events, as the Pentagon attempts to cover the costs of stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan while pursuing an array of new weaponry, exploring revolutionary technologies and caring for an all-volunteer military.

In a sign of mounting pressure to constrain the Pentagon`s purse, the Senate Budget Committee voted last week to trim $7 billion from Bush`s defense request. Defense hawks vowed to restore the money and to block a similar cost-cutting move expected in the House.

The looming political battle bore a striking parallel with conditions 19 years ago when congressional alarm over a soaring federal deficit led to the end of President Ronald Reagan`s defense buildup.

"This feels to me the way it did back in 1985," said John Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary and comptroller under President Bill Clinton and now president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "I believe the tide has begun to turn. These deficit and defense budget numbers are so shockingly big now that, politically, they`re untenable."

Indeed, the Army`s decision last month to cancel its Comanche helicopter program signaled a growing recognition by military authorities that they can no longer afford all the projects they have in the works.

Among the most vulnerable projects are a few big-ticket weapons programs conceived during the Cold War and still in development, including the Air Force`s F/A-22 Raptor jet, the multi-service F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Marine Corps`s V-22 tiltrotor aircraft and the Navy`s Virginia-class attack submarine. Some newer, experimental projects may also be at risk -- notably, the Army`s Future Combat System, the Navy`s Littoral Combat Ship and the Bush administration`s missile defense program.

But deciding what to cut is likely to prove more problematic now than in the Reagan years, according to military officials and defense specialists, who note that Bush`s spending boost has differed markedly from Reagan`s.

For one thing, while Reagan`s rise took place in peacetime, Bush`s budgets have included a significant wartime component. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan added more than $60 billion to the 2003 and 2004 budgets. They likely will require an additional $50 billion or so in 2005 on top of the $421 billion Bush already has requested, according to a White House estimate.

"The fact that we are in some manner of war at this time may put a floor under what`s done to defense, a floor that was not there in 1985," said Gordon Adams, director of the Security Policy Studies program at George Washington University.

Another substantial chunk of Bush`s buildup has gone toward higher salary, health care and retirement costs associated with sustaining a fully professional, family-oriented military. This, too, contrasts with Reagan`s spending increase, much of which went to buying fleets of tanks, helicopters, aircraft and other military equipment.

"A lot of the extra money that the president is giving us is being soaked up not in hardware or structure, but in compensation," said Lt. Gen. Jerry Sinn, the Army`s top budget officer. "Without these budget increases, we`d be looking at force reductions."

Indeed, the high cost of troops is one reason Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has resisted calls in Congress for a permanent expansion of the armed forces to ease the strain on 1.4 million active duty troops and 1.2 million reservists.

Sinn cited figures showing that, on average, officer compensation has nearly doubled since 1990, from $68,000 to $115,000. "Grade creep" has led to higher percentages of commissioned and noncommissioned officers in the force, which in turn has escalated costs.

"In Reagan`s era, we were buying lots of stuff," Hamre said. "Now, the military establishment is substantially different, with a much reduced force and fewer weapons on order. Yet, we`re spending the same amount of money. It`s just startling."

Bush came into office pledging to impose greater fiscal discipline on the Pentagon and stressing new, "transformational" technologies aimed at reshaping the U.S. military into a leaner, more mobile force geared to fighting regional wars and terrorist networks instead of the old Soviet Union.

But the terrorist attacks in 2001 triggered a surge in defense spending that eased pressure on the Pentagon to choose between the legacy systems still in development and the new technologies getting off the ground, including missile defenses, pilotless aircraft and laser communications satellites. Before last month`s elimination of Comanche, the Pentagon under Bush had cut only two other sizable programs -- the Army`s Crusader howitzer and a Navy missile defense system.

In late 2001, Bush approved a military budget plan that provided for increases of about $10 billion a year, plus the cost of inflation, through the rest of his term and beyond. The actual increases have been much greater.

Total defense budget authority, which covers not only the Pentagon`s needs but also the nuclear weapons programs run by the Energy Department, rose by $19 billion in 2002 to $385 billion. It soared $89 billion the next year to $474 billion and has remained at about the same level in fiscal 2004.

By comparison, Reagan`s buildup, in today`s dollars, peaked at $494 billion in 1985.

Under Bush, said Adams of GWU, the Pentagon has "dodged a bullet" and avoided hard choices it would have faced under tighter fiscal conditions. "It has been able to have its cake and eat it, too."

Defense hawks in Congress remain determined to prevent the cake from being sliced up. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and 33 other House Republicans sent a letter Feb. 25 to Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa), chairman of the Budget Committee, warning they would oppose a budget resolution cutting Bush`s request.

At a hearing of his committee last week, Hunter said reductions now "would be a mistake in the middle of a war, while our service personnel are engaged with the enemy." He and opponents of defense cuts also have pointed to aging fleets of military aircraft and vehicles, arguing that investment in new equipment must be sustained to make up for the "procurement holiday" of the 1990s that followed the Soviet Union`s collapse.

Even with the recent rise in defense spending, they note, the military`s share of the nation`s gross domestic product amounts to only 4 percent, compared with an average 6 percent in the 1980s. The military`s share of the federal budget is down as well, from an average 28 percent in the 1980s to slightly less than 20 percent in 2004.

Still, say proponents of defense cuts, the Pentagon consumes about half of all federal discretionary spending. As military spending has shot up under Bush, most other discretionary categories have remained flat or declined.

"There are many people in the other Appropriations subcommittees -- including the leaders of those subcommittees -- who believe their flat funding puts them in a very difficult position, and they`ll be taking a hard look at our defense bill to try to tap into that pool," said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee`s panel on defense.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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US Using "Terrorist" Methods in Guantanamo, Says Terry Waite

Agence France Presse

LONDON, 6 March 2004 "Agence France Presse" - Former British hostage Terry Waite, who was held in captivity by Islamic extremists for almost five years in Lebanon, said yesterday that the United States was using terrorist methods in its treatment of detainees at a prison camp in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

“You do not defeat terrorism by adopting methods of terrorists,” said Waite speaking alongside the families of British and French prisoners at the launch of a campaign for Guantanamo prisoners to be treated in accordance with international law.

“I know what it’s like to have no rights,” Waite told a London press conference the day before he and other representatives of the Guantanamo Human Rights Commission take their campaign to New York and then Washington.

“My family know what it is like to have no information about me, even whether I am alive or dead,” Waite said.

“There are many families around the world who are in this same position now because of Guantanamo Bay,” he said.

Five British detainees who are set to be freed by US authorities from Guantanamo Bay will be back in Britain next week, Maxine Fiddler, the sister of one of those to be released and also a member of the commission, said earlier yesterday.

“All that we know is that the Britons are being brought home sometime next week,” she told BBC radio, adding she had not been given a specific date for her brother’s return.

The five are among nine Britons, and a total of more than 650 prisoners, at the isolated US naval base where US President George Bush’s administration has been holding non-American suspects in its “war on terror”.

Guantanamo “detainees have been hooded, shackled and, I understand, kept in cages which in itself amounts to mental torture,” Waite said.

“There are reports that they have been subjected to very severe hardship in order to extract information. I was blindfolded, shackled, kept in solitary confinement and interrogated,” he said.

This “should not be happening in a civilized nation”, Waite said. “I have no truck with terrorism and what happened in the United States on Sept. 11 was a terrible tragedy. But I firmly believe that if you are going to deal with this problem you should follow due process,” he said.

“Some of these people may be guilty and some of them may be innocent,” he added. “None of us will know unless they follow due process.”

The delegation, which includes actors and leading human rights activists Corin and Vanessa Redgrave, novelist Margaret Drabble and family members of European detainees, will submit letters to Bush at the White House on Monday. It will also lobby US legislators and appeal to the public about the prisoners’ plight, dividing their time between New York and Washington before flying home on Thursday next week.

The team is also planning to meet Democratic Party presidential hopeful John Kerry, who has criticized the US-led invasion of Iraq. “Our message is very simple,” Corin Redgrave told journalists: “America has given the world a model of democracy which is founded on the rule of law, on fundamental human rights, including the right to fair trial, the right to silence.”

“Guantanamo offers an alternative model to the world, a model where no rights are sustained.”

Waite, 64, was held from January 1987 until November 1991 — much of the time in solitary confinement — by a shadowy group. He was kidnapped while trying to negotiate the release of Western hostages in his capacity as a special envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury.

© 2004 Agence France Presse

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-afgh…
THE WORLD
U.S. Abuses in Afghanistan Are Alleged
Human Rights Watch reports a pattern of mistreatment of prisoners by troops.
By Paul Watson
Times Staff Writer

March 8, 2004

NEW DELHI — U.S. troops in Afghanistan use excessive force during arrests, mistreat prisoners and commit other human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch charged in a report released today.

"In doing so, the United States is endangering the lives of Afghan civilians, undermining efforts to restore the rule of law in Afghanistan, and calling into question its commitment to upholding basic rights," the New York-based human rights group said in its report.

The group also said the Defense Department had not adequately explained at least three deaths of prisoners in U.S. custody, two of which were declared homicides by U.S. military doctors.

The report focuses on eastern and southeastern Afghanistan, where U.S.-led coalition forces continue to battle the ousted Taliban militia, members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network and supporters of renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

The U.S. military said it was aware of Human Rights Watch`s accusations and had already addressed some of the problems cited in the report.

"We do take them seriously," Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said from Kabul, the capital. He says U.S. troops follow the law during operations in Afghanistan.

"Our combat operations comply with the law of armed conflict and are conducted with appropriate, and strict, rules of engagement," Hilferty said.

He acknowledged that the U.S. military changed its procedures at the Bagram air base north of Kabul after the deaths of two prisoners in December.

The two prisoners were declared homicide victims by U.S. military doctors who performed autopsies. Their death certificates cited "blunt force injuries" to the legs. U.S. officials have refused to provide any details about the June 2003 death of a man in a detention facility near the eastern town of Asadabad, Human Rights Watch said.

"We investigate all credible reports, and there is an ongoing investigation into the deaths of persons under custody," Hilferty said.

But Human Rights Watch said its investigations, and those of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, have found a pattern of abuse at Bagram and at least two other detention centers, and it believes U.S. authorities have failed to stop the mistreatment of prisoners.

"There is credible evidence of beatings and other physical assaults of detainees, as well as evidence that the United States has used prolonged shackling, exposure to cold, and sleep deprivation amounting to torture or other mistreatment in violation of international law," the group said.

Militant groups in Afghanistan routinely attack civilians and aid workers and bomb nonmilitary targets such as markets. Five aid workers have been killed in the last three weeks. On Saturday, armed men on motorcycles killed a senior Afghan aid worker in southeastern Zabol province as he was driving home from work in the provincial capital, Qalat.

Human Rights Watch said militants responsible for attacks on civilians should be investigated and prosecuted. "But the activities of these groups are no excuse for U.S. violations," the report added.

The group estimates that coalition forces have detained 1,000 people in Afghanistan since 2002. Though some of the captives were involved in combat, others were "civilians with no apparent connection to ongoing hostilities," the report said.

U.S. troops have killed Afghan civilians unnecessarily by repeatedly using deadly force, including attacks from helicopter gunships, in areas under the control of their Afghan allies, the report charged. In some cases, the attacks may amount to violations of humanitarian law, the report stated.

"U.S. forces regularly use military means and methods during arrest operations in residential areas where law enforcement techniques would be more appropriate," the group said.

Hilferty responded that U.S. troops are in Afghanistan to fight a war, not for law enforcement. "Afghanistan is currently a combat zone, and forces here are engaged in combat operations against determined enemy forces," he said. "Al Qaeda and [the] Taliban have stated repeatedly that they are at war."

Human Rights Watch cited several examples of what it called excessive force, including what the group described as indiscriminate shooting to ward off potential attackers in an eastern Afghan village under the control of U.S.-allied Afghan forces.

Niaz Mohammed, a farmer sleeping next to recently harvested wheat, died after he was shot in the back and foot during a U.S. raid in July 2002 in eastern Paktia province, the rights group said. A woman in a nearby house was wounded by stray gunfire.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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RONALD BROWNSTEIN / WASHINGTON OUTLOOK
Job Shortage Is Kerry`s Best Bet to Unseat Bush From His
Ronald Brownstein

March 8, 2004

By now, the Bush family must consider jobs a four-letter word. Anemic job growth helped to sink George H.W. Bush after one term in 1992. Under his son, President George W. Bush, the employment picture is even more dismal. So dismal, in fact, that it`s the job market Democrats have most in mind when they gibe: Like father, like son, one term and he`s done.

The economy`s continuing failure to produce meaningful numbers of jobs, reinforced by other bread-and-butter concerns such as rising healthcare costs, looms as the greatest vulnerability for Bush in the general election campaign that effectively began last week.

But in seeking to survive a poor performance on jobs, this Bush has two advantages his father lacked. National security issues are more relevant today than in 1992, and John F. Kerry, the all-but-certain Democratic nominee, offers a more tempting target on values and cultural issues than Bill Clinton presented against the elder Bush.

There`s no guarantee the younger Bush can overcome economic anxiety by exploiting these other issues. But it does mean that he and Kerry face an electoral environment in which the differences from 1992 are as important as the similarities.

The biggest parallel is the gloomy job market. During the four years of the first President Bush, the economy created just 2.6 million jobs. The economy generated nearly four times as many jobs during Jimmy Carter`s four years and more than six times as many during Ronald Reagan`s eight. Those contrasts helped explain why George H.W. Bush was out of a job after the 1992 election.

Job growth zoomed again under Bush`s successor. During Clinton`s eight years, the economy generated 22.7 million jobs — the most created under any single president since the 1920s, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But job growth has stalled again under the second President Bush. With the government report Friday that the economy produced just 21,000 new jobs in February, total employment is down by more than 2.2 million since he took office. Barring a miraculous recovery, Bush is fated to become the first president since Herbert Hoover to suffer a net loss of jobs over a full presidential term.

There aren`t many inviolate rules in American politics, but in an election year it`s safe to say no president wants his name plausibly placed in the same sentence as Herbert Hoover`s.

The White House blames the meager performance largely on the slowdown it inherited from Clinton (job growth was still positive, but slower, in the second half of 2000 than the first). But the job loss has persisted long after the recession officially ended in fall 2001.

Fewer Americans were working in January 2003 than in January 2002. Even fewer Americans were working in January 2004 than in January 2003. Manufacturing employment has declined in every single month of the Bush presidency.

These are not numbers that scream four more years.

Bush supporters argue that it`s unfair to blame or credit a president too much for the economy`s performance. Yet Americans have been doing exactly that for more than 200 years.

Many Democrats agree Kerry has to flesh out his own ideas for stimulating job growth (which now center on tax credits for manufacturers, grants to states, a tougher line on trade and reducing employers` healthcare costs).

But even if Kerry holds up a blank piece of paper as his recovery plan, it will be tough for Bush to win an argument about the economy unless job growth revives.

The difference from 1992 is that this Bush has a better chance of surviving even if he loses the economic argument. One key reason: National security is much more relevant to voters today than it was then.

Americans may or may not accept Bush`s contention that we are living in an ongoing state of war that makes him a "war president." But there`s no doubt that Americans see terrorism as a continuing threat. No one felt that way about Iraq after the first Gulf War in 1991.

As a result, voters are likely to place much more weight than in 1992 on the candidates` credentials as commander in chief. Democrats hope that Kerry`s record in Vietnam will blunt that advantage for Bush. But credibility on national security is still likely to help this Bush more than it did the first.

Compared to his father, this Bush may have an even wider advantage on values issues. Against Clinton, the elder Bush tried mightily to replicate his successful strategy from 1988, when he portrayed Democrat Michael S. Dukakis as outside the cultural mainstream.

But Clinton offered few targets. He supported the death penalty, insisted that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare" and backed work requirements for welfare recipients.

By neutralizing the values issues, Clinton kept the campaign focused on the economic concerns where his opponent was weakest.

That won`t be nearly as easy for Kerry. He opposes the death penalty in all cases except terrorism and says he will only appoint Supreme Court justices who explicitly support the right to abortion. Kerry also opposed legislation Clinton signed to ensure that states need not recognize gay marriages performed in other states.

So far, Kerry has parried Republican thrusts on these issues mostly by dismissing them as a diversion from the real — i.e., economic — problems facing the country.

Even many Democrats recognize Kerry will need a better response. "If this comes down to a campaign between Kerry … on the economy … versus George Bush arguing social issues and values, then Bush wins," says Leon Panetta, Clinton`s White House chief of staff.

Discontent over jobs remains Kerry`s best hope of taking the one belonging to Bush. But without convincing answers on national security and values, come November Kerry may have more in common than he`d like with all those Americans unable to land the jobs they want.

*

Ronald Brownstein`s column appears every Monday. See current and past columns on The Times` website at http://www.latimes.com/brownstein .


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Gibt es intelligente Minen? Minen mit Batterie und einem Ablaufdatum.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-garwin8…
COMMENTARY
Bush Sets the Right Course in Control of Land Mines
By Richard L. Garwin
Richard L. Garwin, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, chaired the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board in the Clinton administration.

March 8, 2004

As a physicist who has spent a half-century working for national security and arms control, I am dismayed by many acts of the Bush administration, including its dangerous opposition to the nuclear test ban. But the administration deserves credit for one thing that is very right: its new policy on land mines.

Once laid, land mines explode when they sense a target. The key to their military usefulness is that only they can provide defense throughout the duration of a battle or even a war. But that is also the key to their humanitarian menace. Many mines remain active indefinitely. Long after the battle has ended, they may destroy civilian lives, limbs, land and livelihood.

But mines need not remain dangerous. They can contain timing mechanisms that will cause them to self-destruct after a set period, and they can be powered by batteries, so that, if self-destruction fails, the battery will die and the mine will be deactivated. Most mines now in U.S. stockpiles are designed to self-destruct four hours after emplacement; some can be set for as long as 30 days, the maximum for such mines allowed under the Convention on Conventional Weapons, which the U.S. has ratified. The reliability of the self-destruction mechanisms is high: In more than 65,000 tests, no activated U.S. mine has failed to self-destruct.

The essence of Bush`s new policy is that after 2010, the U.S. will no longer use any persistent land mines — that is, mines that do not self-destruct or self-deactivate — and after 2004, the United States will not use nonmetallic mines, which are difficult to detect. The measures cover not only antipersonnel land mines but also those that target vehicles.

The United States is the first major nation to take these humanitarian steps, which make it the world`s moral leader in land mine policy.

Nevertheless, some have criticized the new policy because it doesn`t include joining the so-called Mine Ban Treaty. In fact, there is no Mine Ban Treaty. This misnomer is sometimes applied to the 1997 Ottawa Convention, which bans antipersonnel mines but freely permits all types of anti-vehicle mines.

Dividing the land mine universe this way makes little sense. Decades after a conflict has ended, persistent anti-vehicle mines continue to kill people in buses and trucks. By causing road closures, they prevent refugees from returning to their lands and keep humanitarian assistance from getting to where it is needed. Currently, for example, 70% of the main roads in Angola are blocked by anti-vehicle mines.

Thus, there are now two partial mine bans: the Ottawa Convention, which permits only anti-vehicle mines, and the new U.S. policy that permits only self- destructing mines.

To compare them, imagine two minefields: one laid by the U.S. and one by, say, Belgium, a signatory of the Ottawa Convention. Both are deadly weapons of war. The U.S. minefield contains antipersonnel and anti-vehicle mines that self-destruct in 30 days or less.

The other contains anti-vehicle mines that will be active indefinitely, and the Ottawa Convention also permits it to contain some anti-vehicle mines that are nonmetallic and that will explode if a person accidentally kicks one and turns it over.

Three months later, the U.S. minefield will be perfectly safe. But after three months, or three years or three decades, the Ottawa-compliant field will be as dangerous as the day it was laid. Clearly, the Bush plan is more humanitarian than the Ottawa Convention.

Why not also join the Ottawa Convention? That would do little more to reduce post-combat civilian casualties, but because it would ban the use of all antipersonnel mines, it would gravely increase the risk to our ground forces during combat, and to those civilians they may be sent to protect.

The Bush White House has done the right thing, setting a course the world would do well to follow. The U.S. plan is what the Ottawa Convention should have been.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 08. März 2004, 13:35
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,289572,00.html
Irakische Verfassung

US-Rückzug auf Raten

Der Irak hat eine Übergangsverfassung. Die 25 Mitglieder des irakischen Regierungsrates bekannten sich mit ihren Unterschriften einmütig zu dem vor einer Woche ausgehandelten Entwurf. Damit geben die Besatzungsmächte erstmals einen Teil ihrer Macht ab.

Bagdad - Ein Haus sei von einer Rakete getroffen worden, teilte das US-Militär mit. Genauere Angaben über Opfer und Schäden sind noch nicht bekannt. Wegen der Zeremonie herrschten in Bagdad scharfe Sicherheitsvorkehrungen. Bei einem Angriff von Unbekannten starben heute bereits in Falludscha drei Sudanesen, drei weitere wurden verletzt. Wie Augenzeugen berichteten, griffen bewaffnete Männer die Zivilfahrzeuge an, in denen die Sudanesen Versorgungsgüter für das US-Militär in der rund 70 Kilometer westlich von Bagdad gelegenen Stadt transportierten.

Der amtierende Ratspräsident Mohammed Bahr al-Ullum sprach während der Unterzeichnung der Übergangsverfassung von einem "historischen Moment, entscheidend für die Geschichte des Irak". Zuvor hatte er die Ratsmitglieder aufgefordert, die Interessen des Landes über die eigenen Interessen zu stellen. "Die Welt erwartet von uns, dass wir unserem Land einen Dienst erweisen." Die Zeremonie fand im Kongresszentrum in Bagdad statt.

Mit den Unterschriften der Iraker hat Washington nicht länger die absolute Kontrolle über die politischen Entscheidungen im Irak. Die US-Regierung muss immer stärker irakischen Politikern und Geistlichen weichen. Dadurch werden die Pläne für eine weitere Stationierung der alliierten Truppen in Zweifel gezogen.

Der mächtigste schiitische Geistliche des Landes, Großajatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, hatte erst gestern seinen Widerstand gegen die Übergangsverfassung aufgegeben. Noch am Freitag hatte er die geplante Unterzeichnung mit seinen Vorbehalten gegen zwei Klauseln verhindert. Auf sein Drängen hin wandten sich fünf schiitische Ratsmitglieder insbesondere gegen die im Verfassungstext verankerten Autonomierechte der Kurden. Weder Kurden noch Sunniten zeigten sich jedoch zu einer Änderung des Textes bereit. Schließlich blieben die Klauseln unverändert.

In Washington und Bagdad betonen US-Regierungsvertreter, Sistanis Einspruch beweise das Funktionieren der Demokratie im Irak. "Wenn eine Gesellschaft demokratische Institutionen aufbaut, sind Rückschläge nichts Ungewöhnliches", erklärte der Sprecher des Weißen Hauses, Scott McClellan. "Wichtig ist, dass die irakischen Politiker frei über solche Themen sprechen können, ohne Bedrohung von Seiten eines repressiven Regimes. Und so bewegt sich die Demokratie im Irak vorwärts."

Nach dem Entwurf hat die kurdische Minderheit nunmehr die Möglichkeit, die endgültige Verfassung in einem Referendum zu verhindern. Demnach würden Änderungen am derzeitigen Dokument scheitern, wenn zwei Drittel der Bevölkerung in drei Provinzen dies ablehnten. Die Kurden, die die drei nördlichen Provinzen des Irak kontrollieren, wollten damit sicherstellen, dass ihre Autonomierechte auch künftig nicht eingeschränkt werden. Sistani beklagte jedoch, die Klausel räume einer Minderheit ein unfaires Vetorecht ein.

Schiiten legen Basis für die Zukunft

Aus Verhandlungskreisen verlautete, der Streit habe die Beziehungen zwischen den Volksgruppen im Verwaltungsrat schwer beschädigt. In dem Gremium sind 13 Schiiten, fünf Kurden, fünf sunnitische Araber, ein Christ und ein Turkmene vertreten. Die Übergangsverfassung wird bis Ende 2005 in Kraft bleiben. Dann soll in einem Referendum über eine endgültige Verfassung entschieden werden.

An der feierlichen Unterzeichnung nahmen auch der US-Zivilverwalter Paul Bremer sowie der britische Irak-Beauftragte Jeremy Greenstock teil. Bremer sprach von einem beispiellosen Dokument in der irakischen Geschichte, weil erstmals Bürgerrechte gesichert seien und ein Rechtsstaat verankert werde.

Mit der Unterzeichnung legen die Schiiten schon jetzt die Basis für einen postamerikanischen Irak. Sie stellen 60 Prozent der Bevölkerung und sind zuversichtlich, nach der nächsten Wahl die Regierung dominieren zu können. Aus diesem Grund haben sie wenig Interesse daran, die Machtübergabe zu verzögern. Die schiitische Führung will sicherstellen, dass jetzt gefällte Entscheidungen ihre Einflussmöglichkeiten in der Zukunft nicht behindern. Sie ließen sich deshalb auf einen Streit über die Interimsverfassung ein, die wahrscheinlich als Grundlage für die Ausarbeitung einer dauerhaften Verfassung dienen wird.

Pentagon kontrolliert Wiederaufbau

Das US-Verteidigungsministerium setzte sich unterdessen im internen Machtkampf mit dem Außenministerium durch und bekommt nun weitgehend die Kontrolle über 18,4 Milliarden Dollar für den Aufbau des Irak. Dies teilte ein US-Vertreter gestern in Bagdad mit. Aufbauprojekte, die seit einem Monat auf Eis gelegen hätten, würden nun in dieser Woche in Angriff genommen.

Das Hilfspaket sieht 2300 Bauprojekte in den kommenden vier Jahren vor. Das Außenministerium ist dabei nur für rund zehn Prozent zuständig. Mit der Entscheidung bleibe das Pentagon auch nach dem Ende der Besatzung des Irak maßgeblich zuständig für den Wiederaufbau des Landes, hieß es weiter.


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© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

Rev. Rich Lang: `George Bush and the rise of Christian Fascism`
Posted on Monday, March 08 @ 10:10:27 EST
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By Rev. Rich Lang

The Imperial Presidency

The men who wrote the Constitution of the United States knew that if power accrued into the hands of an elite the experiment of democracy (power spread out into the realm of the people) would be over. So they created a system of checks and balances which blocked access to any one person, or any one special interest or elite gaining too much power over others. Thus our executive, legislative and judicial branches of government "balanced" each other. The media was yet another "check" on the accrual of too much power, as was the Bill of Rights, and to some extent the Church (or churches). The system wasn`t perfect but it kept alive the possibility of true democracy. It kept alive the dream that one day "we the people" could live in a peaceful commonwealth where every person has what they need to survive and thrive.

That dream died in December 2000 when the checks and balances of our Constitution collapsed and George Bush was inserted into the Presidency of the United States. September 11, 2001 furthered the atrophying of democracy handing the country into the hands of an emerging Corporate (and I say Christian) Fascism.



Fascism meaning the collapse of diverse spheres of power into one. Since that time we have witnessed, and have been unable to prevent, the emergence of an Imperial Presidency that has the unrestricted power to declare war against any country it chooses. The Imperial Presidency has brought to end the Constitutional mandate that `ONLY CONGRESS` has the authority to declare war. It has furthered weakened international law and undermined the potential of the United Nations to spread democracy throughout the earth.

The Imperial Presidency has also gained unrestricted potential to round up American citizens incarcerating them in military brigs or concentration camps for unlimited amounts of time. The presidency can keep the accused from ever again communicating with friends, families, and attorneys, simply on the certification that the incarcerated are "terrorists," as he has done with Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi. The Presidency may also now kill American citizens abroad solely on the basis of naming the one killed "a terrorist". Just ask the family and friends of Ahmed Hijazi, anAmerican killed with a U.S.-fired missile in Yemen. This nullifies the Constitutional right: "no person shall be denied life, liberty or property without due process of law."

Ominous signs are all around us concerning the accrual of power into the hands of the Presidency. If Mr. Bush stays in office I think our future will continue to witness shrinking political rights, financial collapse and endless war. Part of the power and seduction of this administration emerges from its diabolical manipulation of Christian rhetoric. I want to flesh out the ideology of the Christian Fascism that Mr. Bush articulates. It is a form of Christianity that is the mirror opposite of what Jesus embodied. It is, indeed, the materialization of the spirit of antichrist: a perversion of Christian faith and practice.

Christian Fascism

This country, like it or not, is overwhelmingly dominated by the ideology of the Christian story. It is not so much that our founders were all Christians. Rather, they lived in an atmosphere which was visioned through the lens of Christian thought and rhetoric. What they saw was that America had become the New Israel (the new Promised Land) of God. America was a benevolent nation seeking only the good of all. Our wealth is a blessing given to us as a sign that we are a "chosen, special people" whose larger meaning is to help the world into an era of peace, prosperity and justice. Every politician draws on this "civil religion story" of benevolence which gives authority to the politicians ambition and agenda. Another way of saying this is: every nation needs sacred legitimation. It needs the authority of transcendence: of a story larger than itself ... a story that connects past with present and future. An Empire needs an even broader story: one that connects with cosmic and/or historical redemption and new creation.

Martin Luther King understood this sacred American civil religion and was able to wed it brilliantly with the prophetic religious teachings of the Bible. He drew upon Biblical narratives which limited the power and authority of the elite while calling for economic redistribution of wealth. He drew upon teachings rooted in the personal morality of nonviolence and compassion. George Bush, on the other hand, also understands this sacred American `civic gospel` and has brilliantly merged it with Biblical Holiness and Holy War traditions. These traditions call for the emergence of the Righteous Warrior who will cleanse the land of its impurity. These traditions are rooted in the personal morality of righteous zeal and obedience.

For example:

Mr. Bush consistently sends signals to his right wing religious base. In the 2003 State of the Union he exhorted: "there`s power, wonder working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people". It`s a phrase from a well known Communion hymn "there`s power, wonder working power in the blood of the lamb". Bush brings together the holiness zeal of Christian evangelicalism with patriotic fundamentalism. The core belief system of this `civic gospel` goes something like this: The United States was founded as a Christian nation with free enterprise as the only economic system truly compatible with Christian beliefs. These religious values are today under attack in America. The danger is that without faith in God America will lose its blessing. Therefore, the government needs to act to protect the nation`s religious heritage.

Mr. Bush`s teachings on terrorism: "you are with us or against us" cements for the hearer the apocalyptic world of good versus evil. There can be no neutral ground. You have to make a decision. Patriotism is now all or nothing: it is either total agreement or a slippery slope towards treason. In the Church you come to Jesus alone for salvation. In the state you obey the God-annointed leader and are thereby secured.

Renana Brooks writes (The Nation June 24, 2003: Bush Dominates A Nation of Victims):

"Bush is a master at inducing learned helplessness in the electorate. He uses pessimistic language that creates fear and disables people from feeling they can solve their problems. In his September 20, 2001 speech to Congress on the 9/11 attacks, he chose to increase people`s sense of vulnerability: `Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. ... I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight ... Be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat.` (Subsequent terror alerts .. have maintained and expanded this fear of unknown, sinister enemies.)"

The terror threat itself can only be combated with increases in military force, domestic security and curtailment of civil rights through Patriot Acts. There are no other options nor any dialogue or debate that would create an alternative way to deal with terrorism.

3.) Mr. Bush certainly sees himself as a Messiah figure. Listen to his language after 9-11: " I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people." Or, in his 2003 State of the Union speech: "I will defend the freedom and security of the American people". He has become the nation. He is its embodiment. According to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, - Bush told him: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them." This is Biblical language ... it isn`t political script. This is Bush`s soul language. He understands himself as a man with a Divine mission. It also means that for him leadership is not "representing the people" rather leadership means transcending the will of the people. George Bush already knows the truth before the evidence is presented. He is guided by God and must blaze the trial even if the people are reluctant.

Iraq, for example, was a necessary war whether or not Saddam had nukes. Saddam, for Bush, was a bad guy who tried to kill "my dad". The war, for Bush, was holy and justified and necessary. Purging evil is necessary in the Holiness/Holy War tradition of the Bible. The righteous will purge evil but the unrighteous will be consumed by it.

Like all religions the Bible has various narratives within its pages: Jesus drew on the prophetic traditions that called upon the people to change their way of life even as it critiqued and called upon the elites to decentralize their power. Jesus role modeled a lifestyle of redemptive suffering on behalf of others. Mr. Bush, however, draws on traditions that call for purity and cleansing. It is a language of hostility towards enemies and a strident call for obedience. It calls forth a lifestyle of the RIGHTEOUS ONE who will purge evil from the world through sacred violence. This religious rhetoric, which merges Holiness Christianity with Imperial Americanism, is "in sync" with a growing new movement in theology called Christian Reconstructionism (or Dominion Theology).

Reconstructed Fascism

First and most basic is that Dominion Theology wants to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern according to a very literal and peculiar interpretation of Biblical law. The disciples of Jesus are to have "dominion" over all of creation. It is the role of the Church to rule over the wicked and bring them into the obedience of faith.

In a "reconstructed society" democracy would be heresy. The division between sacred and secular would be abolished. A new insistence on conformity to moral rules would replace the pluralism we now know. The purpose of the Federal government would be to enforce morality through military and police functions. Society would be regulated by a theocratic elite: in the words of Pat Robertson: "just as the Supreme Court justices place a hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution, so they should also put a hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

We see this at play in the leanings of Supreme Court Justices Scalia and Thomas. Against the common assumption that we are a secular state Mr. Scalia has said (in a FIRST THINGS: May 2002 ) "government ... derives its moral authority from God. Government is the minister of God with powers to revenge, to execute wrath, including wrath by the sword."

Scalia is drawing from Romans 13. If taken literally the implication of those verses would prohibit any resistance against the policies of a government. No more peaceful demonstrations (the government would be justified to do what it did to those recently in Miami and earlier here in Seattle). Even writings of dissent and opposition could be labeled treasonous (this is part of Ashcroft`s passion for Patriot Acts and other warnings not to say too much).

Scalia (and many of the conservative judges placed in Federal Courts since Reagan) believe in interpreting the Constitution in its original intent. As Scalia has said (same article as above) "the constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead. It means today not what current society ..thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted." So, as Katherine Yurica points out in her article THE DESPOILING OF AMERICA:

.. since the death penalty was clearly permitted when the 8th Amendment (which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments) was adopted and at that time the death penalty was applied for all felonies --- including, for example, the felony of horse-thieving, "so it is clearly permitted today".

All a willing Dominionist Republican controlled congress need do to extend the death penalty to those people who practice witchcraft, adultery, homosexuality, heresy, etc. is to find those particular death penalty laws existing as of November 3, 1791 and re-instate them.

Scalia further believes that democracy fosters civil disobedience and is therefore a hindrance to the greater good of law and order. Our Federal Court system is being packed with these types of Judges ... Bush himself will try to fill Court vacancies with these type of judges.

Secondly: The good society according to Dominion Theology has men on top. Society would be reconstructed into a strong patriarchy that would provide the social pressure ensuring conformity. Women would find their true function as supportive wives, mothers and homemakers. Those outside this "patriarchal modality" would be exterminated. (Today the Gay marriage movement is a true threat to establishing a patriarchal society. This administration has no choice but to make this a MAJOR issue in the coming election.).

Thirdly: Purity becomes very important. There is only one right way to see the world. It is therefore of fundamental importance to control education in all spheres of culture. We see this in the Bush administration`s approach to testing in schools; in his massive discounting of Global warming and in his repeated refusals to engage in open, diversified conversation about matters of importance: whether it be Cheney`s Energy Task Force, the investigation of 9/11; or the creation of an "in house" intelligence team which created evidence for the Iraqi war after the other governmental agencies couldn`t provide it. The Bush team KNEW the answers before the evidence was even accumulated.

Fourth: Dominion Theology denies history and spurns the modern. It is not a conservative (conserving) movement. Although it might appeal to a nostalgic and mythical past it is primarily focused on a radically, revolutionized future of utopia. It assumes that the end will justify the means and it is moral to work as "stealth agents" fooling the pagans. It sees the world as engaged in spiritual warfare pitting "good Christians" against everybody else. This HOLY WAR and HOLINESS rhetoric is foundational in Mr. Bush`s worldview.

Now if you think that this talk is bit "hyper" on my part ... that I`m Chicken Little squawking in the wind ... what then do you make of these Texas Republican platform positions of 2002 ???

"The Republican Party of Texas reaffirms the United States of America is a Christian nation.

Government: We reclaim freedom of religious expression in public on government property, and freedom from government interference. Support government display of Ten Commandments.

... Dispel the "myth" of separation of church and state.

ECONOMY: Abolish the dollar in favor of the gold standard. Abolish the IRS. Eliminate income tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, capital gains, corporate income tax, payroll tax and property tax. Repeal minimum wage law ...Gradually phase out Social security tax for a system of private pensions.

UNITED NATIONS: We immediately rescind our membership in , as well as financial and military contributions to the United Nations ... we should evict the United Nations...

FAMILY: We believe that traditional marriage is a legal and moral commitment between a man and a woman. We recognize that the family is the foundational unit of a healthy society and consists of those related by blood, marriage or adoption. The family is responsible for its own welfare, education, moral training, conduct and property.

EDUCATION: Since Secular Humanism is recognized by the United States Supreme Court as a religion ... Secular Humanism should be subjected to the same state and federal laws as any other recognized religion.

ENVIRONMENT: Oppose the myth of global warming. Reaffirm the belief in the fundamental right of an individual to use property without governmental interference.

This coming election will not be decided because of political policy. It will not be decided in a debate over free markets versus fair markets; tax cuts or no tax cuts, Patriot Act or no Patriot Act; military draft or no draft. None of these issues will determine the election because the candidates are all for free markets, tax cuts, domestic security and a strong global military presence. The election will be determined by the candidate who can embody the deeply felt, often unarticulated religious yearnings of the populace. Yearnings such as "who will save us, secure us, lead us??? who will connect us with a power greater than the terrors of the night?" Bush speaks this language. Democrats are stuck in political nuance. Or, in other words, Democrats cannot speak the language of Martin Luther King who understood that social transformation requires a transcendent authority. And it is a vision of transformation, not nuance, that gives people courage to risk alternative paths to violence.

The problem comes down to this: Democrats, liberals, and social progressives have simply not grasped how afraid, insecure and how deeply in despair the populace is. They keep speaking as if tinkering with the system is a vision that can win the day. What Bush and Rove, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Pearls, Abrams and Bolton, DeLay and Rice etc, have clearly understood is that truth is perception. Image is EVERYTHING! Unfortunately, the inner person of America today is a hollowed out consumer who lacks the will power, stamina and imagination to do anything more than be overwhelmed by appearances. Therefore, a politics of crisis, a politics of fear will keep us locked into a state of conformity.

Apocalyptic Fascism

Fueling this politics of fear is yet another theological worldview of crisis and insecurity. Apocalyptic theology is booming !!! Drawing from the Holiness/Holy War traditions of the Bible it currently dominates the mass media expression of Christian faith from which Bush draws his strength. It is a theology of despair that has given up on the possibilities of redemption.

One of the most popular fiction series making the rounds these days is the LEFT BEHIND series written by Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins. Multiple millions of people are reading these books which fictionalize the end of life as we know it. It used to be that the Church could control people through the fear of eternal damnation. Today it is through fear of the future. The theology is basically this: The Bible is a code book that when rightly interpreted reveals that we are living at the end of history. History is scripted and is about to come to a catastrophic conclusion. The only hope is to accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior so that you can be "saved" from the future apocalypse. God will "snatch you up" (Rapture) right before a seven year series of horrible events that will see the rise of Antichrist and the rebuilding of the Jewish temple. There will be world war with most of humanity dying. At that point Jesus will return to restore law and order. This theology of despair "fits" our current culture of powerlessness and fear. From SARS to weapons of mass destruction to the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict, to ecological collapse, the whole world seems to be on a "no exit" slide into an end times abyss. The theology of despair is very seductive and it is shaping the spirituality of millions of Christians today.

It has, at least, five political implications that affect each one of us here today. FIRST: Israel is to be exalted and defended no matter what they do to the Palestinian people. They are God`s chosen people and must reside in their Biblically anointed Land for the "end time clock" to tick to its final minute. Israel has a Biblical mandate to conquer and control all of the land from the Nile River to the Euphrates. Behind the politics of oil lie the religious passion to fulfill God`s will: Syria must fall.

Secondly: institutions like the United Nations are not to be trusted because they are tools of the Antichrist. The Antichrist is thought of (not as a spirituality or ideology) but as a personal embodiment of evil. The Antichrist will be a living person who will come to power at the end of history and proclaim himself to be god on earth. The theory has it that his power will be generated from within a coalition of nations. Thus ... America, as God`s chosen nation, will need to go it alone so as not to be duped by Antichrist. Our destiny is to take the gospel to all the nations: a benevolent gospel of security and salvation for all.

Thirdly: since the world is passing away the environment is not of great importance. There is no need to worry about issues of sustainability because the world is in its final countdown. Part of the unconcern towards global warming and other ecological crisis is the religious belief that we aren`t going to be around in 100 years. We`re in the end times now ... every moment is merely preparation for eternity. Whether Bushhimself believes this or not is irrelevant. This is the religious worldview of those who exalt him and the voter-bloc to which he plays. For Bush to act for sustainability would require a major shift in his religious narrative. ... As an aside this past summer the National Park Service was instructed to approve the display of religious symbols and Bible verses, as well as the sale of creationist books at the Grand Canyon National Park. In December 2003 the Park Service was ordered to develop a "more balanced" version of an 8 minute video shown at the Lincoln Memorial Visitor Center. Conservative Christians wanted the removal of footage of gay rights, pro choice and anti-war demonstrations replacing it with footage of Christian rallies and pro-war demonstrations.

Fourth: Apocalyptic theology believes that Jesus dying for my sins is far more important than the teachings of Jesus. We see this in the recent movie PASSION OF THE CHRIST. What this creates is a spirituality that can overlook the teachings of Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount is re-framed as an impossible this-worldly ethic. Teachings about nonviolence, economic redistribution, compassion toward those who are thought of as sinners and resistance to injustice are all discounted. Recently, the Governor of Alabama in a fit of religious zeal wanted to take the economic teachings of Jesus seriously: he tried to reform his state to benefit the poor. The Christian Coalition led the charge against such thinking and foiled his efforts.

Fifth: a leader who loves Jesus is to be followed as God`s man for the hour. The Christian leader is God`s shepherd over the American flock. When Bush, who sees himself as a messianic figure anointed by God, decided on running for the Presidency he called a group of evangelical Pastors together announcing to them "I have heard the call" and then received from them the "laying on of hands" which corresponds to divine ordination for the task ahead. On September 14, 2001 he stated: "our responsibility before history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil". He then launched the crusade Operation Infinite Freedom against Afghanistan. Yet other messianic statements from Bush:

"History has called America to action. ... The great hope of our time, and the great hope of every time, now depends on us." ....

"We must also remember our calling as a blessed nation to make the world better ... and confound the designs of evil men."

"Our nation has been chosen by God and commissioned by history, to be a model of justice before the world."

*** According to Vice-President Cheney: America "has the duty to act with force to construct a world in the image of the United States."

In return for this messianic leadership evangelical Christians have poured out an annointing of prayer. During the Afghanistan crusade thousands of "Presidential Circles of Prayer" and "Wheels of Prayer" were organized on the Internet, running 24 hours a day.
WHEEL OF PRAYER FOR OUR SOLDIERS

Lord hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us.

Bless them and their families for the altruistic actions they are performing

for us in our time of need. This I ask in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen
This prayer was so popular and was hit so often that the website crashed within days.

Pastor Charles Stanley distributed among Marines as they entered into combat thousands of pamphlets entitled "Duty of a Christian in Time of War". With the pamphlet went a card instructing them to sign and send directly to Mr. Bush. The card says: "I have committed to pray for you, your family and your Administration." Specific prayers for the President were included for each day.

CONCLUSION:

The point I`m trying to make is that we are not dealing simply with politics when it comes to the Bush administration. The progressive left, which often pays little attention to Christianity, and the moderate middle, which thinks "these things will balance out"; will be making a huge mistake if they overlook the religious ideology at the core of Mr. Bush personally and the movement he represents. And we are talking about a "movement" (a movement of `the people` not just the elites). We are seeing today the emergence of a "fascist movement". It is bankrolled and organized by Corporations, and articulated through the ideology of neo-conservatism. But the troops come out of the right wing church. And that church, drawing upon the Holiness/Holy War Biblical narratives of Apocalyptic-Dominionism theology, is growing in this country. This is not a battle between intellectual and institutional elites. It is far more intimate than that. It`s a battle in our homes, our families, friendships, neighborhoods and within our faith communities. Let me make a rather audacious prophecy: WHOEVER CONTROLS THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE WILL CONTROL THE FUTURE OF THIS NATION. In other words it`s the vision of Pat Robertson or Martin Luther King.

When Dave Korten (author of When Corporations Rule the World) says that we need a "new story"; he is talking about needing a transcendent authority in which we root our political culture. Human beings cannot live in societal form without a sacred narrative. Neither anarchy nor atheism can construct a house that will hold our future. The Republicans know this well. But the Democrats seem clueless.

What we need is a movement of spiritual justice. We need the language of those who can wed America`s civil religion with Biblical prophetic narrative. We need to expand that language so that it can include the language and stories that are emerging from the antiwar, fair trade and human rights movements. Together this language can form a unique new narrative that has the power to inspire imagination and courage. A language that can call forth a new coalition powerful enough to envision a new and better world. It will be a language that articulates "we are the ones we are looking for". A language that proclaims "God with us in our diversity" not God above us threatening wrath and ruin.

Rev. Rich Lang is pastor of the Trinity United Methodist Church in Seattle, Washington

[Joerver]

Monday, March 08, 2004
War News for March 8, 2004
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
Bring ‘em on: “Green Zone” again under fire in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Baghdad police station mortared; two Iraqi policemen, three civilians wounded.

Bring `em on: Local councilman assassinated in Mosul.

Bring `em on: Insurgents attempt to assassinate police chief in Khaldiyah.

CENTCOM reports one US soldier died from a non-combat-related medical condition.

Report from Baghdad. “Iraq is a country filled with anger, and poor planning by U.S. leaders has put American troops in a bad spot, a correspondent for Time magazine told high school students here Wednesday. ‘It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,’ Phil Zabriskie told the students. ‘It is easily the most unpleasant place I’ve been. There is anger everywhere.’

Rummy gets control of Iraqi reconstruction budget. “After a power struggle with the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon has won control over most of an $18.4 billion aid package for Iraq, and rebuilding delayed for a month will start this week, U.S. officials in Baghdad said Sunday.” (Second item in this news round-up.)

Ahmad Chalabi and Lieutenant AWOL’s rush to war. “The alternative intelligence, marshalled to make the case for war, came overwhelmingly from Chalabi`s INC and their carefully coached ‘sources’. Among the INC allegations that have not been borne out were that Hussein had built mobile biological weapons facilities, that he was rapidly rebuilding his nuclear weapons programme and that he had trained Muslim warriors at a camp south of Baghdad. Now defence officials acknowledge that the defectors` tales were ‘shaky’ at best…To give wider credibility to this dubious narrative, Chalabi planted stories in mainstream newspapers such as the New York Times, stories that were then quoted as independent corroborative evidence by administration officials.”

British occupation policy appears more effective than Bremer’s. “US soldiers` heavy-handed methods in Fallujah, Ramadi and other Sunni cities has fueled support for the insurgency in those areas. Tribal leaders have been subjected to humiliating arrests in front of their tribesmen, hooded and handcuffed. US troops also were accused of putting their boots on the back of men`s heads as they lay face down.”

Italian pilots face charges for refusing to fly in Iraq.

Commentary

Opinion: "Twice Murtha, in the House, voted to back invasions of Iraq by a president named Bush. Today, recently back from a return inspection visit there, Murtha is upset and angry about Iraq, its future and the well-being of this nation’s military men and women their civilian leadership have stationed there."

Analysis: It was very easy for the lone superstar to start a war. But what followed from that war proved largely beyond anyone`s control. Bush is hoping to stem the tide of deleterious spillover effects from his decision to invade Iraq for his prospects of reelection. But the Middle East has proven through centuries that it operates purely on the basis of its own logic, or, as some say, the lack thereof.


86-43-04. Pass it on.




# posted by yankeedoodle : 3:00 AM

[Joerver]

_____________

[Joerver]

`It`s the same old Iraq, just a tiny bit worse than it was last month`

by Robert Fisk

08 March 2004 "The Independent" - Each time I return to Iraq, it`s the same, like finding a razor blade in a bar of chocolate. The moment you start to believe that "New Iraq" might work - just - you get the proof that it`s the same old Iraq, just a little tiny bit worse than it was last month.

At the border yesterday morning it was all smiles. Passport formalities would be over in minutes. But $10 (£5.40) would help. It did. That`s what we used to do under Saddam - they are the same Iraqi officials, just not up to their previous standards of venality - but soon, no doubt, we`ll be up to $15, or more.

The bombed road bridge on the Baghdad highway has been repaired - despite the murder of the owner of the company rebuilding it five weeks ago. There`s a three-mile convoy of new American troops humming westwards along the motorway - you can tell the new units because their Humvees and armour are forest green; the invasion tanks are in desert yellow - and all seems well until we stop to chat to the sheikh of the little mosque by the last petrol station before Ramadi. He says there are three "Ali Baba" cars waiting. They crashed into a civilian car and sent it spinning off the highway into the desert. We drive on at 110mph.

The radio - BBC Arabic service, Iranian radio in Arabic, anything rather than the one run by the occupation authorities - announces a settlement with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani over the constitution that`s supposed to be signed this morning. Iraq`s leading Shia cleric doesn`t want the Kurds to have a veto over the permanent constitution and wants more Shias on a five-person council. Then a Shia on the Governing Council - where everyone is handpicked by the Americans - speaks those words that always fill me with dread in the Middle East because they always turn out to be wrong. "We have reached an agreement," he said. "There is going to be very good news very soon." Well, we shall see.

Baghdad is yellow and grey under a fierce wind and, with sinking heart, I see more walls. The massive concrete ramparts around Paul Bremer`s consular headquarters, the hotels of westerners, of the Governing Council, of every American barracks are familiar. Now government ministries are to be hidden behind concrete. And woe betide those Iraqis who work for the Americans as translators and fail to heed warnings about "collaboration". Three of them ignored the threat. One, a Christian, was shot dead in her car in the Zeyouna quarter, a second wounded with her, their driver also was shot dead.

I arrive at my dingy hotel and find that yet another translator is dead. He worked for an American newspaper and was driving home with his mother and two-year-old daughter when gunmen with silencers shot all three of them. There`s a rumour that this was a revenge killing. So while we are outraged, we all secretly and cruelly hope it`s revenge, not a collaborator killing, that has contaminated our hotel.

I lean over my balcony and watch four miserable Iraqis from the Civil Defence patrolling the road below. One of them is lame. The last man, the lame one, is walking backwards and staring at the rooftops.

Groceries in Karrada Kharaj, to a vast emporium crammed with the new Iraqi rich, middle class; the poor can`t afford this place. There is fresh Danish butter, Austrian fruit juice, Perrier by the gallon. And then there are the cigars. Churchills at a quarter of the price of a European duty free, Cohibas at less than a third of their cost. Are these part of the untaxed imports with which the occupation authorities are trying to encourage the economy? Or part of the loot from Saddam`s stores? In the evening, gunfire ripples across Jadriya, near the university - I hear it away as I write - and two American helicopters are thundering up in the darkness. I listen to this unreported battle, glad I didn`t buy a bar of chocolate.

* At least 10 rockets exploded last night near the Baghdad headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority. There were no reports of casualties. The Katyusha rockets were fired towards the Convention Centre and the al-Rashid Hotel. The vehicle from which the rockets were fired blew up.

© 2004 The Independent

[rv_2011]

Die Stimmung in Deutschland scheint zu drehen:
Unter den Spiegel-Lesern ist (anders als in seiner Heimat) eine deutliche Mehrheit zufrieden mit der Amtsführung von Präsident Bush:
_________________________________________________________________
SPIEGEL ONLINE - 08. März 2004, 18:01
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/politik/0,1518,289615,00.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/politik/0,1518,289615,00.html

Vote-Pfuscher

You need to click "Abstimmen"

Von Frank Patalong

Votes sind eine feine Sache, die Butter auf dem Nachrichtenbrot. Sie geben dem Online-Medienmacher ein Feedback, wie der Leser eine Sache sieht. Fast 60 Prozent der Leser von SPIEGEL ONLINE halten George W. Bush beispielsweise für einen Top-Präsidenten. Wir wissen auch, warum.

Die Witwe Vivian Freep aus Midland (Texas) ist "George Bush`s biggest supporter".

Schön für Bush, denkt sich da der Europäer, doch in einem Amerikaner konservativen Credos steigt gleich der Zorn auf. Eine Frechheit ist das, die nicht mehr und nicht weniger sagen will als Folgendes: Bushs Erfolg gründet sich auf die Hilfe von Menschen, die manipulieren, stören, fälschen.

Denn "Freeping" ist ein Slang-Ausdruck. Er meint das nächtliche Überkleben von Wahlplakaten, die Organisation lärmender Gegendemos, das gezielte Stören von Auftritten politischer Gegner und - nicht zuletzt - die massenhafte Verfälschung von Abstimmungen im Internet.

Der seltsame Begriff entstand Ende der Neunziger und geht zurück auf die Webseite "Free Republic" des ultrakonservativen Aktivisten Jim Robinson. "Freep", wie die Webseite von Fans schnell genannt wurde, versteht sich als "ein konservatives Nachrichten-Forum". Kernstück des Angebotes ist das Diskussionsforum, in dem es teils heftig zur Sache geht.

Die konservative Klick-Guerilla

Free Republic begann als Clinton-Hasser-Seite, entwickelte sich aber schnell weiter. Erste Lorbeeren erntete das "Freep-Movement", als die Seite begann, in diversen Wahlen zur "Unterstützung" konservativer Kandidaten aufzurufen.

Und zwar ganz konkret: Es ging darum, Kundgebungen der Demokraten zu stören, Plakate abzureißen oder zu verfälschen, Gegner aktiv zu unterstützen. Schon als sich Bill Clinton mit einem Amtsausschlussverfahren konfrontiert sah, organisierten Freep-Gruppen in verschiedenen US-Städten "Info-Veranstaltungen" und schalteten Zeitungsanzeigen. Der Begriff "Freeping" entstand und meinte: Übertöne den Gegner.

Vote-Manipulation bei SPIEGEL ONLINE

Daran hat sich nichts geändert. In der letzten Woche wurde SPIEGEL ONLINE die Aufmerksamkeit der "Freeper" zuteil, genauer: Eine Abstimmung, ein Vote im Themenpaket zum anlaufenden US-Präsidentschaftswahlkampf (siehe unten).

"Seit drei Jahren", fragten wir unsere Leser, "ist George W. Bush der mächtigste Mann der Vereinigten Staaten - und der Welt. Wie beurteilen Sie seine bisherige Amtszeit (in Schulnoten)?"

Das Resultat der populären Abstimmung mit bisher über 38.000 abgegebenen Stimmen könnte zweierlei beweisen:

* Deutsche sind gar nicht so "Bush-skeptisch", wie oftmals behauptet;
* die Macht der "Freeper".

Denn die rufen seit dem 5. März dazu auf, das Vote bei "Germany`s left-left-wing SPIEGEL ONLINE" zu "freepen". Das eigentlich besondere daran ist, dass das Forumsmitglied, welches den Vorschlag machte, durchaus kein amerikanischer Konservativer ist: David Kaspar betreibt das Web-Log "Davids Medienkritik", ein Forum für "politisch unkorrekte Betrachtungen zur Berichterstattung in deutschen Medien".

Bei Kaspar bedeutet das: mit vehementer Bush-Freundlichkeit gegen die angebliche Voreingenommenheit der deutschen Medien. Vom Medienkenner Kaspar stammt auch die Einschätzung des SPIEGEL als "left-left", als ultralinks - alles eine Frage der Perspektive.

Wörtlich heißt es in seinem bei Free Republik wiedergegeben Aufruf: "Bush Needs Your Help!" Und weiter: "Bis zum 5. März, 13 Uhr Berliner Zeit sind Bushs Resultate ziemlich mies. Nur 3,3 Prozent stimmten für `1` und 1,47 Prozent für `2`".

Zum Glück findet der Aufruf bei Free Republic sofort freundliche Aufnahme: Binnen weniger Stunden gelingt es den "Freepern", die Abstimmung zu kippen. David Kaspar am 5. März, 22 Uhr "Berliner Zeit": "Bush`s Resultate sind exzellent. 41,23 Prozent für eine "1" (= Bush hat seine Aufgabe als Präsident prächtig gemeistert). Vielen Dank! Ihr Leute macht das phantastisch! Die Bush-Hasser bei SPIEGEL ONLINE kriegen einen Herzinfarkt morgen früh ... Macht so weiter!"

Vote-Manipulationen: Die Masse macht`s

Zwei Tage später, meldet Kaspar, ist das Ergebnis "amtlich": "SPIEGEL ONLINE With Large Pro-Bush User Base". Euphorisch gibt Kaspar in seiner Meldung über "59 Prozent Einsen" ein imaginäres Interview mit einem imaginären SPIEGEL-ONLINE-Redakteur wieder: Demnach habe das Vote den SPIEGEL erkennen lassen, dass seine ganze "Ausrichtung" falsch war. Jetzt suche die Redaktion Rat bei ihren Medienberatern, wie der "zukünftige Kurs" aussehen solle.

Wörtlich heißt es in dem phantasievollen Interview: "`In Bezug auf die Idiologie ist jetzt alles offen`, sagte die Quelle, `Es könnte sogar sein, dass wir nun Bushs Wiederwahl unterstützen. Kerry ist so oder so eine Knackwurst.`"

Damit der schöne Druck nicht nachlässt, wiederholt er seine Aufrufe zur Vote-Manipulation nun im Tagestakt: "Sie könnten Licht in unser miserables Leben bringen, indem Sie an dieser kleinen Umfrage teilnehmen. Als Nebeneffekt verletzen sie die Gefühle einiger deutscher Bush-Hasser."

Innerhalb weniger Tage verbreitet sich der Aufruf zur Vote-Manipulation wie ein Lauffeuer. Getragen wird er von einer starken, bisher wenig wahrgenommenen konservativen Blogger-Szene. So appelliert "Little Green Footballs" an sein Publikum: "Helft, die deutsche Linke in den Wahnsinn zu treiben."

"Freep this Poll!"

Die Masse aber kommt über Free Republic. Die Website bekennt sich längst offen dazu, mit Begeisterung zu "freepen". Eine Anfrage mit Stichwort "Freep" über die Suchmaske der Seite offenbart, wie viel ehrenamtliche Begeisterung Free Republic freizusetzen vermag: Am Morgen des 8. März gibt Free Republic die Terminliste von John Kerry bekannt und ruft Freeper dazu auf, mit einer digitalen Kamera vor Ort zu erscheinen, um "realistischere" Bilder vom Auftritt zu machen.

Auch zu Aktionen gegen andere "Democrats" wird aufgerufen, vor allem aber immer wieder zur Manipulation von Online-Abstimmungen: "Freep this Poll!".

Die Ziele der Aufrufe: Abstimmungen zur Schwulenehe (56 Prozent dagegen). Auch Abstimmungen zur Frage, ob die "9/11"-Wahlwerbungen von George Bush geschmacklos seien oder nicht, bringen klare Ergebnisse: mal sind es 78 Prozent, die das ganz und gar nicht finden können, mal 85 Prozent - selbst bei CNN sind es noch 72.

Normalerweise schützt Masse vor Vote-Manipulationen. Die großen Webseiten schützen ihre Abstimmungen mit Cookies, die ein mehrmaliges Wählen zumindest mühselig machen sollen: Zwischen zwei Abstimmungen müssen jedes Mal die Cookies gelöscht werden. Ansonsten steht für die Zuverlässigkeit eines Votes nur die Zahl der Leser, die sich daran beteiligen. Ein unvollkommener Schutz, doch bei Votes, an denen mehrere Tausend Menschen teilnehmen, wird die Manipulation zumindest zur Qual.

Freeper: Auf dem Weg zum Mainstream?

Die Freeper jedoch zeigen, dass sie der Masse "normaler" Webseitenbesucher jederzeit eine eigene Masse entgegensetzen können: Von SPIEGEL ONLINE über CNN und "Times", diverse Fernsehstationen bis hin zu MSN Australien und natürlich unzählige kleinere Zeitungen bekommt im Web niemand mehr ein ehrliches Vote hin, wenn die Freeper unterwegs sind.

Die manipulieren selbst trivialste Abstimmungen: In der letzten Woche war es ihnen wichtig, den Einfluss ihres Landes dadurch zu dokumentieren, dass sie die Abstimmung einer südafrikanischen Website darüber, ob Ex-Präsident Jean-Bertrand Aristide Haiti freiwillig verlassen habe, dahingehend manipulierten, dass 68 Prozent mit einemmal der Meinung waren, die USA hätten ihn hinausgedrängt.

In einer Abstimmung über den Treibhauseffekt meinten 86,5 Prozent, der existiere entweder gar nicht oder sei völlig natürlich. Am 2. März rief Free Republic dazu auf, eine Abstimmung an Grundschulen im Staate New York zu "freepen", weil bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt die Mehrheit der Grundschüler "demokratische" Wahltendenzen zeigte.

Nur an die großen amerikanischen Zeitungen traut sich Free Republic nicht mehr heran: Bereits 1998 hatten die "Los Angeles Times" und die "Washington Post" Free Republic wegen Copyright-Verletzungen vor Gericht gebracht. Erst im Juni 2002 gelang es "Freep"-Betreiber Jim Robinson, eine außergerichtliche Einigung zu erreichen, die auf eine Verzichtserklärung hinauslief: Künftig dürfe auf seiner Webseite weder aus den Klägerzeitungen noch aus mit ihnen verbundenen Medien zitiert werden.

Dem "Freep-Movement", das nach dem Scheitern des Amtsenthebungsverfahrens gegen Clinton eine längere Popularitätspause einlegte, hat das nicht geschadet: Spätestens seit dem katastrophalen 11. September und der dadurch eingeleiteten Radikalisierung im politischen Diskurs der USA ist "Freep" stärker als je zuvor. Die Bewegung sucht nach Wegen in den Mainstream: Seit dem Golfkrieg engagieren sich "Freeps" auch als ganz normale Demonstranten für die gute Sache - für Bush und für den Krieg. Mit John Armor, meldete Free Republic am 2. September 2003, versuche nun erstmals "one of our very own" in den US-Kongress gewählt zu werden. Armor würde sein Forums-Nomen zum Omen machen: Bisher trat er da nur als "Congressman BillyBob" auf.

[Joerver]

March 8, 2004
Iraqi Shiite Cleric Takes Direct Role
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 5:35 p.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Followers of Iraq`s top Shiite cleric often say he doesn`t want a role in politics -- but that hasn`t stopped him from intervening at every step in U.S. plans to hand power to the Iraqis. Even with the latest dispute over the interim constitution patched over, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani is demanding his voice be heard.

The messy process of approving the charter made al-Sistani virtually another negotiator at the table with U.S. administrators and Iraqi politicians -- the most direct political role yet for the 75-year-old ayatollah, who rarely sets foot outside his house in an alley of Shiite Islam`s holiest city, Najaf.

As in the past, he showed he could bend to political realities. But even when al-Sistani relents, the political realities have to bend as well.

After disrupting a planned signing ceremony three days earlier with his objections, al-Sistani gave Shiite members of Iraq`s Governing Council his consent for them to sign the new constitution Monday, convinced by the politicians of the need to maintain unity on the council.

But he quickly made clear what he didn`t like about the document, issuing a fatwa, or religious ruling, that sharply criticized parts of it and cast doubts on its legitimacy. His words will strengthen Shiite leaders` demands and likely fuel fears among Sunni Arabs and Kurds of a Shiite push for domination of the future government.

It`s a far cry from al-Sistani`s ``quietist`` school of Shiite Islam. Unlike Iran`s model of clerical rule, the quietist school dissuades clerics from a role in politics. Al-Sistani, an Iranian-born Islamic scholar, long symbolized that stance -- but that was under the brutal rule of Saddam Hussein, when lying low was a matter of survival.

Few Iraqi politicians feel al-Sistani -- respected as a ``marja al-taqlid,`` or model for Shiites to emulate -- is turning toward the Iranian model. But some are clearly bristling at his intervention and see it as an attempt to promote the power of the Shiite majority.

``To say that the Shiite religious leadership is now meddling in politics is to understate the case,`` said Naseer Kamel al-Chaderchi, a Sunni Arab council member.

Al-Sistani`s followers say his only motive is to protect Iraq`s broader national interests -- unity and democracy -- at a time when there are no elected institutions and American occupiers hold enormous power over Iraqi politicians.

Indeed, the ayatollah has been the strongest voice calling for elections.

But a free election in Iraq will most likely mean a government dominated by Shiites. Al-Sistani`s complaints over the new charter have focused on clauses that would allow the Kurdish and Sunni minorities to veto a permanent constitution even if approved by a Shiite majority.

His call for early national elections brought the most startling example of his influence. Tens of thousands of supporters marched in the streets of Baghdad and other cities in January demanding a vote.

The marches spelled the end for a key part of U.S. plans to hand over power to the Iraqis by July 1. And the show of power eventually drew the United Nations` special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, down the dirt path -- well worn now by political delegations -- that leads to the ayatollah`s modest, cushioned sitting room.

Brahimi succeeded in convincing al-Sistani that an election before June 30 was not feasible, another sign of the cleric`s pragmatism. But in the end, al-Sistani pulled out victories: The regional caucuses method the Americans had wanted to use to create a new government was dumped and elections were moved up to Jan. 31 at the latest, sooner than under the U.S. plan.

In the back-and-forth over the constitution, al-Sistani`s role was more direct. Shiite politicians came to Najaf and held two days of talks to try to resolve his objections. One Kurdish council member even invited him to send a representative to negotiations in Baghdad over the charter, though it never came to that.

U.S. coalition officials depicted the talks as a matter of politicians consulting with leaders of their community -- as if he were just another prominent constituent.

But the Shiite leaders` need for one man`s consent illustrates his power -- despite his Iranian birth and his reclusiveness. Even Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite favored by the U.S. Defense Department, has moved closer to the cleric, apparently to build backing among the Shiite public.

Shiite council member Ibrahim Jaafari said al-Sistani, as a man of religion, ``naturally does not interfere in the details of political work.`` But he acknowledged the power of the ``marja`` will endure.

``Even when there is an elected parliament that reflects the will of the Iraqi people, the marja`iyas will still have guidance to give and their views will continue to be respected,`` he said.

------

Associated Press writer Lee Keath has covered the Middle East since 1995.



Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

[Joerver]

washingtonpost.com
Support for Bush Slumps on Economy, Iraq

Hier alle Zahlen(Anmelden kostet nichts!):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/st…

By Rich Morin and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 8, 2004; 6:30 PM


President Bush, bloodied by months of criticism during the Democratic primary season, has seen public support fall to the lowest level of his presidency for his performance on the economy and the situation in Iraq, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll has found.

A majority of Americans -- 57 percent -- say they want their next president to steer the country away from the course set by Bush, according to the survey. Bush`s standing hit new lows in crucial areas such as the economy (39 percent support him), Iraq (46 percent) and the budget deficit (30 percent).

Bush`s overall support, 50 percent, was unchanged from February and equal to the lowest of his presidency; only the war on terrorism continues to garner Bush the support of more than six in 10 Americans.

As a result of these doubts, Bush narrowly trails likely Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry by four percentage points, 48 to 44 percent, among registered voters in a hypothetical presidential matchup. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader claims 3 percent. Of a dozen policy areas, Kerry leads Bush in eight, including the economy, education and health care, while Bush leads only in the war on terrorism. The two are virtually tied in the other three: Iraq, gay marriage and civil liberties.

In a bit of good news for Bush, Nader is drawing essentially all of his support from Kerry, who leads Bush by nine percentage points in a two-way matchup with the president -- an indication Nader could play the spoiler for Democrats in 2004 as he did four years ago. Underscoring that potential, nearly two thirds of Democrats opposed Nader`s decision to run, while half of all Republicans approve of his move.

Also, Bush begins the campaign with a strong reservoir of support that Kerry lacks: nearly nine in 10 Bush supporters say the "strongly" support him, compared to two in three Kerry voters. In addition, six in 10 Kerry supporters say they`re voting for the Democrat more as a protest against Bush and his policies, and not because they are attracted to Kerry. By contrast, nearly nine in 10 Bush voters say their support is based on their feelings toward the president, and not as a vote against Kerry.

The Bush campaign said the deterioration in the president`s standing is a natural result of the Democratic nominating contest, in which the candidates all took aim at Bush. While predicting Bush will remain tied with or trailing Kerry until the GOP convention this summer, Dowd said Kerry`s support is "soft," as Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis`s was early in the 1988 campaign against George H.W. Bush. The Democrat`s high standing, Dowd added, "just shows you how little [voters] know about him," Dowd said, and is bound to change once Republicans step up their criticism of him.

The Kerry campaign rejected the 1988 comparison, noting that there was no incumbent in that race and that Dukakis did not lead Bush until later in the campaign. "At this moment George Bush is pushing the boulder up the hill in a significant way," said Mark Mellman, Kerry`s pollster. "People have made a judgment about him and they`ve decided they don`t like the way he`s dealing with key issues and they want fundamental change."

The Post-ABC survey reflects the pounding Bush has taken from Democrats during the primaries, as well as disappointing news about job creation and more signs of difficulty in Iraq. While half approve of the overall job Bush is doing, the proportions of Americans who disapprove (48 percent) and strongly disapprove (36 percent) have never been higher. Bush`s handling of the situation in Iraq has shifted from strength to weakness, with a double-digit increase in opposition this year.

Bush no longer is viewed as someone who can bring the country together. Slightly under half the public say the president has done more to unite the country while just as many say he`s done more to divide Americans. Fifty-four percent of Americans view Kerry favorably while just 26 percent take an unfavorable view (respondents were evenly divided on Bush, 47 to 46). Nearly half -- 49 percent -- of those interviewed said they trusted Kerry to handle the biggest issues facing the country while 44 percent preferred Bush. Barely a month ago, the two were tied.

Kerry also is viewed as more honest and trustworthy than Bush, more understanding of the problems of "people like you" and more tolerant than the president. On the key issue of leadership, a strength GOP strategists are already featuring in ads supporting the president, the two candidates are virtually tied, with 63 percent saying Bush is a strong leader and 61 saying the same of Kerry. The two are also closely matched on ideology: a third see Bush as too conservative and a third see Kerry as too liberal.

Democratic attacks on Bush as a president who favors the interests of large corporations over working people clearly have had an effect. Two in three now say Bush cares more about protecting the interests of large business corporations, up from 58 percent in December.

Kerry`s advantage on many key issues was large. The Democrat currently has double-digit advantages over the president as the person best able to handle the economy (Kerry leads Bush by 12 points), Social Security (16 points), education (12 points), the budget deficit (15 points) and health care (20 points). On only one major issue is Bush preferred to Kerry: the war on terrorism, where the president has a 19-point advantage.

While Americans, by 57 percent to 41 percent, would prefer a new direction over Bush`s leadership, that does not necessarily mean they will remove him from office in November. In May 1988, a similar number favored a new direction, but then Vice President Bush was elevated to president. In March 1992, 66 percent favored a new direction and Bush ultimately lost the election. At a similar point in 2000, the country was evenly split.

A total of 1,202 randomly selected adults nationwide were interviewed March 4-7 for this telephone survey. Margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Assistant Polling Director Claudia Deane contributed to this report.


© 2004 The Washington Post Company

[derdieschnautzelangsamvollhat]

Und wen er hundertmal Präsident der USA ist:

Der Iraq-Krieg beibt völkerrechtlich ein Verbrechen. Dafür trägt er, und niemand anders die Verantwortung.

Trotz allem haben mich die Demokraten während und kurz vor Ausbruch des Krieges mehr als enttäuscht. Kritik war von dieser Seite, mehr als verhalten bis gar nicht vorhanden.

"Nicht patriotisch" zu sein ist anscheinend ein größeres Verbrechen, als ein Raubzug im Nahen Osten.

Der religiöse Fundamentalismus Bush`s, gepaart mit einem Schuß Größenwahn zum Wohle regierungsnaher Konzerne wird auch in der EU salonfähig, und solllte uns zum nachdenken
anregen.

[Joerver]

DDSLVH

Ich beschäftige mich seit langer Zeit mit der US-Politik.

Und der Unterschied zwischen Reps und Dems ist nach europäischen Maßstäben marginal.

Auch der nun beginnende Wahlkampf bringt keine großen Unterschiede.

Die USA hat ein Einparteiensystem mit zwei unterschiedlichen Flügeln, so lautet ein oft kolportierter Spruch.

Den größten Vorteil, den Kerry gegenüber Bush hat, ist, er ist geistig gesund.

Sonst wird sich nach den bis jetzt bekannten Ankündigungen nicht viel ändern.

Die Bush-Clique hat einen Einblick in die US-Politik ohne den sonst üblichen Filter gegeben.

Kerry würde die Politik wieder zivilisieren. Alleine durch seinen geistigen Hintergrund.

[Joerver]

Wie angekündigt: heiße Luft!

March 9, 2004
Iraq Council, With Reluctant Shiites, Signs Charter
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 8 — Iraq`s leaders signed an interim constitution on Monday and agreed to embark on a common path toward democratic rule, but the celebratory mood was dampened by calls from the country`s most powerful Shiite leaders to amend the new charter before it goes into force.

The signing ceremony for the interim constitution, delayed once because of terrorist attacks and again because of a political deadlock, unfolded without a hitch inside the fortified confines of the American compound. Each of the 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council signed it or had a representative do so.

The document, with its bill of rights and guarantees for women, was hailed by Iraqi and American leaders as a milestone in the project to implant a democracy here less than a year after Saddam Hussein was swept away.

But immediately after the ceremony ended, Shiite leaders, representing the country`s largest group, brought forth sharp reservations that called into question the viability of the accord.

A leading Shiite member of the council, saying he spoke for 12 of the 13 Shiites on the council, read a statement saying they intended to amend key portions of the document that they considered undemocratic.

Ibrahim Jafari, a Shiite council member, said the group had endorsed the interim constitution in order to preserve the unity of the country. But he made it clear that the Shiite leaders intended to rewrite portions of the constitution before June 30, when the Americans plan to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqi people.

"We say here, our decision to sign the document is pegged to reservations," Mr. Jafari said.

The main issue concerns the mechanism by which the permanent constitution is to be ratified. The Shiites object to a provision that they say grants the Kurds veto power over the permanent constitution, which is to be written after national elections are held.

The Shiites also object to language that bars changes in the document signed Monday, except with the approval of the government and the new national assembly, which is to be elected by Jan. 31, 2005.

The Shiites` objections were endorsed by the most powerful religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who released a religious decree later in the afternoon in which he declared that the charter would obstruct an agreement on a permanent constitution.

In his statement, Ayatollah Sistani said the interim constitution would lack legitimacy until it was approved by a democratically elected national assembly. Under the most favorable circumstances, that is not likely to happen until the end of the year.

"This law places obstacles in the path of reaching a permanent constitution for the country that maintains its unity, the rights of sons of all sects and ethnic backgrounds," Ayatollah Sistani`s decree said.

Together, the reservations portend a shakier future for the interim constitution than American officials and some Iraqi leaders had hoped for.

Still, the immediate impact of the protest was not clear. The ayatollah, who has involved himself deeply in the talks on Iraq`s future, did not actually denounce the interim constitution or call on his followers to reject it.

And whether the Shiite leaders could amend the interim constitution before it takes effect on June 30, when the Americans transfer sovereignty, seemed uncertain as well. The 12 who endorsed Mr. Jafari`s statement form less than a majority of the 25-member council.

A senior American official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said additions to the interim constitution would likely be limited to the shape of the caretaker government that would take over on June 30. But Shiite leaders said they hoped to use that process to make the changes they sought.

The interim constitution exhibits many of the fundamental elements of a modern state: a bill of rights, which include freedom of speech, assembly and religion; civilian control over the military; and an elaborate system of checks and balances. The document declares Islam the official religion and yet only "a source" of legislation. It calls on lawmakers to devise an electoral system that would give women at least a quarter of the seats in the national assembly.

For 90 minutes on Monday, the mood was high, betraying nothing of the quarrels to come. The 25 Iraqi leaders, many of them scarred by wars and traumas past, gave their names to an expansive document that enshrines human rights and democratic rule as firmly as any constitution in the region.

"This is a great and historic day for Iraq," Adnan Pachachi, a member of the Governing Council, told the crowd that had gathered deep inside the protected confines of the American compound. "This is an Iraqi constitution, made by Iraqis. We have produced a document of which we can all be proud."

With that, the 25 leaders moved to an antique table once used by King Feisal, Iraqi`s first monarch, signed the charter and stepped onto a raised platform. As the stage filled, the council stood as the embodiment of the extraordinarily diverse nation, patched together 83 years ago from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, that the interim constitution is meant to hold together.

Among the Iraqis stood Shiite and Sunni Muslims, ethnic Kurds, an Assyrian Christian, a Communist, a Turkmen, several former guerrilla fighters and a handful of survivors from Saddam Hussein`s jails.

One of the most striking moments came when Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party and a guerrilla leader, switched from Arabic to Kurdish midway through his speech. By so doing, Mr. Barzani highlighted one of the principal compromises of the interim constitution: its enshrinement of Kurdish as an official language of the Iraqi state and its recognition of Kurdish identity.

Mr. Barzani recalled the sufferings of the Kurdish people, thousands of whom died by poison gas and other means under Mr. Hussein`s dictatorship. And he saluted the fallen fighters of the pesh merga, the Kurdish guerrillas who helped topple Mr. Hussein and clear the way for a new Iraqi state.

"This constitution will make some of this sadness go away," Mr. Barzani said. "This is the first time we feel as Kurds that we are equal with others in this country, that we are not second-class citizens."

For all the political difficulties, American officials said, their gravest challenge lies in implanting new democratic institutions in a country tormented by violence.

Evidence of that challenge abounded Monday. As the signing ceremony began, guerrillas fired mortars at a Baghdad police station, wounding two policemen and three civilians. In Mosul, in the north, attackers opened fire on a car carrying two city council members, killing one and wounding another.

The ceremony in Baghdad opened with a moment of silence for the more than 180 people killed last Monday in a wave of attacks against Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad and Karbala.

A senior American official here said again that the Bush administration was determined to hand over sovereignty on June 30, even though the violence was expected intensify.

"I think we are heading into a very dangerous time for terrorism, because the terrorists know that time is not on their side," the official said. "But we will make the deadline."


John F. Burns contributed reporting for this article.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Churchill und sein Papagei, eine Home Story.

March 9, 2004
REIGATE JOURNAL
Parrot May Have Been Churchill`s, but She`s Not Saying
By SARAH LYALL

REIGATE, England — If she knew anything, Charlie the parrot was not telling.

She was, in fact, a silent parrot. Although she did stand on one leg, ruff up her neck feathers and demonstrate her ability to hop up and down excitedly, she proved unwilling, or unable, to shed any light on the mystery that has swirled around her since The Daily Mirror wrote about her in an explosive article in January.

The home of Charlie the parrot these days is a garden center in Reigate, England. It is said the parrot once made her home with Winston Churchill at his estate.

Was she once owned by Winston Churchill, as the paper reported, and did she indeed spend her more splenetic moments "cursing the Nazis" using an "unmistakable Churchillian inflection?"

Well, maybe she did. Or, as things go in the hall-of-mirrors world of the British tabloids, maybe she didn`t.

According to Charlie`s owner, Peter Oram, the parrot, a blue and gold macaw, was sold to Churchill by Mr. Oram`s late father-in-law, who ran a well-known pet shop in Croydon.

After Churchill died, in 1965, Mr. Oram says, he and his father-in-law were asked to return to Churchill`s estate, Chartwell in Kent, to collect Charlie and some other birds.

Mr. Oram, possibly weary of discussing his bird after making the rounds of the British news media, did not respond to several telephone messages. But Sylvia Martin, the manager of the Heathfield Nurseries here, which is owned by Mr. Oram and where Charlie has lived for several decades, said the story was unequivocally true.

"She definitely did belong to Churchill," Ms. Martin said. The macaw, she said, is believed to have been born in 1899 — a fact that, if true, would make her quite possibly the oldest bird in Britain. "My boss`s father-in-law was quite a well-known person to purchase birds from, and he sold some birds to Winston Churchill. When Churchill died, they were asked to take the birds back."

Throwing a big bucket of old bird seed onto the story, Judith Seaward, the visitor services and marketing manager at Chartwell, said that there was no record of Churchill ever having kept a macaw, and that Churchill`s daughter, Lady Soames, had no recollection of such a bird living on the property.

"Sir Winston had a variety of livestock and once owned a budgerigar," Mrs. Seaward said, referring to a popular domestic bird. "He also had a completely different kind of parrot some years previously, but Lady Soames is absolutely certain that this macaw was not her father`s."

Mrs. Seaward said that if a macaw was indeed collected by Mr. Oram and his father-in-law in 1965, it might have belonged to some underling at Chartwell. "It`s possible that it wasn`t necessarily the property of Sir Winston," she said. "He had a number of staff."

With the question of ownership seemingly unresolvable — "I was disappointed to hear what Lady Soames said," responded Ms. Martin, "but she might not be a bird lover" — the next question to ask Charlie (or at least Ms. Martin) was about the bird`s supposed swearing at the Nazis, in the voice of Churchill.

According to The Mirror, using a detail that was widely repeated in other British newspapers and indeed by the news media around the world, Churchill taught Charlie to curse — "particularly in company" — to the point that "many an admiral or peer of the realm was shocked by the tirade from the bird`s cage during crisis meetings with the prime minister."

The Mirror account was written by Bill Borrows, an editor at large for Maxim U.K., who said in an interview that he could not recall, exactly, where he got the information that Charlie used to swear about Hitler, but that he might have read it on the Internet. He said he had not met Charlie in person, but had tried, unsuccessfully, to conduct a telephone interview.

"The bird didn`t say anything, but I`ve had worse," Mr. Borrows said.

Appearing several weeks ago on BBC Radio 4, Mr. Oram said that although the bird did indeed have a history of swearing, she always sounded "parroty" rather than Churchillian. As for the content of Charlie`s remarks, Ms. Martin said she had never heard her curse about Hitler, or even about any of the lesser Nazis.

"She lived for a time in Mr. Oram`s father-in-law`s shop, and all the market traders were teaching her all sorts of swear words," Ms. Martin said. In disgrace, she added, Charlie was exiled to the nursery in Surrey so that her cursing would not scandalize the shoppers.

But whatever Charlie said or did not say, she is not saying it now. Ms. Martin said that as the bird has grown older and more fragile, she has uttered less and less. From time to time, she might suddenly come out with a stray operatic high note, but nothing more. Nor does she fly, except for the occasional swoop.

Adding to the indignities of age, Charlie has a nervous feather-plucking habit that has left her, from the front, looking a bit like a partly plucked chicken. "She hasn`t got the feathers she had at one time," Ms. Martin said sadly. Efforts to solve the problem by using a special spray called Bitter Beak have not proved successful.

For years, visitors have come from all over the world — from Germany, from the United States, from Australia — to get a glimpse of Charlie, Ms. Martin said. But since the article in The Mirror was published, the phone has been ringing off the hook, from the Czech Republic, Sweden, Switzerland and India, among other places.

"People are quite fascinated," Ms. Martin said, as Charlie stood there, stone silent, "but to us she`s just a pet."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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March 9, 2004
Muscle for the Intelligence Commission

The nation will never squarely face up to the intelligence failures that preceded the invasion of Iraq unless President Bush grants subpoena power to the independent commission he reluctantly created to look into the simmering controversy. Prodded by critics, Mr. Bush reversed himself and appointed the bipartisan panel a month ago. But he made sure that it lacked full investigative authority.

Now one of the panel`s most respected members, Senator John McCain, is warning that if the commission is to do a believable job, it must have the muscle power to subpoena reluctant witnesses.

"If you don`t have it, you have no leverage," Mr. McCain told The Hill newspaper in describing how he had been rebuffed thus far by the White House.

The commission also needs to look beyond its narrow original mandate. The president limited the investigation to analyzing the quality of the intelligence that led up to the invasion. It should also fully investigate allegations that the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction was hyped by administration leaders to justify a pre-emptive war. If the Bush administration never deliberately exaggerated the dangers, a complete accounting would go far to clear the air.

Public confidence requires that the administration give the commission the power and scope it needs. Mr. McCain speaks as a fervid proponent of removing Saddam Hussein from power, but also as a lawmaker intent on improving the quality of intelligence — and avoiding its possible misuse.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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March 9, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Next Nader Effect
By CHARLIE COOK

After the initial stir, Ralph Nader`s entry into the presidential campaign has been widely dismissed as the folly of an over-the-hill egomaniac. While Mr. Nader`s critics might be right about his character, a look at the current polls and the election results from 2000 show that his independent candidacy cannot be ignored. And while I agree with the conventional wisdom that he will get far fewer votes than the 2.7 percent of the electorate he received four years ago, the race between President Bush and John Kerry may very well be so close that even a declawed Ralph Nader could tip the election to the incumbent.

Remember that Mr. Nader, running as the Green Party nominee, cost Al Gore two states, Florida and New Hampshire, either of which would have given the vice president a victory in 2000. In Florida, which George W. Bush carried by 537 votes, Mr. Nader received nearly 100,000 votes. In New Hampshire, which Mr. Bush won by 7,211 votes, Mr. Nader pulled in more than 22,000. National exit polls by the Voter News Service showed that had Mr. Nader not run, 47 percent of his supporters would have voted for Al Gore, while only 21 percent would have voted for Mr. Bush.

Recent national polls suggest that a similar dynamic may play out this time around. While surveys that test a two-way contest between President Bush and Senator Kerry generally show the senator ahead by a few points, those that add Mr. Nader to the mix put the race at a dead heat — or they give the president a narrow edge. A national survey last week by The Associated Press and Ipsos Public Affairs showed the president garnering 46 percent, Senator Kerry 45 percent and Mr. Nader 6 percent.

That poll, which was taken only a week and a half after Mr. Nader dropped his bombshell, likely overstates the support he will carry into November. After all, the circumstances are very different from what they were in 2000. Back then, many moderates and liberals were ambivalent about the Clinton-Gore administration; what`s more, George W. Bush was well-positioned as a relatively unthreatening "compassionate conservative." To the independent-minded voters on the left who fled to Mr. Nader, the choice between Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore just wasn`t all that stark.

Today, Mr. Bush is a far more polarizing figure, with former Nader supporters among his most vociferous detractors. My hunch is that some of the most miserable people in America are the 97,488 Floridians who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. Thus it seems reasonable that, nationwide, Mr. Nader will garner just half or even a third of his support from last time.

Even so, however, he may still be able to tilt the election to the Republicans. Consider the electoral map. Barring some cataclysmic political upheaval, the Republicans have a solid hold on 23 states with 200 electoral votes; the Democrats can probably count on 11 states and the District of Columbia for 168 votes. This leaves 16 states in play — states where Mr. Nader, at least based on 2000, could shift the balance in favor of Mr. Bush.

In addition to Florida and New Hampshire, the two states that Mr. Nader handed to the Bush-Cheney ticket, think about how many others came close to going the same route. In 2000 Mr. Gore won Iowa by about 4,000 votes, with Mr. Nader receiving nearly 30,000 votes; the vice president carried Minnesota by just 58,000 votes, with Mr. Nader pulling 126,000. New Mexico had the narrowest margin in the country — Mr. Gore prevailed by just 366 votes — and Mr. Nader garnered 21,000. In Oregon, the Gore victory margin was 6,765 votes, with 77,357 Oregonians supporting Mr. Nader. In Wisconsin, Mr. Gore won by 5,700 and Mr. Nader`s total was 94,000. And while the Bush margins over Mr. Gore exceeded the Nader vote in Washington, Missouri and Ohio, it wasn`t by much.

The next election could be even closer in all these battlegrounds — the product of the evenly divided parties, the high degree of partisan and ideological polarization and the equally divided support of and antipathy for President Bush. Make no mistake: Mr. Nader will probably earn fewer votes than last time, but he still could make the difference.


Charlie Cook is editor of the Cook Political Report and a political analyst for National Journal.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

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Promises, Promises

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Despite a string of dismal employment reports, the administration insists that its economic program, which has relied entirely on tax cuts focused on the affluent, will produce big job gains any day now. Should we believe these promises?

Each February, the Economic Report of the President forecasts nonfarm payroll employment — generally considered the best measure of job growth — for the next several years. The black line in the chart above (inspired by a joint report from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) shows the actual performance of employment, both before and after its peak in March 2001. The gray lines show the forecasts in the 2002, 2003 and 2004 reports. Notice that the February 2004 forecast, which, as in previous years, is based on data only through the preceding October, is already 900,000 jobs too high.

Economic forecasting isn`t an exact science, but wishful thinking on this scale is unprecedented. Nor can the administration use its all-purpose excuse: all of these forecasts date from after 9/11. What you see in this chart is the signature of a corrupted policy process, in which political propaganda takes the place of professional analysis.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Mal wieder etwas aus der Rubrik, wie die USA Deutschland sieht.
Für alle, die sich für das Bild Deutschlands interessieren, hier ist der Link zu der Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/europe/westerneur…

washingtonpost.com
A Renaissance of Counterculture
Failing to Attract Industry, Reunited Berlin Fosters Artistic Revival

By John Burgess
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 9, 2004; Page A15


BERLIN

On the third floor of a building in central Berlin one day last week, an artist put paint to canvas in an Internet-wired studio. Down the hall, two young women talked with a talent agency about getting listed online. One floor below, a two-screen theater rolled the first showings of the evening; at street level, Café Zapata was thick with patrons and the scent of beer and cigarettes.

In the euphoria that followed the breaching of the Berlin Wall, no industrial enterprise with its thousands of jobs answered the call to move to Berlin. Nor did any big bank or securities firm. But the city gave birth on its own to places such as the Tacheles Art House, six stories of creative energy in the half-rehabbed hulk of a 1909 shopping arcade.

Now, as Berlin searches for the prosperity that unity promised but never delivered, many politicians, academics and business people here wonder if it hasn`t been looking in the wrong place. In this view, an influx of corporate money is fantasy. Rather, the city`s future lies in a melding of its vibrant counterculture and intellectual life with developer money, official permits and a continuing surplus of floor space to create jobs and optimism.

In vacant buildings across the old East Berlin, outposts like Tacheles have sprung up, many of them former squatter colonies gone legit. Their stock in trade is art, music, publishing, software. "You can see them as seedbeds," said Hartmut Haeussermann, a professor at Humboldt University who studies Berlin`s post-wall evolution. "These developments everywhere in these derelict places," he said, are the best hope the city has for better times.

As the wall recedes into history, Berlin has unemployment of 18 percent, 11/2 times the national rate. Its government struggles under $64 billion in debt. The economy is so lifeless that airports of this largest city (population 3.4 million) in this most populous country of Europe offer not a single nonstop flight to the United States.

A speculative construction boom in the 1990s, based on expectations that Berlin would become the new center of Europe, turned some areas into towering galleries of architectural chic. But it did little to address fundamental economic problems left behind by the Cold War division: Berlin hasn`t learned how to live without the huge West and East German subsidies that no longer flow. And big employers have little reason to undertake the huge cost of moving here, beyond answering sentimental calls to recreate the Berlin of a century ago -- a proud national focus not only of government but also business, finance and industry.

In a bruising market where rents are low and tenants sometimes hard to find, a few developers continue to try to beat the odds with conventional projects, working with city officials who seek to bring life to dead neighborhoods and put housing back into central areas where it was all but eradicated. New glass towers and hotels go up next to blighted lots littered with debris. An ornate apartment house is restored at huge cost, while the one next to it is left in decay.

The greater energy is on the storefront scale, notably in parts of the east. Streets are dotted with art galleries, bookstores, fashion boutiques, yoga centers, ethnic restaurants and techno music clubs. Here and there is a software firm and a film studio. A huge red-brick brewery complex in the Prenzlauerberg district has reopened as the "Culture Brewery," a commercial hive of movie theaters, restaurants, a large supermarket and halls that can be rented for parties.

The job of making a new Berlin is not finished, Mayor Klaus Wowereit said. "It`s not a rich city," he said, but "it`s a city in motion."

The few corporate clients his city has landed have tended to be of the culture world -- Sony Corp. put its European headquarters here and built a billion-dollar entertainment and office complex that has become a major tourist draw. Likewise, Universal Music Germany, a division of the media giant Vivendi Universal, has moved here, in part to tap the city`s vibrant music scene.

In February, government and private groups collaborated to help open a large exhibit on loan from New York City`s Museum of Modern Art. City officials were elated about the show -- Berlin was on the world`s art map, at least through the show`s seven-month run. A series of related cultural events has been organized to try to draw in tourists.

Mayor Wowereit said he continues to work to attract companies, but that it`s no easy task. He said he hoped that the induction of 10 more countries into the European Union on May 1, including Poland, just 40 miles away, would mean good things. The city would then be at the center of the expanded single European market, rather than at its eastern fringe. But beyond the expected arrival of more shoppers from Poland, what the practical impact might be remains unclear.

During the Cold War, each of the two sectors of the city was a coddled, subsidized showcase that didn`t pay its way. "East Berlin was eating the flesh" of East Germany, said Hilmar von Lojewski, head of the city`s planning office. "West Berlin got about half its budget from West Germany as the island in the communist sea."

Those subsidies led a few West German companies to open major facilities here in that period, but most stayed away, in view of tensions and difficulties of access. West German banking and finance came to be clustered in Frankfurt, media in Hamburg and Munich, industry in the state of Bavaria.

The end of subsidies in the 1990s caused shock all around. The city lost close to 200,000 industrial jobs that had relied on the payments, undermining its tax base. The arrival of the national government from the postwar capital in Bonn offset only part of that.

At the same time, the city government opted to borrow heavily against hoped-for good times to keep open duplicative public facilities that had developed on the two sides of the wall -- zoos, museums, opera houses, schools.

Dealing with the resulting debt is a daily crisis at city hall and limits its ability to attract private employers with incentives. The federal government is not eager to help. "Germans don`t like Berlin that much," said Michael Cullen, an American who has written extensively on local architectural history. "As a city, it`s seen as a poor relative looking for a donation."

But one thing the city has been producing for decades is culture. The pre-war Berlin of cabarets and expressionism lives on in spirit in experimental theater and drip paintings. It is a city that respects artists and nurtures them with a low cost of living. "You can live well on a little bit of money here," said Monika Schelk, who paints in a second-floor studio at Tacheles. "You don`t have to care how you look. It`s very tolerant."

The building where Schelk works is a mammoth pile of masonry that began in 1909 as a Jewish-owned shopping arcade. Later, it was the site of TV broadcasts of the 1936 Olympics and a back office for Hitler`s Waffen-SS storm troopers. It appears as a burning trophy in Red Army propaganda footage shot in 1945, and after the war was left a partial ruin by the East German state.

Soon after the wall came down, it was seized by militant artists from both east and west. They kept busy with avant-garde paintings and welded sculpture and political manifestos. They did simple repairs on the building. The city, which owned the site, wanted them out. They refused. Confrontations with the police became a staple of local newspapers.

But as the `90s progressed, mentions of the art house found their way into Berlin guidebooks. The place became a stop on tour bus routes -- Berlin`s famous subculture was on display, with bits of it even for sale. The government and developers began to see that the art house was bringing in money for the city and would be better if it was allowed to stay.

Finally, a deal came together. The Fundus-Gruppe development firm got title to the building and adjacent empty lots from the city. It spent about $6.5 million to stabilize and rehab part of the building. The art house would remain where it was, rent-free, until 2008, after which the sides would talk about what came next.

Today, a walk through the old hive of anarchism turns up signs of creeping respectability. While the dense graffiti that are beloved of Berlin`s counterculture abound in many corridors, the place has telephones, restrooms, a computer network -- and rules. Artists pay utility costs but no rent, while other more commercial ventures such as photographers and Web companies do pay rent.

Bit by bit, the center has become a landlord and gets into squabbles with tenants who don`t pay. Occasionally it calls the police when rowdy outsiders refuse to leave.

Martin Reiter, Tageles` manager -- though he prefers the title "chaos pilot" -- says he`s soon to move on. The place has become too settled for him. The success is corrupting. But he`s happy that the 1990s vision of Berlin didn`t work out. "This is a guarantee for peace," he said, "that there is no capital of Europe."



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Some Progress on Detainees




Tuesday, March 9, 2004; Page A22


THE PENTAGON unveiled a draft last week of the review process it contemplates for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The document, on which the Defense Department seeks public comment, fleshes out procedures Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld sketched in a recent speech. For those who have been alarmed by the Bush administration`s failure since establishing the detention facility to create any serious review mechanism, its move toward a more systematic approach is welcome. Though belated, and announced only under the looming threat of Supreme Court intervention, the proposed process contains positive elements. It also falls short in important respects.

The administration proposes that a three-member military panel review each detainee`s case at least once a year. In non-adversarial proceedings, a "designated military officer" would present the pros and cons of release. The panel could hear from the detainee, his family and the government of his country. The detainee would, subject to national security concerns, be able to see material presented indicating he remains a threat. The review board would make a recommendation to a civilian Pentagon leader, who would then order release or continued detention.

The boards, according to the draft, will assess "whether and to what extent each enemy combatant poses a threat to the United States or its allies," but the standard and burden of proof are far too vague. It isn`t clear which side will have to prove how much of a threat that a given detainee poses, or how little. If this means, in practice, that a detainee must prove beyond a scintilla of a doubt that he poses not a scintilla of a threat, the review process will be a rubber stamp for long-term human storage. Crafting an appropriate standard is difficult but essential if the review process is to be predictable, orderly and fair.

The military also would do itself a favor if one member of each panel came from outside the services. Right now, the whole system is a closed one; the military reviews its own judgments with no outside checks. Panels that will be approving long detentions without charge would gain important public legitimacy if they included, for example, people with credibility among human rights and civil liberties groups. And detainees should have access to lawyers, not just a military officer to "assist" them, as the draft proposes. Lawyers are trained to help people make the best arguments on their behalf. Panels reviewing these detentions would surely benefit from hearing the best cases on behalf of release.

Finally, while the draft specifies that decisions on release and detention will be revealed to the detainee and his government, it says nothing about public disclosure. If not changed, secrecy would continue to reign at Guantanamo; the public would still have no idea who was being held and on what basis. Undoubtedly there will be times when the government must withhold some information about some detainees. But if the detentions are to enjoy any public legitimacy -- domestically and internationally alike -- the military`s general policy must be to explain its decisions openly, in as much detail as security concerns will allow.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
How to Help in the Meantime


By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, March 9, 2004; Page A23


Imagine if I told you that all the job growth in the country was explained by a rise in the number of people on government payrolls -- and that there had been no net increase in employment in the private sector.

You might assume that those socialist Democrats were back in power and at it again, emptying the public till and expanding their patronage mills.

But that would be wrong. The above is a description of the employment figures released last week after 38 months of a Republican administration insisting that large tax cuts for the wealthy would make the private sector hum and put everybody back to work.

It hasn`t happened. Last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, payrolls expanded by only 21,000 -- far less than most of the experts expected. If it hadn`t been for public employment, there would have been no net job creation at all.

Washington didn`t add those jobs. Federal employment was down by 3,000, according to the BLS. Most of the government job growth came from state government, said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. The states alone added 20,000 jobs, largely in education.

The unemployment rate of 5.6 percent sounds modest by the standards of the 1980s. But the number disguises the distress. Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) points out that the long-term unemployed -- those seeking jobs for six months or longer -- have made up more than a fifth of the total unemployed for the past 17 months. That`s the lengthiest stretch of long-term unemployment in 20 years.

And the unemployment rate is artificially low, because many potential job seekers have become so discouraged that they`ve stopped looking for work. Last month 392,000 people dropped out. The labor force has contracted in six of the past eight months. "That`s unprecedented this far into a recovery," says Bernstein. Such measures of unrelenting weakness in the job market, he adds, would normally be associated with unemployment rates of 8 to 9 percent -- numbers associated with the recession of the early 1980s. That`s why jobs are such a big issue in the presidential campaign.

In explaining all this, it`s trendy to argue about outsourcing. It`s a useful debate. But we shouldn`t wait for it to be resolved before acting to relieve the injury we know is out there.

For example, doesn`t it make sense to acknowledge the problem of the long-term unemployed right now? According to Isaac Shapiro, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, some 760,000 workers exhausted their unemployment benefits between the end of December and the end of February.

Why? Nearly all who have exhausted their regular state benefits have been out of luck for additional help because Congress allowed the Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation Program to expire on Dec. 20.

The program was passed in March 2002 and extended twice. Recent votes suggest a majority in the House and Senate -- nearly all Democrats and a significant number of Republicans -- favor extending it again. But the Senate Budget Committee voted down a Sarbanes proposal last week that would have pushed for a benefit extension. This week Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) is expected to propose an amendment on the Senate floor to make a benefit extension possible through the end of June. The political question: Will Republican congressional leaders and President Bush let the extension go though?

"We can debate all we want as to what the best approach is to generate job growth," Shapiro says, "but until the jobs come back, we should agree to provide assistance to those being left behind in the labor market. We have been collecting numbers on this since 1971, and we have never had so many people exhaust their benefits and have to go without further aid. It`s unprecedented." That word again.

Extending unemployment benefits is the very least that should be done to deal with a strange job market. Sluggish job growth demands new efforts to guarantee health insurance to workers who find themselves in difficult transitions. Wage insurance, to provide a year or two safety net for the incomes of those who have to move to lower-paying jobs, might help. So could tax changes specially aimed at helping displaced workers.

Above all, Washington needs to admit that an economy producing healthy profits but minimal new employment is not the middle-class jobs machine it used to be. Helping the unemployed now is just a modest down payment on a larger project to broaden the reach of growth and prosperity.

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washingtonpost.com
Who Really `Owns` Sept. 11?


By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, March 9, 2004; Page A23


We are witnessing a little scrap about real estate. President Bush thinks he owns the events of Sept. 11, 2001, symbolized particularly by the World Trade Center, and some of the families of victims feel just as strongly that they do. I side, just for the moment, with my beloved president, who is entitled to use that dark day for political purposes if, at the same time, he will own up to what happened during the days before it. Everything should be on the table.

But that is not what`s happening. Instead, the president has been a bit scarce with the time he will accord the commission looking into how the terrorist attacks happened in the first place. We all know by now that various elements of what is laughingly known as the intelligence community knew something ominous was up -- who were those guys at flight schools all over the country? -- and that at least one of the terrorists was being sought (by the Germans, among others) and that Sandy Berger, the national security adviser under Bill Clinton, had told Condi Rice, the national security adviser under George W. Bush, that terrorism would be her No. 1 concern -- and yet almost 3,000 lives were lost and a gash punched into the Pentagon and a hole left in the bottom of Manhattan Island. For this, somehow, no one is at fault.

The commission -- it is formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- may well find otherwise. It`s clear that there was a massive intelligence failure and maybe a massive leadership failure as well. After all, by Sept. 11, the Bush administration had been in office almost nine months, which is time enough to make a baby if not a terrorism policy. So it would be good if the president gave an accounting of what he was doing and thinking during that time.

In his recent "Meet the Press" appearance, Bush said he would be glad to "visit" with a different commission -- the one created to investigate how everyone was so wrong about Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction. We will see what Bush means by "visit," but when it comes to the Sept. 11 commission it amounts to a drop-by. In the first place, the commission will come to Bush -- not he to them -- and, as with many White House events (treaty signing, etc.) seating is limited. In this case it`s not the commission that`s welcome but just the chairman and vice chairman, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton. What`s more, this visit shall take no more than an hour, the president presumably being very busy -- what with exercising and the need to get the ol` head on the ol` pillow sometime before 10 lest he accidentally channel-surf onto adult programming.

Trouble is, an hour is not a lot of time. By the time Bush and Kean and Hamilton have finished asking about the wife and kids and that sort of thing, 10 minutes will be gone. But what will also be gone is the feeling, the sense, the appreciation, that this is a momentous investigation, something very important, something touching the lives of many thousands of people -- the families and friends of the deceased -- and all of us, every single one of us whose hearts momentarily stopped that day.

The Bush administration treats the Sept. 11 commission as something of a pest. It will not permit Rice to testify in public (she has in closed session), and even the vice president will donate only an hour of his time. Each concession -- the grand "visit," the offer of a whole hour -- has come only through negotiation and, sometimes, threats of subpoena. I understand, as do we all, that there are grave issues regarding separation of powers and precedent, but they pale compared with the enormity of the crime that day and the bucket of wormy conspiracy theories that are its consequence. Lyndon Johnson would not testify before the Warren Commission -- one reason its conclusions have been challenged ever since.

The president is entitled to use Sept. 11, since it happened on his watch and he performed admirably. But for the same reason -- his watch -- he ought to cease playing hard-to-get with the commission looking into how the terrorist attacks happened in the first place. If he wants to own Sept. 11, he`s entitled. But it does not come alone. Sept. 10 is his, too.

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© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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DER SPIEGEL 11/2004 - 08. März 2004
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,289472,00.html
Justiz

Ein patriotischer Akt

Jesselyn Radack war eine junge Karrierejuristin im Justizministerium von Washington. Dann geschah der 11. September, und sie verlor ihren Job und ihren Ruf - weil sie es wagte, eine andere Meinung zu haben als die Regierung Bush. Von Alexander Osang

An einem Wintermorgen vor gut zwei Jahren versuchte Jesselyn Radack eine einfache Frage ihrer Regierung zu beantworten. Wenn man sich das Leben der Frau heute so ansieht, könnte man denken, sie hat die falsche Antwort gegeben. Aber wahrscheinlich gab es keine richtige.

Jesselyn Radack war an jenem Morgen Dienst habende Anwältin in einer Abteilung des US-Justizministeriums, die Regierungsmitarbeiter bei rechtsethischen Problemen berät. Sie arbeitete dort seit zweieinhalb Jahren. Es waren gute Jahre. Sie fügten sich fugenlos an ihre Karriere, die sie zunächst an die Eliteuniversität Brown in Rhode Island geführt hatte, dann an die Law School der noch berühmteren Universität Yale, wo sie promovierte, und schließlich als eine von zwei Absolventen ihres Jahrgangs ins Justizministerium nach Washington. Jesselyn Radack war an diesem Morgen 31 Jahre alt, sie lebte mit ihrem Mann Sam, einem großen, gut aussehenden Wissenschaftler, der bei der Weltbank arbeitete, und zwei kleinen Söhnen in einem hübschen Backsteinhaus am Stadtrand, sie verdiente mehr als die Hälfte des Familieneinkommens, und es sah nicht so aus, als würde sich das ändern. Vor drei Monaten hatte sie der stellvertretende US-Justizminister Larry Thompson zum Essen eingeladen, um ihr eine Stelle in seinem Büro anzubieten, und vor 39 Tagen hatte ihr FBI-Direktor Robert Mueller in einem Brief zu einem Artikel gratuliert, den sie im "Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics" veröffentlicht hatte.

Es war der 7. Dezember 2001, ein Freitag, sie hatte sich gerade einen Kaffee geholt und ihren Computer eingeschaltet, als das Telefon klingelte. Es war John De Pue, ein Prozessanwalt aus der Abteilung Terrorismus und Gewaltkriminalität des Justizministeriums. Er wollte wissen, ob John Walker Lindh bei seiner Vernehmung in Camp Rhino, Afghanistan, ein Anwalt zustehe.

Jesselyn Radack schrieb Lindhs Namen auf ein weißes Blatt. John Walker Lindh. Vor ihrem Fenster lag der Washingtoner "Platz der Freiheit", die große, weite Welt schwappte in ihre kleine Ministeriumsaußenstelle.

John Walker Lindh war der "amerikanische Taliban-Kämpfer". Ein 20-jähriger Kalifornier, der eine Woche zuvor bärtig, unterernährt und unter Taliban-Kämpfern in Afghanistan gefunden worden war. John Walker Lindh hatte eine ganz andere Karriere gemacht als Jesselyn Radack, eine entgegengesetzte, wenn man so will. Er stammte aus guten Verhältnissen und war in der High School überraschend zum Islam konvertiert. Lindh hatte Arabisch im Jemen und den Koran in Pakistan studiert, bevor er sich in einem Rekrutierungsbüro der Taliban in Kabul meldete, um an ihrem Kampf für einen rein islamischen Staat teilzuhaben. Lindh schien der erste große Fang im jungen amerikanischen Feldzug gegen die Taliban zu sein. Eine Figur, mit der auch der Durchschnittsamerikaner etwas anfangen konnte. Lindh war ein Verräter aus den eigenen Reihen, die Boulevardpresse nannte ihn "Ratte" und "Schwein", Justizminister John Ashcroft nannte ihn einen von der "Qaida trainierten Terroristen". Jetzt saß er in Camp Rhino, einem Marines-Stützpunkt in der Nähe von Kandahar, bereit, von einem FBI-Agenten befragt zu werden. In Afghanistan war es abends.

Hatte Lindh, der Vaterlandsverräter, das Recht auf einen Anwalt?

Jesselyn Radack diskutierte die Frage mit Kollegen und antwortete De Pue wenig später in einer E-Mail, dass eine Befragung Lindhs ohne Anwalt ethisch nicht vertretbar, ja nicht einmal rechtmäßig sei.

"Vielen Dank", schrieb De Pue zurück. "Ich werde das weiterleiten und halte Sie auf dem Laufenden."

Am Montag rief De Pue wieder an und sagte, dass der FBI-Agent den Gefangenen Lindh am Wochenende ohne Anwalt befragt hatte.



"Newsweek"-Artikel über Walker Lindh: Einzige Sicherheit
"Die Befragung muss womöglich versiegelt werden und kann nur für Zwecke der Nationalen Sicherheit verwendet werden", antwortete Jesselyn Radack.

"Mist", schrieb De Pue zurück. "Wir versuchen mal rauszukriegen, was Walker gesagt hat, wenn er denn überhaupt was gesagt hat."

In den folgenden zwei Wochen tauschten Jesselyn Radack und De Pue weitere E-Mails aus, insgesamt 14. Radack druckte sie aus, tat sie in eine Akte, die sie zum Fall angelegt hatte, und hängte sie in den Aktenschrank ihrer kleinen Außenstelle des Justizministeriums.

"Recht", sagt Ashcroft, "hat oft mit Vergeltung zu tun und oft sogar mit Rache."

Dann war Weihnachten.

"Ich hatte zum Schluss den Eindruck, dass sich John De Pue aus unserer E-Mail-Konversation zurückzog. Er löste sich regelrecht auf", sagt Jesselyn Radack.

Sie sitzt in einem bunten Strickpullover auf der Wohnzimmercouch ihres Hauses, das sie in den letzten anderthalb Jahren nur selten verlassen hat. Es ist ein freundliches Haus, alles ist in warmen Farben gehalten. Auf dem Kamin steht das Hochzeitsfoto, das sie und ihren Mann vor dem Washington Monument zeigt. Im Flur bauen ihre beiden kleinen Söhne mit Stöcken aus dem Garten eine Art Scheiterhaufen, das schwarze Kindermädchen trägt Radacks drei Monate alte Tochter durch die Küche.

Jesselyn Radack hat einen dicken Ordner auf den Knien, der ihren Kampf der vergangenen zwei Jahre zusammenhält. Sie ist jetzt 33 Jahre alt, seit 16 Monaten arbeitslos. Jesselyn Radack hatte in dieser Zeit einen stressbedingten Anfall von multipler Sklerose, sie hat 30 000 Dollar Anwaltsschulden gemacht, und sie fährt ihren Haushaltsmüll auf eine Kippe nach Virginia, nachdem sie eines Nachmittags einen unauffälligen Mann in Windjacke dabei beobachtete, wie er ihre Abfälle inspizierte.

"Unser verdammter Müll geht niemanden etwas an. Nicht, dass ich etwas zu verheimlichen hätte", sagt sie. Aber so genau weiß sie das natürlich auch nicht mehr. Sie ist in das System der vorbeugenden Verbrechensbekämpfung geraten, in dem die Grenzen zwischen Täter und Opfer verschwimmen.

Das Böse auszurotten, bevor es sich zeigt, war ein alter Traum von Justizminister John Ashcroft, der sich gelegentlich mit Jesus Christus vergleicht.

"Recht hat nicht mit Vergebung zu tun", sagte Ashcroft kurz nach seinem Amtsantritt. "Es hat oft mit Vergeltung zu tun und oft sogar mit Rache."

Kurz nach dem 11. September rief er seine engsten Mitarbeiter zu sich und erklärte ihnen die neue Rolle des Justizministeriums: Künftig gehe es nicht mehr nur darum, Verbrechen aufzuklären, sondern sie zu verhindern, bevor sie passieren. Er entwarf den "Patriot Act", ein Gesetz, das seinen Mitarbeitern weitgehende Freiheiten bei der Überwachung des Volkes einräumte.

"Wer dazu nicht bereit ist, kann jetzt gehen", sagte Ashcroft.

Seine Botschaft sickerte in alle Gefäße des amerikanischen Gerichtssystems. Im Januar 2002 rief Claudia Flynn, die Chefin der kleinen Washingtoner Außenstelle für ethische Rechtsberatung der US-Regierung, ihre sieben Mitarbeiter zusammen, um ihnen mitzuteilen, dass sie in ihrer Arbeit von nun an grundsätzlich eine "konservativere Position" einnehmen würden. Zwei Tage später bekam Jesselyn Radack von ihrer Chefin eine Beurteilung.

Die Beurteilung war nicht datiert, auch nicht unterschrieben, aber sie war vernichtend. Jesselyn Radack verstand die Welt nicht mehr. Sie hatte bislang nicht mal Erfahrungen mit durchschnittlichen Beurteilungen. Sie war ihr Leben lang überall die Beste gewesen, und nun las sie, dass sie unfähig war. Es gab keine Begründung, nur das Urteil. Sie fragte ihre Chefin, was das zu bedeuten habe.

"Vielleicht solltest du dich nach einem neuen Job umsehen", sagte Claudia Flynn freundlich.

Am nächsten Tag erschien Justizminister Ashcroft wieder auf einer Pressekonferenz und erklärte, dass die Rechte des "amerikanischen Taliban-Kämpfers" John Walker Lindh "peinlichst und sorgfältigst" gewahrt worden seien. Man würde Lindh bald den Prozess machen. Es gebe zehn Anklagepunkte. Die geplante Strafe war zweimal lebenslänglich. Oder Tod.

Jesselyn Radack sah keinen Zusammenhang zwischen dem Lindh-Fall und ihrer schlechten Beurteilung. Sie war Republikanerin, sie hatte kein Mitleid mit dem "amerikanischen Taliban-Kämpfer". Sie wusste allerdings auch nicht, dass Claudia Flynn hinter ihrem Rücken den E-Mail-Schriftwechsel mit De Pue an hohe Stellen des Justizministeriums weitergeleitet hatte. Sie wusste nicht, dass all diese Dokumente vom Gericht unter strengster Geheimhaltung eingestuft wurden. Sie wusste auch nicht, dass John Walker Lindh wie ein Tier in einem Container gehalten wurde. Zeitweise lag er nackt, mit verbundenen Augen, mit Isolierband an eine Trage gefesselt in dunklen Räumen. Bei den ersten Befragungen durch das FBI war er unterernährt, unterkühlt und übermüdet. Und niemand sagte ihm, dass seine Eltern einen Anwalt für ihn beauftragt hatten.

Aber genau um das Ergebnis dieser ersten Befragungen sollte die Anklage gegen Amerikas Staatsfeind Nummer eins gebaut werden. Es war jene Befragung, von der Radack per E-Mail abgeraten hatte.

Am 7. März bekam Jesselyn Radack von einem der US-Staatsanwälte, der den Lindh-Prozess vorbereitete, die Nachricht, dass zwei E-Mails, die sie mit John De Pue zur Vernehmung des amerikanischen Taliban-Kämpfers ausgetauscht hat, beim Gericht eingetroffen seien. Der Staatsanwalt fragte, ob das die gesamte Korrespondenz gewesen sei.

Hatte Lindh, der amerikanische Taliban-Kämpfer, das Recht auf einen Anwalt?

"Das war vielleicht das allererste Mal, dass ich misstrauisch wurde. Ich hatte ja mindestens ein Dutzend E-Mails mit De Pue ausgetauscht", sagt Jesselyn Radack. "Ich bin zu Claudia Flynn, meiner Vorgesetzten, gegangen und hab ihr von der Anfrage erzählt. Die hat die Tür zugemacht und schneidend, aber leise gesagt: `Ich hab alles weggeschickt, was da war. Verstehst du? Alles!` Ich bin gleich zum Aktenschrank gegangen und hab nachgesehen, und da waren noch ganze drei Mails in der Akte. Der Rest war verschwunden. Einfach weg. In dem Moment hab ich wirklich Angst bekommen."

Jesselyn Radack ging zu einem Kollegen ihrer Außenstelle, dem sie vertraute. Er sagte, die Akte sei "entwässert" worden, einen Begriff, den sie noch nie gehört hatte. Der Kollege riet ihr, die Computertechniker des Ministeriums anzurufen, um die automatisch gelöschten Mails zu retten. Sie fanden tatsächlich alle wieder. Sie druckte sie aus und machte Kopien.

Jesselyn Radack begriff, dass die Aussagen ihres Justizministers Ashcroft nicht zu ihrem kleinen Briefwechsel mit De Pue passten. Sie fühlte, dass sie eine Art Bedrohung für das Ethikbüro geworden war, wenn nicht für das gesamte Ministerium. Ihre Chefin Flynn unterbreitete ihr regelmäßig Jobangebote. Als in der Washingtoner Niederlassung der Firma "Hawkins Delafield & Wood" eine Stelle frei wurde, bewarb sie sich. Sie fing dort am 8. April 2002 an. Am 5. April war ihr letzter Arbeitstag im Justizministerium. Sie nahm die Kopien der E-Mails zur John-Walker-Lindh-Befragung mit, als sie ihren Schreibtisch ausräumte.

"Es war meine einzige Sicherheit", sagt sie heute.

Vielleicht aber hat sie schon damals darüber nachgedacht, etwas mit den Mails zu machen, die sich so gegen sie gewendet hatten. Jesselyn Radack musste ihr Leben lang kämpfen.

Ihre Mutter hatte Alkoholprobleme und lebte mit wechselnden Männern zusammen, die sie nicht selten schlugen. Jesselyn Radack wollte nur raus aus dem schmutzigen, verrümpelten Haus in Maryland, sagt sie. Sie hat sich den Weg an die Eliteuniversitäten über ein Sportstipendium erkämpft. An der Brown-Universität hatte sie drei Mitstudenten angezeigt, die sie sexuell belästigt hatten. Große, starke Footballspieler alle drei. Mit Anfang zwanzig stellte man fest, dass sie an multipler Sklerose leidet. Im ersten Yale-Jahr erblindete sie auf einem Auge und verlor das Gefühl in Armen und Beinen. Im zweiten Jahr nahm sie ein neues Medikament, die Nebenwirkungen waren stark, dennoch hielt sie immer ihre erstklassigen Noten und gelangte schließlich über das Ehrenprogramm des Justizministeriums nach Washington, das damals noch von Demokraten regiert wurde. Sie diskutierte als 25-Jährige bei einem Lunch mit Clintons Justizministerin Janet Reno über die Stammzellenforschung und machte ein einjähriges Praktikum in Hillary Clintons Büro. Man kann sich nur schwer vorstellen, dass sich eine Frau wie Jesselyn Radack still zurückzieht, wenn sie auf Widerstand stößt.

Vielleicht wollte sie sich an ihren Kolleginnen der Rechtsberatungsstelle rächen, vielleicht an Ashcroft, vielleicht am gesamten System. Wer weiß. Sie sagt, dass sie eines Morgens eine Diskussion über den bevorstehenden Lindh-Prozess im Rundfunk hörte und beschloss, die Wahrheit ans Licht zu bringen. Es war Juni 2002.

"Ich hörte, wie dieser Reporter von `Newsweek` im Radio behauptete, dass John Walker Lindh nach gültigem amerikanischen Recht behandelt worden sei. Ich dachte: Du hast doch keine Ahnung, Junge."

Sie rief den "Newsweek"-Reporter noch am selben Tag an und erzählte ihm von den E-Mails. Sie telefonierten ein paar Mal, schließlich faxte sie ihm die kopierten Briefe. "Newsweek" druckte Auszüge am 24. Juni 2002. Ihr Name wurde nicht genannt, aber es war kein weiter Weg zu ihr.

Zehn Tage nach dem "Newsweek"-Artikel meldete sich Special Agent Ron Powell aus dem Ermittlungsbüro des Justizministeriums bei Jesselyn Radack. Er hatte Protokolle der Telefongespräche zwischen "Newsweek" und ihrem Büro. Woher er sie hatte, war nicht klar, aber Special Agent Powell konnte genau sagen, wann und wie lange zwischen ihrem Telefon und dem "Newsweek"-Anschluss Kontakt bestand. Auch die Faxverbindung hatte er zurückverfolgt. Nach dem "Patriot Act" war das alles rechtmäßig. Jesselyn Radack hätte eine Staatsfeindin sein können.

Sie nahm sich einen Anwalt.

Der Anwalt erzählte ihr, dass ihre Aussage unter das Whistleblower-Gesetz fällt, das Regierungsangestellte schützt, die aus Gewissensgründen Interna an die Öffentlichkeit bringen. Es sehe gut aus.

Sie schöpfte Mut. Sie wähnte sich außerhalb des Systems. Sie fragte Powell, was man ihr eigentlich vorwerfe.

Der Special Agent zuckte mit den Schultern - und begann ihr Leben zu zersägen.

"Powell rief in der Kanzlei an und erzählte dort, dass gegen mich kriminalistische Ermittlungen geführt werden. Er erzählte es allen, von der Frau an der Rezeption bis zum Senior Partner. Am Anfang hielt die Kanzlei noch zu mir, aber man konnte zusehen, wie ihr Widerstand zusammenbrach", sagt Jesselyn Radack.

Die Kanzlei entließ sie nach fünf Monaten und übergab all ihre Unterlagen an Special Agent Powell.

"Vielleicht", sagte ihre Chefin, "solltest du dich nach einem neuen Job umschauen."

"Die hatten keinen Durchsuchungsbefehl, sie sagten nicht einmal, was sie eigentlich für kriminalistische Untersuchungen gegen mich führten, aber die Kanzlei gab ihnen meinen Computer. Da waren Hunderte Akten von privaten Klienten gespeichert. Das waren vertrauliche Informationen", sagt Jesselyn Radack.

Der Prozess gegen John Walker Lindh wurde in dieser Zeit eilig und still durchgezogen. Der große Staatsfeind verschwand unspektakulär. Die Staatsanwaltschaft musste von den zehn Anklagepunkten acht fallen lassen. Lindh wurde im Oktober 2002 wegen "Dienst für die Taliban" zu 20 Jahren Gefängnis verurteilt. Am Ende schien er nur noch ein verwirrter Junge zu sein. John Walker Lindh sitzt in einem normalen Gefängnis in Kalifornien, sein Fall ist zur Ruhe gekommen.

Für Jesselyn Radack war es noch nicht vorbei. Das Justizministerium informierte die Anwaltskammern in Maryland und Washington D. C., bei denen Jesselyn Radack zugelassen war, über die Ermittlungen. Ihre Anwaltslizenz war nun bedroht. Ihr Leben rutschte weg.

Vor einem Jahr traf Jesselyn Radack einen Anwalt, der sie kostenlos verteidigt, weil er die Ungerechtigkeit nicht ertragen kann. Und weil er der amerikanischen Verfassung vertraut. Das ist Bruce Fein.

Fein ist Ende fünfzig, er ist konservativ. Er ist in Cambridge geboren, hat in Harvard Recht studiert und war schon zu Reagan-Zeiten im Justizministerium. Fein beschäftigt sich seit über dreißig Jahren mit Verfassungsrecht. Er hat als Berater an den neuen Verfassungen von Russland, Südafrika, Mosambik und Ungarn mitgearbeitet. Sein Sohn ist Partner in seiner Kanzlei, aber gerade als Reservist der Army in Bagdad, wo er hilft, das irakische Justizministerium aufzubauen.

Bruce Fein erzählt das alles ganz am Anfang, womöglich, um klar zu machen, dass er nicht unpatriotisch ist.

Es funktioniert. Ashcrofts System der Patrioten funktioniert.

Gibt es ein System?

Bruce Fein überlegt einen Moment.

"System? Ich weiß nicht", sagt er. "Manchmal erinnert mich das alles an die McCarthy-Zeit. Damals genügte es, einfach zu sagen, jemand ist ein Kommunist, und er war zerstört. So in etwa ist es auch bei Jess. Niemand musste irgendetwas beweisen. Es wurde immer nur behauptet."

Fein sagt, dass er ihren Ruf wiederherstellen will.

Wie soll das gehen?

Es ist ein langer Weg, sagt Bruce Fein.

Wie ein amerikanischer Präsidentschaftskandidat musste Jesselyn Radack über die unklaren, trüben Stellen in ihrer Biografie nachdenken. Sie hatte in einer College-Girls-Geschichte vom "Playboy" posiert. Ihre Mutter hatte ein Alkoholproblem. Sie hatte bei Frauengruppen mitgemacht. Ihr Mann reiste viel. Ein paar Kolleginnen aus ihrem Ministeriumsbüro streuten Gerüchte gegen die Frau, die jünger und erfolgreicher gewesen war als sie. Sie habe für ihren viel beachteten Rechtsartikel bei anderen geklaut, hieß es. Sie habe als Studentin Namen von sexuell aggressiven Männern an die Campusmauern von Yale geschrieben. Das alles stimmte nicht. Jesselyn Radacks Anwalt verbot den Kolleginnen per einstweiliger Verfügung, diese Gerüchte zu verbreiten. Aber sie waren ja in der Welt.

Niemand geht unbeschadet aus so einer Geschichte hervor.

Man spürt es, wenn man lang und tief in Jesselyn Radacks Berichten versinkt. Niemand ist nur unschuldig, denkt man irgendwann. Vielleicht war doch alles nur eine Bürofrauengeschichte. Wie kann jemand, der in einem Vorort-Haus sitzt, ein riesiges Ministerium bedrohen? Klingt es nicht eher wie ein John-Grisham-Roman? Ein Mann in Windjacke, der den Müll untersucht? Vielleicht bildet sie sich alles nur ein. Hat sie nicht alles erst ausgelöst, als sie sich an die Presse wandte? Und warum gibt sie nicht endlich auf? Warum zappelt sie noch? Jesselyn Radack ist allein und störrisch. Das macht es schwer, sich auf ihre Seite zu schlagen.

Sie hatte gehofft, dass nach dem "Newsweek"-Artikel eine Art Medienlawine ins Rollen kommen würde. Aber die Zeitungen hielten sich zurück. Als Eric Lichtblau, ein angesehener Rechtsexperte von der "New York Times", den Fall in einem Artikel erwähnte, streute ein republikanischer Kongressabgeordneter, dass Lichtblau auch mal einen Artikel zusammen mit Redakteur Jason Blair geschrieben hatte, der gerade als Fälscher aufgeflogen war.

Washington ist eine kleine Stadt, man schafft es von Ashcrofts Büro zur Außenstelle für Rechtsberatung und von dort zu der Anwaltskanzlei zu Fuß in einer halben Stunde. Alles liegt so dicht zusammen. Jesselyn Radack trifft ihre ehemaligen Kollegen im Supermarkt, bei Kinderfesten und in der Synagoge. Überall sind Staatsanwälte, Richter, Verteidiger, Politiker. Die Stadt lebt von ihnen, sie sind ihr Blut. Sie schauen weg oder lächeln sie an. Sie sind nicht verlegen, denn sie sind stark.

"Ich kann zu dem Fall nichts sagen", sagt Claudia Flynn, Radacks ehemalige Chefin aus der Rechtsberatungsstelle, ruhig und lächelt. Eine kontrollierte, ältere Frau, mit Pagenschnitt und Perlenkette. Sie zieht langsam die Tür zu ihrem Büro zu.

Niemand musste irgendetwas beweisen. Es wurde immer nur behauptet.

"Wir wollen das lieber nicht kommentieren", sagen die Anwälte der Kanzlei "Hawkins Delafield & Wood", die in einem Gebäude auf der anderen Straßenseite arbeiten.

Und die Anfrage im Justizministerium, das drei Straßen weiter hinter Stacheldraht und Straßenblockaden liegt, verschwindet wie in einem tiefen Brunnen. Kein Echo, nichts.

Der demokratische Senator Edward Kennedy schrieb im vorigen Jahr einen Brief an John Ashcroft und bat um Aufklärung im Fall Jesselyn Radack.

Ashcroft hat nicht mal reagiert.

Einer von John Ashcrofts Lieblingssprüchen geht so: "Es gibt zwei Sachen, die sich auf der Mitte des Weges befinden. Liberale und totgefahrene Stinktiere."

Man weiß nicht, ob er sich jemals im Detail mit dem Fall Radack beschäftigt hat. Aber man kann wohl annehmen, dass er kein großer Freund der ethischen Rechtsberatung ist. Vor einem halben Jahr rief jemand aus dem Justizministerium bei Radacks Anwalt an und teilte mit, dass die Ermittlungen gegen sie eingestellt worden seien. Sie wusste zu diesem Zeitpunkt immer noch nicht, was ihr juristisch eigentlich vorgeworfen worden war. Der Anruf kam am 11. September 2003, dem zweiten Jahrestag des Anschlags. Das hätte ein Zufall sein können.

Oder ein Zeichen.

Fein hat beim Gericht Einsicht in die Kriminalakte Jesselyn Radack beantragt und sie vor zehn Tagen bekommen. Es ist der lächerliche, kleinkarierte Bericht des Agenten Powell. Es sind viele Fehler drin, Jesselyn Radack hat sie alle aufgelistet und dem Gericht zugeschickt. Aber das eigentlich Bemerkenswerte ist, dass es nie darum ging, warum die E-Mails verschwanden und ob sie jemals beim Gericht ankamen. Niemand machte sich die Mühe, herauszufinden, warum Jesselyn Radack aus ihrem kleinen Büro gedrängt wurde und ob sie vielleicht ehrenwert gehandelt hat. Es ging nur darum, einen Verrat zu beweisen. Sie zerstörten eine Karriere und verurteilten damit ein Verbrechen, das noch gar nicht begangen worden war.

Es ist unmöglich, sich dagegen zu wehren.

Jesselyn Radack sitzt in ihrem Wohnzimmer. Sie hat die Rechtslage in ihrem Ordner. Die spricht für sie. Sie hat die geretteten E-Mails abgeheftet. Sie hat eidesstattliche Erklärungen über die gesamten Vorgänge der vergangenen zwei Jahre zusammengetragen. Sie ist immer noch jung. Sie hat blonde gewellte Haare, kräftige weiße Zähne, und wenn sie steht, drückt sie ihre Beine durch wie ein Cheerleader. Sie ist ein All-American-Girl. Sie war Republikanerin, sie war eine von ihnen. Aber man weiß nie, in welcher Gestalt sich das Böse nähert. Jesselyn Radack hat sich bei über 30 Stellen beworben. Die meisten haben nicht mal geantwortet. Eine Kanzlei schrieb, sie wolle sich nicht mit der Regierung anlegen. Die Georgetown-Universität antwortete, Radack käme erst in Frage, wenn sie ihre Probleme geregelt hätte. Und ein Washingtoner Professor sagte ihr, dass alle Rechtsfakultäten der Stadt sich weigern, jemanden "mit einem solchen Ballast zu beschäftigen". Jesselyn Radack ist jetzt registrierte Demokratin. Aber am Ende hat sie nicht mal einen Job im Wahlkampfteam von Wesley Clark bekommen.

So funktioniert "Patriot Act".

Im Recht geht es nicht um Vergeben, sagt John Ashcroft. Es geht meistens um Vergeltung. Und oft um Rache.


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© DER SPIEGEL 11/2004

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Manuel Valenzuela: Of The Evil Empire
Tuesday, 9 March 2004, 12:49 pm
Opinion: Manuel Valenzuela

Of The Evil Empire, Imperialist Devastation of Peoples And the Evils Done in our Name

By Manuel Valenzuela, Axis of Logic Contributing Editor
Mar 8, 2004, 15:25
FROM: http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_5525.shtml
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 throughout the 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 the Evil 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.


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© Copyright 2004 by AxisofLogic.com

Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, activist, writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel to be published in Spring of 2004. His articles appear weekly on axisoflogic.com where he is also contributing editor. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at [e-mail]

[Joerver]

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-doherty…
COMMENTARY
Give Them Your Name and Give Up Your Rights
By Brian Doherty
Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine.

March 9, 2004

One man parked on the side of the road in Humboldt County, Nevada, in May 2000 was brave enough to say no to a police officer when ordered to identify himself.

The officer "just walked up and started demanding my papers," Larry Hiibel told Associated Press. "I was there on that road minding my own business."

He refused and, as a result, was arrested. Now Hiibel may end up redefining our ability to move in public without having every aspect of our lives investigated at the whim of the police.

Such a redefinition is sorely needed. Under current precedent, being ordered to give your name to a police officer, if you are stopped under reasonable suspicion of being involved in a crime, is generally considered a reasonable and minimal intrusion on your privacy and dignity. When the Supreme Court hears the case of Hiibel vs. 6th Judicial District Court, it must consider how the practical consequences of identifying yourself to a police officer have changed given the rise of a seemingly endless number of computerized databases.

Police now potentially have at their disposal such databases as the National Criminal Information Center (which the Justice Department exempted from requirements that data in it be "timely, relevant, complete and accurate") and the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (which the American Civil Liberties Union thinks contains some of the data-mining aspects of the controversial and supposedly scuttled Total Information Awareness program).

Demands that you identify yourself are creeping into situations well beyond roadside encounters with police. The Department of Homeland Security is rolling out its Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II program, which will check data on all airline passengers against existing government and private databases to establish what threat level a traveler presents.

This will potentially involve checking your credit records, gun ownership, magazine subscriptions, outstanding child-support obligations and any other information about you floating in the "datasphere." It will also serve as a means to capture anyone with an outstanding warrant for a violent crime; once the system is in place and the data are collected, its uses can easily expand. Overdue traffic ticket? Why don`t we take care of that now?

As a recent General Accounting Office report on the program noted, the Department of Homeland Security has not yet worked out a means of redress for citizens detained or prevented from traveling based on the inevitable faulty data that might make them seem suspicious.

We are entering a world in which our day-to-day activities as private citizens leave us vulnerable to an officious police check on every bit of information that any source, public or private, has gathered about us.

Not only the guilty have reason to fear. As the Electronic Privacy Information Center wrote in its amicus brief in Hiibel`s case, "a name is no longer a simple identifier: It is the key to a vast, cross-referenced system of public and private databases, which lay bare the most intimate features of an individual`s life. If any person can be coerced by the state to hand over this key to the police, then the protections of the 4th and 5th Amendments have been rendered illusory."

Nevada claims that merely stating your name would suffice under its statute. But it also says in one of its court filings in the Hiibel case that "if the person provides a false name, the officer may continue to detain the person until the conflict is resolved." This certainly seems to imply an officially authorized state-issued ID is all that will ultimately satisfy authorities.

Technological realities have transformed our world into a fishbowl. If we are to live in that fishbowl, it`s imperative that the government be constrained in the circumstances under which it can stick a hook in us.





Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer9…
COMMENTARY
The Worst Form of Exploitation
A hypocritical Bush uses 9/11 images but resists an accounting of the truth.
By Robert Scheer
Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Times and is coauthor of "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq" (Seven Stories Press/Akashic Books, 2003).

March 9, 2004

How perfect the irony, how sordid the scam. The president, who ignored the Al Qaeda threat before Sept. 11, 2001, who diverted public attention in that horror`s aftermath to the nonexistent threat from Iraq and who has stonewalled the investigation of 9/11, now seeks to exploit that tragedy as a reelection gimmick.

George W. Bush avoids being photographed with the dead and injured from his folly in Iraq, but hey, those flag-draped coffins of 9/11 victims make great TV ads. What a grisly low in political exploitation.

That`s why the ads were condemned by a firefighters union and many of the 9/11 victims` relatives, whose various websites contain an impressive list of the unanswered questions concerning the tragedy. As Bob McIlvaine, whose son was killed in the Twin Towers disaster, put it: "Instead of playing on people`s emotions with images of that day, the president would do right to cooperate more with the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks so we can learn the truth about what happened on that day and why."

But uncovering the truth about 9/11 has never been Bush`s intention. Instead, the president has used that tragedy for his own political ambitions — to draw attention away from his lies about Iraq, the unprecedented national debt, the disappointing jobless recovery and the attacks on civil liberty. What`s mind-boggling is the cynicism of Bush`s electoral ploy when one considers that he never showed any interest in terrorism before 9/11. He had focused instead on the war on drugs and trying to one-up his father on Iraq. His abysmal failure to heed the Clinton administration`s warnings regarding the threat posed by Osama bin Laden may be one reason for Bush`s extreme reluctance to permit an unimpeded, bipartisan public investigation of 9/11.

Never before in our national history has such a major event been so unexamined by the government while being so effectively hyped for political advantage. The obfuscation has been deliberate and executed with a passion that suggests Bush may have some dreadful truth to hide. Why else would he initially oppose the formation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the origins and lessons of 9/11?

Bush allowed the commission to form only after enormous public pressure led by the families of victims, who demanded an accounting of what led to the loss of their loved ones. Bush then sought to undermine an honest investigation by appointing Henry Kissinger, international grand master of mendacity, to be chairman. That gambit failed when Kissinger refused to make public his murky financial entanglements with the very regimes most likely to have links to the 9/11 terrorists.

After a more independent commission finally was allowed to form, Bush set about to systematically undermine its work by refusing to turn over documents essential to the investigation or to permit the full committee to interview the top officials in his administration, from himself on down.

This is a president whose immediate response to 9/11 was to protect the Al Qaeda terrorists` known sponsors in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan while planning a sideshow war against Bin Laden`s sworn enemy in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein. In the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster, a Saudi plane was allowed to land in the United States and whisk Bin Laden relatives and certain Saudis out of the country before intelligence agencies could fully question them, despite the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals who had been allowed to enter the U.S. under suspicious circumstances, suggesting the connivance of the Saudi government.

Bush turned his sights on Iraq`s illusory weapons of mass destruction while lifting the sanctions imposed on Pakistan, a known possessor and proliferator of nuclear weapons. Nor have any of those sanctions been restored even now, when Pakistan admits that its top scientific institute was the source of nuclear weapons technology sold to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

Bush defends his exploitation of 9/11 with these words: "How this administration handled that day, as well as the war on terror, is worthy of discussion." Yes indeed, but it is an administration that delights in discussions in which it monopolizes all of the crucial information and cherry-picks, fabricates and otherwise distorts evidence, mocking the sacred notion of representative democracy.






Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-cons…
THE WORLD
U.S. Mission in Iraq May Be Vulnerable at Home
The public is growing impatient, a think tank report finds. It predicts a foreign policy disaster if leaders don`t shore up support.
By Sonni Efron
Times Staff Writer

March 9, 2004

WASHINGTON — Public support for a large, sustained U.S. involvement in Iraq has grown fragile, and leaders of both political parties should help shore it up to prevent a foreign policy catastrophe, according to a report released today by an influential think tank.

Citing polling data and anticipating future difficulties, the Council on Foreign Relations said President Bush, Democratic presidential challenger Sen. John F. Kerry and other political leaders should counter an erosion in support by committing themselves to a multibillion-dollar effort lasting at least several more years.

"We encourage all parties — the president, Sen. Kerry, congressional leaders — to recognize that this is a continuing American commitment," said James R. Schlesinger, secretary of Defense in the Nixon and Ford administrations and co-chairman of the bipartisan task force of foreign policy experts who wrote the report.

"They need to sustain it because the effect of not sustaining it and failing in Iraq would be a substantial blow, if not catastrophic, for American foreign policy," Schlesinger said in a telephone interview Monday.

The scheduled hand-over of power to a new Iraqi government on June 30 may lead Americans to think that the United States has turned the corner in Iraq and can begin to phase out its involvement, the report said.

"In fact, Iraq is entering an exceptionally challenging and dangerous phase, and sustained and determined U.S. engagement will be essential in the months and years to come," the report concluded.

The Bush administration insists the United States will stay the course in Iraq, and Congress last year approved spending billions of dollars on the occupation. Nonetheless, "support among Americans may be broader than it is deep, and appears to be accompanied by some degree of impatience," the report said.

In a nationwide poll taken in November, 60% of respondents said they thought the process of creating an Iraqi government was going too slowly, according to the report. That was before new obstacles complicated the effort to set up a transitional government to take sovereignty from the United States this summer.

Growing doubts about the rationale for war are also likely to affect public support, the report warned. In April, 70% of respondents to a Washington Post-ABC poll thought the war had been worth fighting. The figure dropped to 50% when the survey was repeated last month.

At the same time, Americans` expectations for the success of the U.S. mission appear to be low. In a Harris poll last month, 73% of those surveyed said they thought it very or somewhat likely that the United States would "get bogged down for a long time in Iraq and not be able to create a stable government there."

The report is a warning to policymakers and the public that the U.S. engagement in Iraq is too important to become a divisive domestic issue, said task force member Edward P. Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Israel who directs the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

"It`s an alert: Don`t let this get out of hand in an election year," Djerejian said.

The report also calls on the United States to put greater emphasis on addressing pervasive unemployment in Iraq. And it draws particular attention to the need to manage Iraq`s oil sector and maintain accountability over oil revenue to ensure that the money is used to fund national reconstruction.

"This is very important because there`s been a history in the Arab world of oil wealth being siphoned off into private pockets and systematic corruption in various regimes," Djerejian said.

Oil experts interviewed by task force members expressed concern that there had been insufficient progress in establishing financial controls and ensuring merit-based hiring in the oil sector.

In an unusual approach to the overall American effort, the report recommended that the Bush administration spend up to $40 million to offer incentives to civilian U.S. government employees willing to serve a year or more in Iraq. The incentive pay should be added to the ordinary danger pay offered to civil servants abroad, and should target Arabic-language speakers and Iraq experts, the report said.

The State Department has denied having problems recruiting staff members for Iraq duty, but the task force said the security situation has made it difficult to recruit for long-term assignments.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/163779_helen09.html

Let people, not NRA, call the shots
Tuesday, March 9, 2004

By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- If the American people want the law banning assault weapons to be extended, now is the time for them to contact their lawmakers in Washington.

In an unusual move, the powerful National Rifle Association passed the word Tuesday to its favorite senators that they should kill the NRA`s pet bill that would grant gun producers immunity from civil lawsuits.

What ticked off the NRA was the fact that the Senate had tacked on two amendments that the gun lobby didn`t like.

One amendment would require background checks on purchasers at gun shows and from unlicensed dealers. The other would have extended the ban on sale of military-style assault weapons for 10 years.

Faced with winning on the no-liability shield but losing on those two amendments, the NRA urged its friends to kill the whole package. And they did so.

The current ban on assault weapons expires Sept. 13.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, a big NRA supporter, said the bill had been so "dramatically wounded it should not pass."

Now, it`s back to the starting line. It`s up to the voters to tell Congress that it should work to promote a safer environment for everyone by ignoring the political grumblings of the powerful NRA.

It would be lovely to think that members of Congress had a grand awakening on the need for more gun control.

We can hope that, some day, the members of the Senate and the House will be thinking of ways to reduce violence on the streets, starting with common sense rules about access to guns.

During the presidential campaign, President Bush said he favored a ban on assault weapons. But this time around, he passed the word that he wanted a "clean" bill, meaning without pesky amendments. Even then, he failed to push for an extension of the assault weapons ban.

When I asked White House spokesman Scott McClellan recently if the president wanted the extension, he dodged the question and responded that the president believes the best way to crack down on crime is to strictly enforce existing laws.

In other words, after a crime is committed with such weapons, then capture and punish the perpetrator. Why not restrict access to deadly weapons before they can be used? Or is that too logical?

But McClellan was crystal clear about Bush`s stand on lawsuits against gun makers: He`s against them and views them as "frivolous." The president believes the manufacturer or seller of "a legal product should not be liable for the criminal use of that product by others," the White House press secretary declared.

Opposition to such lawsuits, McClellan continued, "is part of our efforts to stop lawsuit abuse and bring some more sanity to our civil justice system," referring to Bush`s campaign for so-called tort reform and his ferocious attacks on trial lawyers.

Gun control advocates had the support of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Major Cities Chiefs of Police organization, and 200 sheriffs and police chiefs. A big lift came from Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who said he was persuaded by the law enforcement community, which cited statistics showing crimes attributed to assault weapons dropped 66 percent as a result of the ban.

The Washington Post has identified the NRA as the sixth-biggest donor to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the 2002 congressional races, contributing $411,000 to GOP candidates.

The newspaper quoted a spokesman for the Center for the Study of Elections, as identifying the NRA as having overtaken Christian conservatives "as the very best interest groups on the right at grass-root mobilizing."

The NRA is only in temporary strategic retreat. It`s up to the people to call the shots this time and make the lawmakers do the right thing by extending the ban on assault weapons.



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Helen Thomas writes for Hearst Newspapers. She can be reached at 202-263-6400 or at the e-mail address hthomas(at)hearstdc.com).

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Roadside bomb kills American soldier in Iraq

Tuesday, March 9, 2004
©2004 Associated Press

URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/a/2004/03/09/international0709EST0490.DTL


(03-09) 04:09 PST TIKRIT, Iraq (AP) --

An American soldier was killed Tuesday morning after a roadside bomb exploded while his convoy was passing by, the U.S. military said.

The soldier was the first member of the 1st Infantry Division, which is replacing the 4th Infantry Division, to die in Iraq, said Maj. Debra Stewart.

The soldier was killed after the Humvee he was riding in was hit by the bomb in Balad Ruz, just east of Baqouba in the Sunni Triangle. A second soldier was wounded in the explosion and airlifted the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad and was listed in stable condition.

The names of both soldiers were withheld pending notification of their families.

"It is a very sad day for the division, we have lost a very valuable team member," said Stewart, a Division spokeswoman.

The latest death brings to 553 the number of American service members who have died since the Iraq conflict began March 20. Most of those deaths occurred after President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1.

©2004 Associated Press

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Published on Tuesday, March 9, 2004 by the Wall Street Journal
Is Military Creeping Into Domestic Law Enforcement?
by Robert Block and Gary Fields

IN A LITTLE-NOTICED side effect of the war on terrorism, the military is edging toward a sensitive area that has been off-limits to it historically: domestic intelligence gathering and law enforcement.

Several recent incidents involving the military have raised concern among student and civil-rights groups. One was a visit last month by an Army intelligence agent to an official at the University of Texas law school in Austin. The agent demanded a videotape of a recent academic conference at the school so that he could identify what he described as "three Middle Eastern men" who had made "suspicious" remarks to Army lawyers at the seminar, according to the official, Susana Aleman, the dean of student affairs.

The Army, while not disputing that the visit took place, declined to comment, saying the incident is under investigation.

Last year, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the nation`s primary source of global maritime intelligence, demanded access to the U.S. Customs Service`s database on maritime trade, saying it needed information to thwart potential terrorist activity. Customs officials initially resisted the Navy`s demands but eventually agreed to give naval intelligence much of what it wanted.

In an interview earlier this month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection chief Robert C. Bonner said he shares data only after getting Navy assurances that the information won`t be abused. Navy spokesman Jon Spiers says the Office of Naval Intelligence first approached customs about sharing inbound foreign cargo information in December 2002, and he denies there is anything improper about the request. The agency "has not overstepped any authority or crossed the line dividing law enforcement from military operations," he says.

Lt. Spiers adds that when the Navy`s top spy agency gains access to data about American companies and individuals, the information will be "subjected to a meticulous legal review" and will be retained only if it is directly related to the agency`s mission to identify potential foreign threats.

In another sign of military interest in domestic information-gathering, the Defense Intelligence Agency`s new antiterrorism task force is looking to share information with law-enforcement officials in California and New York City, according to an August 2003 General Accounting Office report.

Historically, Americans haven`t trusted the military to do domestic police work. The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, passed in response to abuses by federal troops in the South after the Civil War, prohibits the use of the military "to execute the laws" of the U.S. That`s been widely interpreted as a ban on searching, arresting or spying on U.S. civilians by federal troops.

But the law has been violated, notably during the Vietnam War, when Army operatives spied on antiwar activists on campuses. Meanwhile, Congress has eased the law`s limits to allow the military to help prosecute the war on drugs.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House sought to further loosen restrictions to allow the military to take on a new domestic-security role. It has mostly been rebuffed. In May the House refused to approve a White House-backed proposal to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the military authority to scrutinize personal and business records of U.S. citizens. And the Senate last year blocked funding for a Pentagon project known as the Total Information Awareness program, which was supposed to collect a vast array of information on individuals, including medical, employment and credit-card histories.

The issue of an expanding military role in domestic affairs also surfaced last year with the Pentagon`s creation of the Northern Command, or Northcom, based in Colorado Springs, Colo. The new command, the first such military command designed to protect the U.S. homeland from a terrorist attack, has responsibility for the U.S, Canada, Mexico, portions of the Caribbean and U.S. coastal waters. Northcom`s commander, Gen. Ralph "Ed" Eberhart, is the first general since the Civil War with operational authority exclusively over military forces within the U.S.

Gen. Eberhart has stoked concern among civil-liberties advocates by saying that the military and civilians should be involved in developing "actionable intelligence" for the government. In September 2002, he told a group of National Guardsmen that the military and the National Guard should "change our radar scopes" to prevent terrorism. It is important to "not just look out, but we`re also going to have to look in," he said, adding, "we can`t let culture and the way we`ve always done it stand in the way."

Northcom officials and other military leaders play down his remarks. "No one ran out after that speech and started snooping," one official says. Gen. Eberhart echoed that last September on PBS`s "News Hour": "We are not going to be out there spying on people, " he said, though he added, "we get information from people who do."

Further evidence of the blurring of the lines between the civilian and military worlds comes in a job-vacancy notice for a senior counterintelligence advisor to Northcom. The duties, according to the notice, include providing advice that goes beyond potential terrorism to include "other major criminal activity, such as drug cartels and large-scale money laundering" -- work usually under the purview of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Secret Service.

Another little-known Pentagon group, the Counterintelligence Field Activity, was set up two years ago. With 400 service members and civilians stationed around the globe, the CIFA was originally charged with protecting the military and critical infrastructure from spying by terrorists and foreign intelligence services. But in August, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, issued a directive ordering the unit to maintain a "domestic law-enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense."

The CIFA also works closely with the FBI and is conducting some duties for civilian agencies. For example, according to Department of Agriculture documents, the CIFA is in charge of doing background checks on foreign workers and scientists employed by the department`s agricultural-research service. The group also provides information to the Information and Security Command, or Inscom, the Army`s main intelligence organization, based at Fort Belvoir, Md.

The Army intelligence agent who investigated the law-school conference was assigned to Inscom. Army officials reviewing the Texas incident concede that the agent may have overstepped his boundaries and should have tried to win the voluntary cooperation of the faculty and students. But they say that he was reacting to a possible counterintelligence threat to the military. It isn`t clear why there were Army lawyers at the conference in the first place, though some officials say the attorneys wanted to learn more about Muslim traditions and Islamic law.

Civil-rights advocates are skeptical. Robert Pugsley, professor of law at the Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles, says the Texas incident is "a chilling example" of the military`s overreaching. "It`ll multiply like fleas on a dog" if left unchecked, he says.

"What we are starting to see is 50 years of legal refinement and revisions for oversight being quietly jettisoned," adds Steven Aftergood, an intelligence policy specialist at the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit, left-leaning think tank in Washington.

But James Carafano, a policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation in Washington, says he believes the military has honored posse comitatus. His concern is that hard distinctions have been created between who has jurisdiction in homeland defense versus homeland security. It`s distinctions terrorists might exploit, he says. "We may potentially be creating vulnerabilities."

Copyright © 2004, Dow Jones Newswires

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Chalabi, Bush`s shadowy man in Baghdad

March 9, 2004

Before America gives yet more power to this man, it should ask a few questions about him, writes Isabel Hilton.

In the mayhem that followed the explosions in Baghdad and Karbala last week, Ahmed Chalabi, an ever more powerful member of the Iraqi Governing Council and a Pentagon favourite, was swiftly at the scene, behaving like a politician come to offer sympathy. It was a shrewd piece of public relations - if you forget the responsibility Chalabi bears for Iraq`s present tragic condition.

It was Chalabi, more than any other individual, who helped persuade the US that toppling Saddam Hussein would bring peace and democracy, and break the link that he alleged existed between the Iraqi leader and al-Qaeda.

In the approach to war, both the US and British Governments mobilised a mishmash of arguments in a campaign of persuasion that was based not on rigorous analysis of intelligence but on the selective use of data and informants. And in this sorry tale, no one played a more critical role than the man many proclaim the most likely future leader of Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi.

He has been working to take power in Iraq for a long time. The son of a wealthy and influential family in Iraq that lost its place with the fall of the monarchy, Chalabi has a long association with US intelligence. In the early 1990s, he was considered a serious asset by the CIA - but they soon found him to be unreliable.

However, advocates of radical action in the Middle East came to power with George Bush. The next steps are now well documented. As Richard Perle once complained: "The CIA has been engaged in a character assassination of Ahmed Chalabi for years now, and it`s a disgrace." To bypass such obstacles, an alternative intelligence group - the Office of Special Plans - was created.

But there was still a shortage of evidence on two key points: that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he had links with al-Qaeda. Step forward Ahmed Chalabi, who knows a market when he sees one. He claimed his sources inside and outside Iraq could supply the necessary evidence.

In 2001, Colin Powell declared: "He (Saddam) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction... our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbours of Iraq." Tony Blair told the Commons in November 2000: "We believe that the sanctions regime has effectively contained Saddam Hussein." These assessments coincided with the view of the intelligence services and the inspectors.

The alternative intelligence, marshalled to make the case for war, came overwhelmingly from Chalabi`s Iraqi National Council and its carefully coached "sources".

Among the INC allegations that have not been borne out were that Saddam had built mobile biological weapons facilities, that he was rapidly rebuilding his nuclear weapons program and that he had trained Islamic warriors at a camp south of Baghdad.

Now British defence officials acknowledge that the defectors` tales were "shaky" at best.

On whose judgement was this shaky information included in official prewar intelligence estimates of Iraq`s illicit weapons programs and key statements by US and British politicians?

On September 12, 2002, for instance, claims by Iraqi military officers supplied by the INC that Iraq had been training Arabs in "hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage and assassinations" were given uncritical prominence in a White House report.

And what is now described as an INC "fabrication" - that Iraq had mobile biological warfare research facilities - was included in Powell`s presentation to the UN security Council in February 2003.

To give wider credibility to this dubious narrative, Chalabi planted stories in newspapers such as The New York Times, stories that were then quoted as independent corroborative evidence by Bush Administration officials. The paper`s now much-criticised specialist on WMD, Judith Miller, has acknowledged her 10-year association with Chalabi.

He has admitted that the "evidence" he supplied was wrong. He is no longer interested in pretending that there are any WMD in Iraq, but nor is he repentant. George Bush may lose the presidential election and Tony Blair is trapped in the political minefield of the war`s aftermath, but Chalabi is a clear winner. "We are heroes in error," he told London`s Daily Telegraph. Since Saddam was gone, "What was said before is not important."

When the US flew Chalabi in to Iraq by helicopter early in the war, along with 700 friends and supporters, he was not remotely electable. He did, though, look like a man positioning himself to be at the centre of power.

Last week, Iraq`s provisional constitution was agreed. Given Bush`s need to create a puppet government in time for the US elections, power will now remain in the hands of the governing council until such time as elections might be held - a promise that recedes into the future with each terrorist outrage. The longer elections are postponed, the better for Chalabi, who is now in control of Iraq`s finances and of de-Baathification.

Perhaps his greatest coup was to gain possession of 25 tonnes of captured Saddam documents that could prove useful in the future. Before the war, for instance, the Jordanian foreign minister criticised Chalabi as untrustworthy. Chalabi then threatened to "expose" documentary evidence of the Jordanian royal family`s close relations with Saddam. The public criticisms stopped.

With power there also come opportunities for enrichment. US authorities in Iraq have awarded more than $US400 million ($A526 million) in contracts to a company that has extensive family and business ties to Chalabi.

If intelligence is to be of even greater importance in the future, its reliability is critical - an argument, perhaps, to learn from recent experience.

But not for the US Defence Department. It plans to spend $US4 million over the next year buying intelligence on Iraq. And who does it plan to buy that intelligence from?

Step forward Ahmed Chalabi.

Isabel Hilton is a columnist with The Guardian, London.


This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/08/1078594295479.h…

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Iraqi Muslims: Islam Is Not at War With Itself

By Firas Al-Atraqchi
Freelance Columnist
09/03/2004

Iraqis question whether the US has an agenda to fuel sectarian violence in the war-ravaged country.



Iraqi Shiites protest, condemning US troops for their raid on a Sunni Mosque

US officials have charged that Islam is at war with itself in the wake of the of the fatal suicide bombings in Kadhimiya district in Baghdad and the holy city of Karbala, which together claimed more than 271 civilians, mostly religious pilgrims commemorating Ashoura. According to Iranian press reports, up to 50 Iranian pilgrims were among the dead.

(Ashoura marks the martyrdom of Al-Hussein, son of the Imam Ali and grandson of the Prophet Mohammed. More than 1,400 years ago, Al-Hussein and a band of some 70 supporters were surrounded by thousands of Umayyad soldiers who promptly massacred the entourage, killing Al-Hussein and his entire family. Al-Hussein was killed because he sought to return to the values that first cemented the Islamic community - a measure that threatened the corruption and political power of the new rulers of the expanding empire.)

Such statements which hint at Sunni militancy against Shiites in Iraq smack of agenda-building, say Iraqi theologians and religious leaders.

Adding insult to injury, Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post wrote Wednesday that “the latest waves of holy murders should shake from their fantasies the Islamic political leaders and religious authorities who deny that a war for control of Islam is raging around them. The war will claim many more lives if Muslim society does not face up to the cancerous growth feeding on Islam and lead -- not join, but lead -- the fight against that cancer.”

The blood had not yet dried on the ground before members of the US-selected Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) declared, without an iota of proof, that it was Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi acting on behalf of Al-Qaeda that was behind the attack.

In an email message to the London-based Al-Quds newspaper, Al-Qaeda denied any knowledge or affiliation with Tuesday’s attack on Shiites. The email message did, however, issue a warning to the IGC and any collaborators with the foreign occupation.

Yesterday, leading Sunni clerics joined their Shiite brethren and called on all Iraqis to consider themselves “Husseiniya,” the living embodiment of the struggle and sacrifices that the Imam Al-Hussein faced.

A day later, the leading Sunni religious establishment in Iraq called on the Iraqi resistance to immediately halt all attacks on Iraqis and Iraqi institutions.

“Jews and Americans are behind this,” shouted someone from the Kadhimiya mosque after the first blasts. A US troop contingent deployed to the area came under attack from enraged Shiite crowds.

Foreign journalists were also attacked in central Baghdad, according to reports from independent sources.

Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, leading Shiite cleric, joined Harith Al-Thari, chairman of the Sunni Cleric Council, in blaming US forces for “dragging their feet” in securing Iraq’s borders. “We call on all dear Iraqi sons to be more vigilant against the schemes of the enemy, and ask them to work hard to unite and have one voice to speed up regaining the injured country’s sovereignty and independence and stability,” Sistani said to cheers from both Shiites and Sunnis.

According to Jawad Al-Naboulsi, a Sunni Iraqi businessman in Beirut, Lebanon, today’s attacks are by forces desperately trying to engineer a civil war. “They know Islamic Iraq is coming, but they fear Shiites and Sunnis uniting as one fist,” he said. “We are Arabs; we are Iraqis; this is our land; this is our religion. Today, we are all Shiite,” he added.

Sources in Baghdad said that hundreds of Sunni Iraqis rushed to clinics and hospitals to donate blood for the injured and wounded.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair seems to agree that there are concentrated efforts to tear Iraq apart: “The purpose… is to try and set the different religious communities in Iraq against each other, to destroy the progress in Iraq, to cause the maximum amount of dissent, division and hatred,” Blair said at a press conference in London today.

While US media points the finger at Al-Zarqawi and highlights the “schism” between Sunnis and Shiites, both of the latter have rejected calls for revenge and have sworn to face off what they term “American Zionist efforts to break up Iraq in a bloody civil war.”

“Americans and no one else will pay for every drop of blood spilled by every Shiite and every Iraqi because it is America first and foremost that is to blame here,” went one chant in a thousands-strong procession including Sunnis and Shiites.

Reuters reported that “Hundreds of Shi’ites waved black flags of mourning and backed their clerics’ plea for unity, chanting: ‘We are brothers, Sunnis and Shi’ites, and we will not sell our country to foreigners.’”

On Wednesday, The Independent’s Robert Fisk doubted US claims that Sunni insurgents, allied with Al-Qaeda, could be behind the attack.

“If a violent Sunni movement wished to evict the Americans from Iraq - and there is indeed a resistance movement fighting very cruelly to do just that - why would it want to turn the Shia population of Iraq, 60 per cent of Iraqis, against them?” Fisk asked.

At press time, it still remained unclear who was behind the Karbala and Baghdad attacks.

Firas Al-Atraqchi is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage. Holding an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication, he has eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry. You can reach him at [e-mail].

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Tuesday, March 09, 2004
War News for March 9, 2004
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
Bring `em on: One US soldier killed, one wounded by roadside bomb near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Sunni cleric assassinated in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: US troops attacked in Mosul; seven Iraqi civilians wounded.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi truck driver killed by roadside bomb near Baghdad. (Last paragraph.)

CENTCOM reports one US Marine dies from a gunshot wound in Kuwait.

Iraqi Sunnis fear electoral marginalization and rule by Shi’ite clergy. “There`s a palpable concern among Sunnis that the Americans are anxious to mollify the Shiites and Kurds during the handover process, but have less time for the concerns of the Sunnis, who are viewed as having collaborated with and profited from the Hussein regime over the past three decades. This has led to predictions that Sunni leaders will reject whatever political settlement the Americans offer, plunging the country into a fresh political crisis.”

Burial ablutions in Najaf. “Islam calls for people to be buried within a day of their deaths. But the bombings often make that impossible, Mr. Abboud said. By the time a family locates someone, identifies the victim, gets the paperwork done to collect the remains, days pass. Mr. Abboud thinks that the dead from the mosque bombings will trickle in for at least a week. By then, if experience is any gauge, he said, another bombing will occur, and the cycle of washing victims whose bodies have been shattered will begin again.”

War memorial. “Officers from the U.S. Army`s Fourth Infantry Division commissioned a life-size bronze sculpture of the tableau to honor dozens of troops the unit has lost in its 11 months in Iraq. Thanks to an unusual choice of sculptor -- and an unusual source of bronze -- the officers added a touch of poetic justice to the work.”

Returning veterans. “What doesn`t change from war to war is this: The soldier is sent to a foreign land and is on constant alert to danger. Months later, the soldier arrives home, drops the duffel bag and then wonders why everything has changed.”

Unemployed Iraqis organize. “With no reliable figures, estimates of unemployment in Iraq vary wildly -- from 20 percent to as high as 70 percent -- although virtually everyone acknowledges joblessness as one of the country`s most pressing problems. The union has set out to register as many of the unemployed as it can.”

Halliburton stiffs a subcontractor. “The company, Event Source, serves 100,000 meals a day in Iraq under a contract with a Halliburton subsidiary. vent Source claims Halliburton owes it $87 million, including payment for President Bush`s Thanksgiving dinner with the troops. ‘When you get stuck out there for $87 million,” explains Event Source Chief Executive Officer Phil Morrell, “it’s a question of economics.’ In an interview with NBC News, Morrell says he’s already laid off employees in the United States and soon will have to feed sandwiches to the troops, instead of hot meals, because his company is running low on money.” (Emphasis added.) Ain`t defense privatization wonderful?

Meanwhile, Halliburton is whining about all those pesky audits. “Halliburton Co.`s liquidity could be negatively affected if ongoing government audits uncover additional problems with its Iraq work, the company said Monday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission…’ It is possible that we may, or may be required to, withhold additional invoicing or make refunds to our customer, some of which could be substantial,’ Halliburton said in its annual report. "This could materially and adversely affect our liquidity.’”

Army announces plan to resolve tensions over detainees. “An American commander unveiled a plan Monday aimed at defusing tension over Iraqis held in U.S. military custody, which tribal leaders in Saddam Hussein’s hometown say is the leading cause of anti-American animosity.” You gotta read this “plan.” Basically, a detainee’s relatives report his arrest to the president of the local provincial sheik council. Then, the council president contacts tribal leaders from the area where the detainee lives to learn if he has been involved in anti-coalition activities. Then, “the sheik council seeks details or the release of the detainee by applying to American forces, the Coalition Provisional Authority, regional governor and, if they are in the area, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Iraqi equivalent, the Red Crescent.” At this point, the “authorities” decide if there is cause to continue holding the detainee. Why is the Army resolving this problem and not the CPA?

General Abazaid asks soldiers leaving Iraq to remain in the Army. Reenlistment numbers must be in the toilet to generate this kind of four-star concern. No wonder Rummy won`t publish the projected retention rates.

Commentary

Opinion: “Each time I return to Iraq, it`s the same, like finding a razor blade in a bar of chocolate. The moment you start to believe that ‘New Iraq’ might work - just - you get the proof that it`s the same old Iraq, just a little tiny bit worse than it was last month.”

Editorial: "But a looming clash of interests appeared over the weekend with the dispatch of a vanguard of some 50 US investigators, prosecutors, and lawyers to Baghdad to staff the Regime Crimes Adviser`s office within the US occupation authority…One source of conflict concerns the calendar. Iraqis have already objected to the administration`s idea of having such a tribunal commence well before the first Tuesday in November and having it begin with Saddam himself in the dock."

Opinion: "The pitch -- the mother of all reality shows pits three tribes, hand-picked for their skills and intelligence, against each other in search of weapons of mass destruction. The tribe that finds the WMDs will win $1 million and a thank-you, week-long vacation at the White House. Episode One: the tribes elect leaders. Tribe 1 votes for Secretary of State Colin Powell. Tribe 2 goes for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Tribe 3 gets stuck with Vice President Dick Cheney."

Casualty Reports

Local story: Florida soldier wounded in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.




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March 10, 2004
Political Groups Spend Millions to Take on Bush in Ad Campaign
By GLEN JUSTICE and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, March 9 — Three advertising campaigns by political groups harshly critical of President Bush are getting under way in 17 states, in an effort to counter Republican commercials that began showing last week.

The largest campaign opens on Wednesday, paid with $5 million in unlimited donations that political parties can no longer collect. Republicans say the tactic is an illegal way to support Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, contending that it violates campaign finance laws.

Stepping in to help Mr. Kerry`s campaign offset what has been Mr. Bush`s 10-to-1 fund-raising advantage, these groups are part of a handful of committees that some critics call a "shadow" political party.

The groups, two of which say they already have a total of $70 million in pledges, have moved to set up expansive voter drives while at the same time fighting the president on television using issues like jobs, the deficit and health care policy.

The advertising campaign beginning on Wednesday goes so far as to hit the president with a broadside, saying that "George Bush`s priorities are eroding the American dream." This campaign, run by Harold M. Ickes, the former deputy White House chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, comes just days after Mr. Bush went on the air with his own $11 million ad campaign.

It also comes as President Bush has begun leading an orchestrated barrage of Republican criticism of Mr. Kerry intended to undercut him and define him as a waffler who is weak on security issues. The attacks are coming from an array of Republican elected officials and are to be amplified by an imminent sweep of hard-hitting television advertisements.

Mr. Kerry`s advisers say they welcome harsh critiques of the president being broadcast by Democrats. But there is concern that because federal rules forbid the campaign or the Democratic Party to coordinate with these groups, the independent advertising could at times run counter to Mr. Kerry`s own themes. "If their first flight of TV ads goes up and they are terrible and off-message, that would be a problem," a Kerry adviser said. "But it`s a problem we can`t do anything about."

On Tuesday night, Mr. Bush`s campaign lawyers said they had filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission saying some of these commercials are illegal because they effectively oppose Mr. Bush, and were paid for with unlimited or "soft money" donations, which they say is a violation of campaign finance laws. They are calling for an investigation into Mr. Ickes`s group, the Media Fund. "This is a blatant violation," said Tom Josefiak, Mr. Bush`s general counsel.

Mr. Ickes calls those accusations baseless, saying: "Politically, we are trying to really highlight, underscore and push into sharp focus the policies of the Republicans. That may have a certain effect on the Bush or the Kerry campaign, but we are not involved in electing or defeating people. We are raising issues."

The debate over what these groups can legally do dates back to last year. Republicans in Congress have investigated them while other Republicans have appealed to the Federal Election Commission. But when it issued an advisory opinion last month, the commission put off any final decision until later this year, and its members have a full range of alternatives before them.

Several Republican officials said they would be watching closely for illegal coordination between the Kerry campaign and these groups. Officials with the groups said in interviews that they were keeping their distance from the Kerry campaign, and that they were by no means working in coordination with it.

"Everyone here is abiding by the prohibition against coordination with the campaign or party committees," said Jim Jordan, who was forced out as Mr. Kerry`s campaign manager in the fall and who is now a consultant to Mr. Ickes`s Media Fund.

Mr. Bush is getting his own outside help — from Republican and conservative groups — though not nearly at Mr. Kerry`s level. One group, called Citizens United and headed by a former Republican Congressional aide who investigated President Clinton`s 1996 fund-raising, David N. Bossie, began advertising this week. Mr. Bossie would say only that the ad campaign was costing in the low six figures. Another conservative group, Club for Growth, is expected to run advertisements against Mr. Kerry soon.

For their part, the fund-raising groups helping Mr. Kerry say they plan to continue their campaigns until an election commission ruling says otherwise. Already, the groups have brought together some of the best organizers in their fields. And some are literally under the same roof in a building just blocks from the White House.

For example, Ellen Malcolm founded Emily`s List, the powerful abortion-rights political action committee. Steve Rosenthal was the top political organizer for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the largest labor organization in the country. The two teamed up to form America Coming Together, commonly known as ACT, an organization that is building a vast voter outreach network in the 17 battleground states.

The group is recruiting an army of people like Sean McDonald, a 31-year-old who left his job installing carpet to make $8 an hour as a door knocker in Massillon, Ohio, near his hometown, Canton. The goal is simple: Find out what issues are on the minds of potential voters.

At some houses, he thrusts a palm computer in the door to show a 16-second video clip of a steelworker talking about losing his job. It is an icebreaker, and Mr. McDonald dutifully records the answers.

Ultimately, the information he collects is fed into ACT computers to create a huge database of potential voters who can now be singled out according to their interests. In the months ahead, the organization will hit these voters with mail, telephone calls and perhaps a few more knocks on the door.

ACT has become the best known of all of these fund-raising groups, known as 527 committees, for the part of the Tax Code that established them. It often captures headlines, like the time George Soros, the financier and a major Democratic donor, pledged $10 million.

The Media Fund anticipated that the Democratic nominee would emerge with little money only to face Mr. Bush, who has more than $100 million banked.

ACT and the Media Fund, raising money jointly, say they have pledges for $70 million, far more than campaign finance reports show they had in December.

The Media Fund`s advertising campaign comes on top of two others that began late last week, at the same time that Mr. Bush`s first advertisements hit the air in the 17 states expected to be the most closely contested, among them Florida, Ohio, Arizona and Nevada.

One campaign, by a Democratic advocacy group called the New Democrat Network, includes two Spanish-language advertisements that accuse Mr. Bush of letting down Latinos. The group, which has the former Clinton housing secretary Henry Cisneros on its advisory board and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico as another adviser, said it was paying $5 million to run spots through Labor Day in cities with large Spanish-speaking populations like Orlando, Albuquerque, Phoenix and Las Vegas. In one of the spots an announcer says in Spanish: "When he wanted to reach the White House, George Bush promised to be a friend of the Latino community and do what`s best for our children. He has not kept his promise."

The MoveOn.org Voter Fund, which has been running commercials against Mr. Bush for months now, began one of its biggest campaigns yet on Thursday, paying about $3 million for two weeks of ads against the president in all 17 states where he is advertising. In most of those states the group is running a new spot in which a visibly beaten-down factory worker laments job losses and proposed limits to overtime pay and says, "Face it, George Bush is not on our side."

Mr. Ickes says his organization coordinates with the MoveOn.org Voter Fund and the New Democrat Network in choosing which media markets to cover. "The object is to make sure we stretch resources as far as possible," he said.

Mr. Ickes said his organization, which used soft money to finance the 30-second spots that began this week, hoped to continue advertising in the weeks ahead.

"It will really be a function of money," he said.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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March 10, 2004
C.I.A. Chief Says He`s Corrected Cheney Privately
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, March 9 — George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that he had privately intervened on several occasions to correct what he regarded as public misstatements on intelligence by Vice President Dick Cheney and others, and that he would do so again.

"When I believed that someone was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it," he said.

Mr. Tenet identified three instances in which he had already corrected public statements by President Bush or Mr. Cheney or would do so, but he left the impression that there had been more.

His comments, in testimony before the Armed Services Committee, came under sharp questioning from some Democrats on the panel, who have criticized him and the White House over prewar intelligence on Iraq. He insisted that he had honored his obligation to play a neutral role as the top intelligence adviser.

In response to a question, he said he did not think the administration had misrepresented facts to justify going to war.

Mr. Tenet said he planned to call Mr. Cheney`s attention to a recent misstatement, in a Jan. 9 interview, when the vice president recommended as "your best source of information" on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda the contents of a disputed memorandum by a senior Pentagon official, Douglas J. Feith.

That memorandum, sent last October to the Senate Intelligence Committee, portrayed what was presented as conclusive evidence of collaboration between Saddam Hussein`s government and Al Qaeda, but it was never endorsed by intelligence agencies, who objected to Mr. Feith`s findings.

Mr. Tenet said he was not aware of Mr. Cheney`s comments in that interview, published in The Rocky Mountain News, until Monday night.

In his annual testimony before the committee on threats facing the United States, Mr. Tenet found himself drawn again into the dispute over whether intelligence agencies or policy makers were more to blame for misjudgments and overstatements about Iraq and whether Baghdad had ties to terrorism.

In his testimony, Mr. Tenet hinted at private disputes with policy makers. He disclosed that he had not learned until last week about a highly unusual briefing given in August 2002 by colleagues of Mr. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, to senior aides of Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush. The briefing outlined evidence of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, contradicting the C.I.A.`s view that such links could not be verified.

According to government officials who have seen copies of the briefing documents, the information was presented to Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and I. Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney`s chief of staff, and included slides that were strongly disparaging of C.I.A. analyses.

The other two instances in which Mr. Tenet said he had acted to correct administration statements involved the State of the Union address in January 2002, when he objected after the fact to Mr. Bush`s inclusion of disputed intelligence about Iraq`s seeking to obtain uranium from Africa, and a Jan. 22 radio interview in which Mr. Cheney portrayed trailers found in Iraq as being for biological weapons, and thus "conclusive evidence" that Iraq "did in fact have programs for weapons of mass destruction."

That was the conclusion initially reached by American intelligence agencies last spring, and it is still on the C.I.A.`s Web site. But it has been disputed since last summer within intelligence agencies, and Mr. Tenet said he had told Mr. Cheney there was "no consensus" among American analysts, with those at the Defense Intelligence Agency in particular arguing that the trailers were for producing hydrogen.

A spokesman for Mr. Cheney, Kevin Kellems, declined to characterize the content of the conversation between Mr. Tenet and Mr. Cheney about the Jan. 22 interview. "It was a private conversation," he said.

An administration official said, "Critics of the administration are misrepresenting what the vice president said in both of those interviews," and added, "I`m going to let the full text of those interviews speak for themselves."

Mr. Tenet has acknowledged that intelligence agencies may have made misjudgments in their prewar assessments of Iraq, which expressed certainty that Mr. Hussein`s government possessed chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear program. In the year since the American invasion, no evidence has been found, though Mr. Tenet insisted again on Tuesday that it was too soon to draw firm conclusions about the extent to which intelligence agencies erred.

At the same time, as director of central intelligence, Mr. Tenet, who has been in his post since he was appointed by President Clinton in 1997, is widely seen as having the responsibility to prevent intelligence from being distorted for political purposes, and he seemed intent on defending himself and his agencies in that regard.

Still, he walked a careful line in his answers, and nothing in his comments seemed to suggest that he was walking away from the administration. He has promised President Bush that he will serve at least through this year.

Among the senators who pressed him hardest were two Democrats, Carl Levin of Michigan and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who has been an early and active ally of Senator John Kerry, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mr. Kennedy asked Mr. Tenet if he believed the administration had misrepresented information about Iraq to justify war, to which Mr. Tenet responded, "No, sir, I don`t."

When asked whether he had sought to correct certain administration statements, including some that portrayed Iraq`s arsenal as carrying the danger of a "mushroom cloud," he said, "I`m not going to sit here today and tell you what my interaction was and what I did or what I didn`t do." But he added: "You have the confidence to know that when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it. I don`t stand up in public and do it. I do my job the way I did it in two administrations.

"And policy makers — you know, this is a tough road. Policy makers take data. They interpret threat. They assess risk. They put urgency behind it, and sometimes it doesn`t uniquely comport with every word of an intelligence estimate."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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The better things are the worse they get, as history is made in Iraq
March 10, 2004

By Robert Fisk

Baghdad: They used King Feisel`s old table to sign the document, the desk upon which Winston Churchill`s choice as monarch once tried - not very successfully, it has to be said - to rule Iraq.

It was supposed to be a special day in Iraqi history. Twenty-five local leaders - most television reports spared viewers the uncomfortable "American-appointed" qualification - dutifully signed their new and temporary constitution. Veiled ladies and tribal sheikhs, some good men and true but also a convicted fraudster, Ahmed Chalabi, scribbled their signatures in front of the US proconsul Paul Bremer on Monday.

You could almost hear him sighing in relief. For the constitution - it is only temporary and contains
plenty of unanswered questions - is supposed to be America`s get-out clause. As long as the 25 men and women signed their names, Washington could hand over "sovereignty" to them on June 30, well before US presidential elections in November. That, at least, is the plan.

On Monday we were spared the string quartet and the children`s choir of last week`s aborted ceremony - but not the violence.

For many Baghdads, the day began as it did for me, instinctively ducking as a tremendous explosion clappered over the city. I was trying to make a phone call when the first rocket exploded on the police station near Andalos Square. I heard the firing of the weapon, a dull thump, and then the swish of the missile overhead.

By the time I reached the cops` headquarters, the road was packed with angry young men and screaming ambulances. There was another thump and another powerful impact as a second rocket hit a civilian home in a cloud of grey smoke.

At the Ibn el-Nafis Hospital, the little boy wounded in the house was writhing in agony, next to Sergeant Abbas Jalil Hussein of the Iraqi police force.

"I was just washing my hands in order to say my morning prayers," he said. "I heard this tremendous noise, and then I felt the blood on my leg and realised I was wounded." At this point, a member of the hospital`s management - under the standing instructions of the American-appointed health minister - interrupted to say I had no business to be in the ward. This wasn`t the day to be reporting on suffering Iraqis, certainly not a day for dangerous folk like journalists to be counting the statistics of violence.

So I set off to the home of an Iraqi businessman, a Christian, to watch America`s dreams come true, praying he would have electricity to power his television set. His generator thumped out just enough juice to run it. The screen dipped and waved and shimmered, but there they were, one by one, stepping up to King Feisel`s chair, applauded and beaming, unelected men and women of the Governing Council signing a temporary constitution which, in theory at least, guarantees freedom of speech and assembly: a flurry of brown robes, sparkling pens, blue suits and veils.


Most Iraqis are more interested in electricity than constitutions which may be one reason why the details of this particular document have not exactly been discussed in the street.

They should have been.

We still don`t know, for example, whether the Kurds will have a veto on any new government decisions. The original document stipulated that two thirds of voters in any three provinces could have a veto. The Kurds control three provinces in the north, two of which, according to the dominant Shia population, contain only a majority of 500 000 people. This was one of the reasons why old Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani objected to the signing. Will the Shia community`s 60% of the entire Iraqi population really be represented by a new government? Will they get three members of their particular faith into a five-man rotating presidency or one in a three-man presidency, which Monday`s signing seemed to represent?

Iraqis have been puzzled by the clause allowing Iraqis two passports and the right of restitution of property if they have been exiled. Did this refer to opponents of Saddam or the tens of thousands of Jewish Iraqis driven from Baghdad more than four decades ago? Were Israelis born in Baghdad to be given Iraqi passports and return? Why shouldn`t they, I asked my Christian friend? Fair enough, he said. But would the Americans then support the return of Palestinians driven from their homes in what is now Israel in 1948?

In the end, the signing ceremony was pomp without much circumstance. Bremer - the man who was supposed to be an expert in "counter-terrorism" when he was appointed by President Bush and is reported as saying that he will retire on June 30 - sent a letter of congratulations to the 25 men and women.

Then came the usual off-the-record briefings from his spokespersons. We could expect more violence now the document had been signed. There would be an increase in attacks up to June 30. It was the same old story: the better things are, the worse they get. - The Independent

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washingtonpost.com
2 U.S. Civilians, Iraqi Translator Killed in Iraq



Associated Press
Wednesday, March 10, 2004; 5:37 AM


BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Gunmen posing as police killed two American civilians and their Iraqi translator -- all employees of the U.S.-led coalition -- at a makeshift checkpoint south of Baghdad, the coalition said Wednesday. In another southern area, four Iraqi policemen died in a shootout with a local militia.

The deaths at the checkpoint came when the gunmen stopped the car Tuesday night outside Hillah, 35 miles south of Baghdad, Polish Col. Robert Strzelecki said. The attackers shot dead the passengers and took the vehicle, he said.

Polish troops later intercepted the car, arrested five Iraqis in it and found the bodies inside, said Strzelecki, speaking from the Camp Babylon headquarters of the Polish-led multinational force in Iraq. In Baghdad, a spokesman for the coalition that governs Iraq confirmed the deaths.

Authorities did not immediately release the identities of those killed.

Checkpoints manned by Iraqis or coalition forces are common on Iraq`s main roads, and this appeared to be the first time gunmen have posed as police at a roadblock.

Further south, Iraqi police tried Tuesday night to enter a building where a Shiite militia was holding two civilians in the city of Nasiriyah, a coalition spokesman said. In a gunbattle, four Iraqi policemen were killed and two wounded.

The standoff finally ended when Italian security forces stormed the building, rescued the civilians and arrested eight militia members, the spokesman said. One Italian Carabinieri officer was slightly injured.

The militia, known as Citizens` Security Group, acts as a security force for a number of Shiite political parties. Such militias, which in some towns try to enforce a brand of Islamic law, often have tense relations with the U.S.-trained Iraqi police force.

In Baqouba, northwest of Baghdad, a bomb went off near the offices of Iraq`s largest Shiite party, wounding two people, said Haithem al-Husseini, a party spokesman.

Al-Husseini, of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, blamed the attack on former Saddam Hussein loyalists and terrorists "trying to spread chaos in the country."

The Baqouba bombing came a day after Shiite leaders issued stern criticism about Iraq`s interim constitution, clouding national unity ahead of the planned turnover of power by the coalition to Iraq June 30.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the most influential cleric to Iraq`s Shiite majority, initiated the latest episode of political wrangling. His objections to the interim charter prompted his supporters on the 25-seat Governing Council to refuse to sign the document at a ceremony Friday.

Citing a pressing need to safeguard national unity and push forward the political process, al-Sistani`s supporters signed the constitution Monday, but made clear their reservations about parts of the document and their wish to change them.

Al-Sistani hardened his opposition to the document Monday, and on Tuesday another grand ayatollah, Mohammed Taqi al-Modaresi, warned of civil war or dismemberment of Iraq because of the charter`s adoption of a federal government system. SCIRI`s leader, Governing Council member Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, said the document encroached on the powers of a future parliament.

Al-Modaresi, who lives in the holy city of Karbala, said clauses pertaining to federalism in the charter were "a time bomb." Referring to the 14-year-old self-rule enjoyed by Kurds in three northern provinces, he said: "this federalism will end up breaking up Iraq and lead to a civil war."

Al-Hakim said Iraqi society was cohesive enough to prevent a civil war, but said: "Our main problem lies with the imposition of restrictions set by an unelected body on an elected body."


© 2004 The Associated Press

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washingtonpost.com
Iraqi Holy Cities Bow to a Capitalist Impulse
Najaf and Karbala Draw Iranian Pilgrims Who Come to Pray and Purchase

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 10, 2004; Page A01


NAJAF, Iraq -- The pilgrims had sold their cows and furniture to raise money for the trip and braved car bombs and shootouts to get here. When Habeeb Allah Jagha Kaboudi finally arrived at the gold-domed shrine of the man Shiite Muslims consider the rightful successor to the prophet Muhammad, he fell to his knees. He chanted. He prayed. He cried.

Then he went shopping.

Since war ended in May, visitors estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands have braved continuing violence to travel to a country that was virtually closed to outsiders during three decades of rule by former president Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party. The main attractions are the Shiite Muslim holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, historical gathering places of the world`s preeminent theological, philosophical and scientific scholars and considered by many Muslims to be as sacred as Mecca and Medina.

On Shiite holidays in particular, the sister cities have been the scenes of immense celebration -- and devastating violence. Last week, a coordinated series of bombings killed at least 110 people in Karbala, many of them Shiite pilgrims who had flocked there for Ashura, the day commemorating the 7th-century battle that killed Imam Hussein, the prophet`s grandson.

Prewar Najaf and Karbala were tranquil places where women in black robes glided around among scholars engaged in decades-long study of the Koran. Now the sister cities have the hustle and bustle of a crowded bazaar. Boys who look no older than 5 barrel past in rickety mule-drawn carts overflowing with construction equipment. Vendors cooking sticky sesame sweets on the streets beckon for visitors to try a taste. Long buses crammed with all manner of goods -- clothes, toys, washing machines, ovens -- line up neatly on the streets.

For many, coming to Iraq is as much about tourism as about religion. "Before, we could only visit in our dreams. Now to see this with my own eyes, I am so happy," said Kaboudi, an elementary school teacher from Karmanshah, in western Iran.

Tourism has provided a much-needed boost to Najaf`s economy, and in many ways it has brought out the best in many of its residents. Some have taken to hosting visitors as they might their own families, handing out tea, dates, blankets and even shelter for free.

While a handful of the visitors come from as far away as Indonesia or South Africa, the great majority come from Iraq`s next-door neighbor and recent archenemy, Iran. Many people here say they welcome their Shiite brothers from across the border, but the lopsided exchange rate between the Iraqi dinar and the Iranian rial -- in favor of the latter -- has created an awkward economic hierarchy.

Explained Sayeed Salih Mehdi, 43, a day laborer: "The rich in Iran are rich in Iraq and the poor in Iran are also rich in Iraq."

Some residents say they worry that the visitors are introducing greed and materialism into what was once a modest and pious culture. Many Iranian tourists leave with sacks full of goods that would be unimaginable on an Iraqi salary. They have driven lodging prices from $3 to $5 a night to upward of $120.

"Tourism has made the economy better," said Muhsin Burhan, 20, an Iraqi laborer. "But the social situation, it is worse."

Saad Habeeb Ibrahim, a tribal leader, said he worries that the country`s treasures are being ruined. "It makes me nervous to see Najaf and Karbala this way for their reputation," Ibrahim said. "Before, they were known as religious cities and they were clean. But they are now getting dirty."

Because tour groups are unregulated, concerns have been voiced about the possibility that Iranian buses are being used to smuggle weapons, explosives or foreign fighters into the country. The suspicions are fueled by regular pronouncements by the U.S. military and Iraqi security officials that unnamed Iranians are suspects in various attacks. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, recently described Iranians, particularly those who bypass checkpoints, as an important security concern.

Ahmed Aljobory, who in January became the chairman of the Culture Ministry`s new board of tourism, acknowledges that the influx of tourists has brought a degree of chaos to Najaf and Karbala. He said he has begun consulting with police and foreign affairs officials about setting up new border checkpoints, a registration system that would ensure that every visitor who enters the country eventually leaves it, and an entry fee to help offset the strain on public services.

"There are people coming in from everywhere. We cannot stop them," Aljobory lamented. "We haven`t any control over them."

In Hussein`s time, tourism was so strictly controlled that responsibility for overseeing it fell to his intelligence services. Passenger manifests had to be faxed to the government weeks in advance. Tourists couldn`t enter directly from Iran, but had to first fly to Syria or Jordan and board a bus that would be escorted by Iraqi security officers.

Today, the Iran-Iraq border is porous. Dozens of buses line up at dawn each day to cross at three main checkpoints. Even those without proper identification can get in by paying bribes of $150 or less, according to several tourists and tour operators.

Most tours focus on the central part of the country and include, in addition to Najaf and Karbala, visits to the shrines at Baghdad`s Shiite district of Kadhimiya. But Alaa Azawi, 49, vice chairman of the Union of Travel and Tourism Companies, which represents more than 300 companies in Iraq, imagines a not-too-distant future when visitors can visit an almost unlimited number of attractions that combine history and religion with the intrigue of the most recent war.

There`s Babylon, which is where the Bible says the world`s languages were created and which is now under guard by Polish troops; Nasiriyah, near a road where Jesus was said to have walked and where U.S. Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch was captured; Basra, a port city where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet and which sits next to the famous marshes that were drained by Hussein and are being revived by the U.S.-led occupation.

Najaf, set around the Euphrates, is home to roughly 900,000 people. Among the world`s 120 million Shiites, it has long been revered as the resting place of Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad and the man Shiites believe should have been his heir. Inside the city boundaries, the words of religious leaders are treated as law and women must be covered from head to toe with a black or navy abaya. Burial in one of Najaf`s numerous cemeteries is considered a great honor.

Before the U.S. invasion, there might have been 150 people in front of the shrine at any given time, said Abbas Hasoun Abbas, 35, deputy manager of the compound. Now it`s closer to 3,000 -- smiling tourists recording each other with digital video cameras, vendors hawking cloths with pictures of the shrine and religious verses, families lunching on falafel and salad as they sit on the cold pavement.

The trickiest part of a trip to Najaf might be finding a place to stay. With so much demand, tourists and residents say, even those with reservations at hotels or guesthouses can`t count on lodging. More than a few have arrived to find their rooms given to a higher bidder. "At first we couldn`t find hotels, so we went to houses. Now we can`t find houses," said Redha Ismaeeli, 38, the manager of an Iranian tour company.

Sayeed Amer Mehdi said he became a guesthouse operator as a gesture of goodwill. The 31-year-old police sergeant said he saw some Iranians sleeping on the street one day and invited them to his house. After doing this a few times, he realized he could ask for money.

He found a house that could hold 40 people and began advertising it to Iranian tour groups. At $5 a night for blankets and a space on the floor, it was a bargain. Since he opened it in December, it has been full nearly every night, yielding net revenue of $5,000 a month, a small fortune for the public servant whose salary is $160 a month.

On the other side of the economic boom are people like Abdul Jabbar Abdullah, 52, who reads verses of the Koran for burial ceremonies in Najaf. He grew up on Rasoul Street, in a three-bedroom house with a small fruit tree garden just a few blocks from the Ali shrine. But late last year, he said, his landlord evicted him, saying that he could get more by renting to Iranian visitors. Abdullah, his wife, four daughters, son and two granddaughters are now crammed into a 400-square-foot studio that overlooks a garbage dump.

"I don`t recognize Najaf anymore some days. People are being seduced by material things," he said.

One late afternoon during the recent Ashura observances, a procession of men and boys marched around the main streets of Najaf to honor Imam Hussein and the 70 men, women and children who died with him. In rhythm to a team of drummers, they slapped their backs with chains.

Javad Mirzie, a 20-year-old student from Iran, missed it. He was in a hotel shop, browsing among the shoes.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Bush Allies, Falling Down on the Jobs


By Robert J. Samuelson

Wednesday, March 10, 2004; Page A29


This election may be settled less in voting booths than in countless executive suites where hiring decisions are made. The irony is inescapable. An administration accused of being rabidly pro-business stands threatened by business -- more precisely, firms` reluctance to add jobs. Let`s see. In February the increase in payroll jobs was a meager 21,000, and even that was offset by a downward revision of 31,000 for December and January. The White House must have groaned while Democrats crowed. President Bush`s job creation is the "worst since Herbert Hoover," said Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

The comparison with Hoover, though technically accurate, is of course absurd. But it may be repeated endlessly because it`s the sort of catchy sound bite that thrills partisan crowds and -- for the media -- flavors campaign stories. In the early 1930s, the country was sliding into its worst economic collapse. From 1929 to 1933, the unemployment rate rose from 3 percent to 25 percent; the number of payroll jobs dropped almost 25 percent. Farms were repossessed. Business leaders felt paralyzed. "I am afraid, every man is afraid," said Charles M. Schwab, head of Bethlehem Steel.

Our present situation is entirely different. Since peaking in March 2001, the number of payroll jobs has dropped 1.8 percent (that`s 2.35 million jobs). Production, incomes and employment are all rising, even if job increases are tiny (61,000 a month since August). People are still spending stupendous sums; in 2003 they bought 7.2 million homes and 16.7 million cars and light trucks. The only intellectual justification for the overblown rhetoric is that if the situation were reversed the White House would be making equally bombastic claims for unexpectedly large employment gains.

Few economists predicted the poor job growth. Theories abound. It`s said that companies have become more productive by mastering new technologies. Chief executives won`t hire until they`re convinced a strong recovery will continue. Efficient firms displace the inefficient (if Company A, with 10 workers, goes bankrupt and its customers shift to Company B, which hires five workers, there`s still a net job loss).

Offshoring is the latest villain. Hordes of high-paying software and service jobs have supposedly left for India. The news coverage of this has been a bit on the sensational side. Time decided it merited a cover story, though estimating that offshoring caused no more than 10 percent of job loss. That`s 235,000 jobs out of payroll employment exceeding 130 million. A New York Times "teaser" headline warned: "No job is safe, unless it`s at the nursing station." (The story didn`t justify the headline.) The truth is that no one knows how many service jobs have gone offshore. There are no reliable surveys. But the number -- so far -- seems small and is overshadowed by domestic job losses stemming from the bursting of the stock and tech bubbles. Since early 2001 the telecommunications industry alone has lost 275,000 jobs, about 20 percent of its total. Here`s a simple question to measure offshoring: How many white-collar workers do you know whose jobs have moved to India? For most Americans, the answer is probably "none."

Politically, little of this matters. In recent polls, job loss ranks with terrorism as the nation`s most important problem, says Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Worse for Bush, he says, the anxiety seems greater than is justified by the unemployment rate, which was 5.6 percent in February. In late 1983 the unemployment rate was still 9 percent but consumer confidence was about where it is today. What explains the exceptional worry?

Possibly age -- those graying baby boomers. The median age of the labor force is now about 40; it was 35 in 1982 and 37 in the 1990-91 recession. Older workers have more obligations (children, mortgages) and less flexibility. Their job skills, though more developed, may limit their choices. Even people with jobs may worry more about losing them. Compounding their anxiety is this: In 1982 about one-fifth of the unemployed were on temporary layoff; they didn`t have to find a new job. Now only about one in eight is on temporary layoff.

It`s also true that the jobless rate "is understating the labor market distress," says Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. If you lose your job, it`s tougher to find a new one than the unemployment rate implies. About 40 percent of the jobless have been without work for 15 weeks or more. That`s as bad as the early 1980s and exceeds the peak of the early 1990s (36 percent in 1992). Because jobs are scarce, Bernstein says people stop looking -- and are no longer included in the unemployed. Counting those workers could push the unemployment rate above 7 percent. Some of the decline in labor force participation may simply be early retirement, notes Marc Sumerlin, a former White House economist now with the Lindsey Group. Still, Bernstein`s adjustment goes in the right direction.

All this is a bad brew for Bush. Some of the steepest increases in joblessness have occurred in "battleground states." The unemployment rate is 6.7 percent in Illinois (up from a recent low of 4.1 percent), 7.6 percent in Michigan (up from 3.1 percent) and 6.2 percent in Ohio (up from 3.6 percent). The Democrats, the press and the offshoring furor are all fanning job insecurity. But the cruelest blow may be that many of Bush`s supposed allies in large and small businesses are quietly helping the other guy.




© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Das Institute of peace ist in enger Verbundenheit mit den Neocons und Serwer ist Balkanexperte.

washingtonpost.com
Doing Right By Iraq


By Daniel Serwer

Wednesday, March 10, 2004; Page A29


Returning to the United States from Baghdad a few days before the signing of Iraq`s interim constitution, I found an America more seized with failures than with the considerable successes there. Nowhere do I find Americans aware that Iraqi children hug U.S. Army sanitary engineers who repair sewer and water pipes. The U.S. press -- critical of the failure to fix the electrical system as well as oil fields and pipelines by last summer -- ignores the return of electricity and oil production to prewar levels. Even the constitutional framework provokes questions about legitimacy rather than praise for accomplishment.

This is understandable. The suicide bombings in Karbala and in Baghdad while I was there, as well as Shiite hesitation to sign the constitutional framework and continuing attacks on coalition and Iraqi security forces, have colored perceptions and raised questions about whether we are doing the right thing. The administration`s prewar failure to plan adequately for postwar reconstruction has cast a pall over the entire enterprise. The reluctance of major allies such as France to join in -- despite the enlarged role for the United Nations and the commitment to early turnover of sovereignty -- has generated further doubts.

We should not, however, allow the problems of reconstruction to obscure the progress that has been made. In Baghdad I found a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) preparing for an unprecedented rapid shift of responsibility from an occupying power to an Iraqi interim administration on June 30. This shift has already occurred for most practical purposes in some areas. Schools and universities, for example, are open for business under Iraqi management, though plagued by resource shortfalls. The coalition is truly multinational, despite the absence of the French. In just a few days in the CPA mess, I ran into a Dutch naval officer, British and Italian diplomats, Australian and Polish army troops. It will be a shame if this multinational effort disappears entirely in the June 30 transition, especially since the United Nations has not sent its people back to Iraq.

The Bush administration, while not announcing a change in policy, had by last spring abandoned its plan to decapitate the Saddam Hussein regime and quickly turn Iraq over to a leader chosen in Washington. Instead, there is now a concerted effort at nation-building that should extend years past the formal turnover of sovereignty, accelerated to suit the American electoral schedule but also in response to strong Iraqi demands. This will require unprecedented levels of assistance. To offer but one example: Americans will be training Iraqi police, judges, prosecutors and prison wardens for years to come. The $18 billion supplemental budget for reconstruction, passed last fall, is an enormous commitment, but likely isn`t the last that will be needed, whoever is president come January 2005.

The emergence of this approach, while expensive, should be welcomed. The half-hearted and superficial nation-building effort in Afghanistan illustrates all too clearly what happens when we try to get away without a long-term commitment to building strong democratic institutions. The U.S.-supported government in Kabul is unable to control most of the country, which is in the hands of warlords and Taliban. Al Qaeda still thrives in both Afghanistan and the relatively lawless frontier provinces of Pakistan.

The same will happen in Iraq, but with more dramatic consequences, if the United States allows it. The recent bombing attacks on Shiite Muslims should be seen not as the consequence of the U.S. failure to plan for the transition to democracy in Iraq but rather as a targeted protest of those plans. Al Qaeda will not be able to survive in an Iraq with strong democratic institutions. It therefore seeks to provoke internal disorder to disrupt the June 30 turnover of sovereignty. The Iraqis I met in Baghdad criticized one or another aspect of U.S. postwar engagement, but they said they wanted American nation-building plans to succeed.

Al Qaeda also seeks to undermine coalition resolve, attacking coalition forces wherever it can and killing more Americans in the postwar period than during the war. This has particular significance as we enter an American presidential race. Administration policy in Iraq is quite properly being questioned: Was it right to go to war? Did doing so increase U.S. security? Would we have gone to war had we known that there were no large stocks of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Was it a good idea to go to war without U.N. or NATO backing? These are tough questions that need to be asked, and answered, in the upcoming presidential election campaign and in years to come.

But there is the risk that those who oppose the administration on the Iraq war will now inadvertently undermine the building of the peace. Whatever the answers on prewar Iraq policy, we are in Iraq now and need to stay the course, with as many allies as we can muster. There is no turning back.

The writer is director of peace and stability operations at the United States Institute of Peace. The views here are his own.




© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Wer sich über die Polls kurz und schnell informieren will:
http://www.pollingreport.com/

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Hier nochmal die Mutter aller Polls: Gallup
Ein Präsident wird nur gewählt, wenn er auch bei Gallup die Mehrheit hat, damit wäre das das Aus für Bush.

March 10, 2004
Public Divided on Bush
Great partisan differences in job approval

by Jeffrey M. Jones
http://www.gallup.com/content/?ci=10948
March 9, 2004
Kerry Maintains Small Lead, Bush Approval at 49%
Nader candidacy hurts Kerry
Hier auch noch mal das Rennen zwischen Bush und Kerry von gestern:

http://www.gallup.com/content/default.asp?ci=10942

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows an American public evenly divided in its evaluations of its president. Forty-nine percent of Americans approve and 48% disapprove of the job George W. Bush is doing as president. This divide in opinion is largely the result of an unprecedented gulf between Republicans` and Democrats` views of Bush. Additionally, similar proportions of Americans report positive or negative emotions about the Bush presidency. Fifty-three percent say Bush has done something to make them angry since he became president, and 58% say he has done something that pleased them or made them feel enthusiastic.

The poll, conducted March 5-7, shows Bush with a 49% job approval rating, tied for the lowest of his presidency. Bush`s approval rating has hovered near 50% since mid-January, and had been in the low- to mid-50s throughout the fall. His approval rating rose above 60% after the capture of Saddam Hussein in mid-December, but the rally in public support dissipated by mid-January.

George W. Bush’s Job Approval Rating
September 2003 – Present

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-tenet10…
THE NATION
Spy Unit Skirted CIA on Iraq
Pentagon group`s role in shaping White House views about ties between Hussein and Al Qaeda was greater than known, Senate panel hears.
By Greg Miller
Times Staff Writer

March 10, 2004

WASHINGTON — A special intelligence unit at the Pentagon privately briefed senior officials at the White House on alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda without the knowledge of CIA Director George J. Tenet, according to new information presented at a Senate hearing Tuesday.

The disclosure suggests that the controversial Pentagon office played a greater role than previously understood in shaping the administration`s views on Iraq`s alleged ties to the terrorist network behind the Sept. 11 attacks, and bypassed usual channels to make a case that conflicted with the conclusions of CIA analysts.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tenet said he was unaware until recently that the Pentagon unit had presented its findings to the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice. It is not clear whether Cheney or Rice were present for the briefing, which was mentioned in a Defense Department letter released by the Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

In a wide-ranging hearing, Tenet said violence in Iraq was on the upswing, but that he thought there was a "low probability" that strife would prevent the United States from handing authority to an interim Iraqi government on July 1.

Although the hearing was billed as a session to discuss international security concerns, it was marked by heated exchanges reflecting the political tensions over the Iraq war and the failure to find weapons the Bush administration cited as the principal reason for last year`s U.S.-led war.

Tenet came under sharp attack from Democrats, who called the prewar intelligence a "fiasco," pointed to what they said were disturbing disparities between classified CIA estimates and more alarming versions released to the public before the war, and criticized the CIA director for saying recently that the agency never portrayed Iraq as an imminent threat.

"The fact that the intelligence assessments before the war were so wildly off the mark should trouble all Americans," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the committee.

It was under questioning from Levin that Tenet acknowledged that he did not know until within the last few weeks that a special Pentagon intelligence analysis unit had briefed the White House on ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

"I did not know that at the time, and I think I first learned about this at [a congressional] hearing last week," Tenet said. A U.S. intelligence official said Tenet first learned of the White House briefing Feb. 24 during a closed hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Pentagon unit was created by Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The unit was a handful of intelligence analysts, Feith has said, and was established to examine state sponsorship of terrorism, but is principally known for its efforts to assemble evidence linking Iraq to Al Qaeda.

It has been reported previously that the so-called Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group presented its findings to the CIA in August 2002. But in a letter to Warner released Tuesday for the first time, Feith said the group`s briefing "was also given to National Security Council and Office of Vice President staff members."

Levin asked Tenet whether it was "standard operating procedure" for intelligence analysis to be presented to the White House without his involvement.

"I don`t know," Tenet replied. "I`ve never been in the situation."

Tenet emphasized that he briefed President Bush personally almost daily, and that his was "the definitive view about these subjects."

"I know you feel that way," Levin replied, making it clear he wasn`t convinced.

Levin said the committee had obtained copies of the Pentagon group`s written briefing material, and that the version presented to the White House included material omitted from the briefing for the CIA. He declined to elaborate, saying the documents were classified.

A government official familiar with the briefings said the presentation for the White House included a slide sharply critical of the CIA for failing to recognize evidence pointing toward collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda. That slide was excluded from the briefing at CIA headquarters at Langley, Va.

The government official said those briefed at the White House included the staff of Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security advisor, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president`s chief of staff.

The Pentagon intelligence group was disbanded before the war, but remains under scrutiny because of its controversial mission and role.

Critics say it sifted through years of intelligence reports on Iraq, seizing on shards that supported the contention that there was collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and then funneling the information to senior policymakers to help bolster the case for war. Pentagon officials reject that characterization.

Many of the group`s findings have been disputed by the CIA and other agencies, who say there is a history of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda but no evidence of an operational relationship. But administration officials continue to cling to the theme, and polls show many Americans believe that Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

In January, Cheney said "there`s overwhelming evidence there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government." Cheney has touted the work of the Pentagon group, saying a Feith memo that lists Iraq-Al Qaeda connections and was leaked to the media is the "best source" on the subject.

Tenet said Tuesday that the CIA "did not agree with the way the data was characterized in that document," and that he intended to contact Cheney to caution him about its conclusions. "I learned about [Cheney`s] quote last night when I was preparing for this hearing," Tenet said. "And I will talk to him about it."

Some lawmakers said that if Tenet did not believe Iraq was an imminent threat — as he said in a recent speech at Georgetown University — he should have done more to challenge the prewar assertions by Bush and others casting Hussein`s regime as a danger that required immediate military intervention.

"You can`t have it both ways, can you, Mr. Tenet?" said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). "You can`t on the one hand just say look, we never said that war was imminent, and then have this superheated dialogue and rhetoric [from the White House] … and tell us here before the committee that you have no obligation to correct it or didn`t even try."

Tenet shot back: "I`m not going to sit here today and tell you … what I did or what I didn`t do, except that you have the confidence to know that when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence I said something about it."

Kennedy then asked Tenet whether he believed the administration "misrepresented the facts to justify the war." Tenet responded, "No, sir, I don`t."

Dissecting a key prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq`s weapons program, Levin cited a number of cases in which he said the CIA or the administration hardened its language or dropped caveats to bolster the case for war. A declassified version of the report warned that Iraq`s alleged weapons stocks could be used "against the U.S. homeland," language he said was missing from the classified text.

In another example, Levin cited the CIA`s assessment in its classified analysis that Iraq would supply weapons to Al Qaeda only under "desperate" or "extreme" circumstances, qualifiers missing from the public version of the report.

Democrats attacked Tenet for allowing recent statements by administration officials to go unchallenged. Cheney, in particular, has reiterated claims that the intelligence community has backed away from, including comments suggesting Iraq might have been complicit in the Sept. 11 attacks, and that Iraqi trailers seized by American forces are "conclusive" evidence that Iraq had banned weapons.

Urged by Levin to be more swift and assertive in correcting public statements by White House officials, Tenet said, "Sir, it`s a fair point."

Republicans on the committee accused Democrats of using the hearing to score political points against the Bush administration as the presidential election is heating up.

Some Republicans defended Tenet, and said he should not have to answer for the prewar claims made by policymakers. The CIA director "is not their keeper," said Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), the chairman of the committee.

Even Republicans who were not involved in the hearing reacted to Democrats` criticisms. One, Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in a television interview called Kennedy and Levin "two old attack dogs gumming their way through artificial outrage about something they should know a lot more about and be more responsible about."


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Man kann sich nicht auf die Anzahl der Opfer einigen, will aber die Täter kennen.


http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-bomb…
THE WORLD
Karbala Shrine Blasts Blamed on Suicide Bombers
Officials conclude that nine attackers targeted a Shiite celebration as three struck in Baghdad, suggesting a complex, highly organized plot.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer

March 10, 2004

KARBALA, Iraq — Investigators probing the bombings that struck this city last week during a Shiite Muslim religious festival, killing more than 100 people, have determined that the blasts were set off by nine suicide attackers wearing belts rigged with explosives, Iraqi police said Tuesday.

Iraqi and U.S. officials previously attributed the March 2 blasts to a combination of suicide bombers, mortar rounds, bombs placed in pushcarts and a land mine. But witnesses` descriptions of suspected bombers and analysis of the scenes — including the discovery of detonating devices and shrapnel — point to suicide attackers, police said.

"All of the executors of this operation were suicide attackers," Col. Karim Hachim Sultan, Karbala`s deputy police chief, said in an interview outside the heavily fortified police station.

The conclusion that nine suicide bombers struck in Karbala — along with three who blew themselves up almost simultaneously at a Shiite shrine in Baghdad, about 55 miles north — underscored the coordination and organization that went into the plot.

Law enforcement authorities agree that the synchronized assaults in the two cities were jointly planned. That meant that plotters were able to enlist a dozen suicide bombers and equip, train and send them on their missions without being detected by U.S. or Iraqi forces.

Despite the widespread use of suicide assailants in insurgent campaigns worldwide, experts say few successful plots have involved so many in coordinated attacks.

A series of bombings targeting foreign-owned and Jewish sites in Casablanca, Morocco, in May involved 15 suicide bombers, authorities said, but only 12 managed to detonate their explosives. Those attacks killed 45 people, including the bombers.

Iraq`s Governing Council said last week that the combined death toll in the Karbala and Baghdad attacks was 271, but the count has since been revised downward.

The current toll in Karbala stands at about 130 killed and more than 200 wounded, Dr. Abdul Abbas Moussa Tamimi, administrator of Hussein Hospital, said Tuesday. Many victims were blown apart and were unrecognizable, he said, denying relatives the chance to identify their dead.

More than half of those killed here were Iranian pilgrims, who have been visiting Iraq`s Shiite shrines in vast numbers since the regime of Saddam Hussein fell and border controls were loosened.

As in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, families posted leaflets around town inquiring about missing loved ones. One leaflet, taped to a wall of the Hussein Hospital lobby, sought information about Waail Shakur Gata, an 18-year-old from a Karbala suburb. The posting included a photo of the young man and his family`s address and telephone number.

Officials say 70 worshipers were killed in the Baghdad bombings, bringing the overall death toll to about 200 — making March 2 the bloodiest day in Iraq since major combat was declared over May 1.

The culprits behind the carnage remain unknown, authorities here said. U.S. officials have called Abu Musab Zarqawi, an alleged Jordanian terrorist, a prime suspect. But they have offered no proof beyond a letter allegedly written by Zarqawi — a Sunni Muslim — in which he called for attacks against Shiites in an apparent bid to spark a civil war.

Iraqi authorities have pointed to several potentially suspect groups: the Al Qaeda terrorist network, Sunni fundamentalists known as Wahhabis and elements of Hussein`s former Baathist regime. But the Iraqis, like U.S. authorities, have produced no solid evidence linking anyone to the bombings.

"There are no crystal-clear indications as to who did it," said Hachim, Karbala`s deputy police chief, who is coordinating his inquiry with U.S.-led occupation forces. "The perpetrators are all terrorists who want to foment instability and sedition," he added.

One theory in wide circulation is that some Sunni-inspired terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda have allied with operatives of the former regime, which was resolutely secular. Proponents of this theory say a foreign group could not have emerged with such lethal effectiveness without the assistance of former Baathist intelligence agents with intimate knowledge of the country, extensive contacts and access to cash.

"Even Al Qaeda is unable to come here and carry out such attacks unless they find someone willing to help them inside the country," said Maj. Chasip Hussein Juburi of the Karbala police.

Al Qaeda operatives are known to be operating in the area, said Warrant Officer Zbigniew Dabkiewicz of the Polish-led international force that patrols the region around Karbala. Polish forces arrested seven Iraqis suspected of being affiliated with Al Qaeda nine days before the attack in Karbala, Dabkiewicz said, declining to elaborate.

Karbala was also hit Dec. 27 by a series of vehicle suicide bombs that killed 19 people — seven coalition soldiers and 12 Iraqis. Two bomb-laden trucks struck outside a Polish-run base in nearby Hillah on Feb. 18, killing at least 11.

Of 17 people arrested here after last week`s attacks, police said, eight have been released. The other nine — six Iraqis and three Iranians — are still being questioned, Hachim said.

At least two other suspects have been arrested in Najaf, police say. One said he was recruited by a former Iraqi intelligence officer to help plan attacks and may have known of the Karbala plot in advance, Najaf police said. The Najaf suspects were turned over to U.S.-led coalition forces, who are continuing to interrogate them, a military spokesman in Baghdad said.

Meanwhile, Iran said Tuesday that it had foiled a mortar attack on the religious center of Qom that was planned for the same day that Karbala and Baghdad were hit.

Citing an Intelligence Ministry statement, the official IRNA news agency said police found a mortar without ammunition at a farm on the outskirts of Qom, the center of learning for Iran`s Shiite clergy.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Staff writers Alissa J. Rubin in Baghdad and Sebastian Rotella in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-fuller1…
COMMENTARY
A Sharp Point in Iraq`s `Pointless` Violence
A radical but coherent vision drives attacks on fellow Iraqis.
By Graham E. Fuller
Graham E. Fuller is a former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA. His latest book is "The Future of Political Islam" (Palgrave, 2003).

March 10, 2004

As Iraq descends into ever greater bloodletting — mostly now visited by Iraqis and outsiders upon other Iraqis — it is tempting to describe all this violence as "mindless," a spasm of senseless nihilism. Yet, sadly, there is a fairly coherent rationale behind these ugly events and their ruthless perpetrators. And even though, fortunately, fewer Americans are dying these days, there can be no doubt that Washington itself is the sole focus of the campaign, regardless of how many Iraqis die.

From day one of the American occupation, radicals — both secular/nationalist and Islamist — had two strategic choices. The first was to limit their targets to U.S. forces and facilities in Iraq, making it abundantly clear that the United States is the sole overwhelming threat to Iraq and the Muslim world. The second was to attack anyone and anything that facilitated any aspect of the U.S. operation, even if it was providing benefits to the Iraqi public. Thus the United Nations and the Red Cross became valid targets, not for their services but because they furthered the broader American game plan for power in the region. In the same vein, Iraqi-staffed police and security officials became part of the American infrastructure of power and control and now are being targeted. Clearly, this second strategy has prevailed — an astonishingly bloody-minded vision that says a lot about the current defensive state of mind of the region as a whole. But regardless of who the actual targets are, it`s clearly a message being directed at the United States.

The bolder the scope of the U.S. master plan — quite bluntly described by top U.S. policymakers as a bid to "remake the face of the Middle East" — the harsher the response from the radicals. It makes no difference to them whether innocent Iraqi civilians pay the ultimate price for associating with the U.S. The whole point is to make sure that the U.S. learns that such interventionist projects are flights of dangerous folly. Radicals seek to drive home the point that Americans should never contemplate for even a moment the ambition of visiting American military force against the Muslim world ever again. If Iraq has to twist in the wind in tortured chaos for a year, so be it if that is what it takes to ensure that the U.S. will be permanently traumatized by messing with Islam.

Sadly, this entire rationale and state of mind may now be taking root across the region. If this happens, the radicals will have won a truly major victory. In their calculus, the price paid by a few thousand sad victims might be relatively modest if the long-range result is to crimp any future American plans for invasion and occupation of Muslim lands anywhere. What bigger victory could the radicals hope for? How many in the West, especially in the U.S., will be eager for a reprise of the Iraq experience?

Once the United States is deterred from its efforts to control the region, then Muslims can set about dealing with their own regimes and building their own future. But in the radical view, the building phase can come only after the region is cleansed of foreign power, whatever the attendant human costs.

Vicious and bloody-minded, yes, but this vision is hardly nihilistic. It represents a radical reading of the course of contemporary history in the Middle East. It helps turn fashionable debate over a "clash of civilizations" into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Few if any Muslims wish to perpetuate a Pax Americana in the region, even if they deplore the violence of Iraqis upon Iraqis. And even though discomfited by the ugliness of such radical tactics, nearly everyone understands the rationale for rejection of the invader. Sadly, Muslims don`t have to be terrorists to have some sympathy for keeping the U.S. out of their face, even if they flinch at the cost.

Intuitive Muslim understanding of this rationale is why it will be hard to get very many Iraqis, or even others in the region, to sincerely root for the success of the U.S. project in Iraq, however benign or constructive it might seem to Americans. This is classic rejectionism: no to anything imported from the United States — not because the product is all bad but because the intentions of the bearer are deeply suspect.

Most Iraqis will wish that this particular lesson was not being written in their own society and cities, but they sense in their bones how and why this is happening and what the very long-range implications are. And they don`t feel they have the power to stop the violence, at least right now.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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March 9, 2004, 9:54PM

GOP learns Bush, gasp, is the problem
By CRAGG HINES
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
Like antsy dogs before an earthquake, some Republicans sensed trouble. They were barking about the deficit, chasing their tails over the immigration proposal. A number had even begun baying about Vice President Dick Cheney. But when the tremor struck Monday (on the evening news) and the strong aftershocks continued Tuesday (in the morning newspapers), the party seemed astonished at the real cause of their prescient unease: President Bush.

The White House and Republicans came face-to-face with a pair of new national surveys that not only show Democrat John Kerry leading the president in the horse-race question (For whom would you vote if the election were held today?) but also find Bush trailing even more distantly in other key measures of voters` underlying sentiments. Taken together, the surveys are much more dire news than the White House had been predicting and for which it has been struggling to steel the faithful.

Perhaps the worst news for Bush and the Republicans was a question in the Washington Post-ABC survey (1,202 adults, Thursday-Sunday) that asked: "Which of these two statements comes closest to your own views: A. After four years of George W. Bush, we need to elect a president who can set the nation in a new direction. B. We need to keep the country moving in the direction Bush has taken us." Same direction got 41 percent, new direction 57 percent. Two percent, bless their indecisive hearts, expressed no opinion.

That is the type of Bush-specific finding that defies malinterpretation by the wiliest of White House spinmeisters. A clear majority of Americans say (at least at the moment) that they are looking for something different. It is one growing deficit the administration will kiss off at its peril. It is a finding that does not meld well with the overarching Bush campaign themes of steadiness and staying the course. What if the course is one on which Americans do not wish to stay?

The exact same split showed up when the ABC-Washington Post respondents were asked: "Please tell me whether the following statement applies to George W. Bush or not: He understands the problems of people like you." Yes, 41 percent. No, 57 percent.

These inquiries paint an even worse picture for Bush and his campaign strategists than his precarious rating in the new USA Today-CNN-Gallup poll (503 adults, Friday-Sunday), which found 49 percent approve and 48 percent disapprove of the way the president is handling his job (a record-tying low for Bush in that survey).

That same sort of narrow divide was reflected in response to a question in the Washington Post-ABC poll: "Overall do you think George W. Bush has done more to unite the country, or has done more to divide the country?" Unite, 48 percent; divide 49 percent. Again, worrisome territory for an incumbent whose first campaign was based (fraudulently as it has turned out) on his stated desire to bring us together.

In policy terms, the findings of both surveys buttress Bush`s decision to run as a war president. It`s about all he`s got. He can`t run as the jobs president, the education president, the Social Security president, the health care president. Unfortunately for Bush, those issues -- and not the fight against terrorism or the war in Iraq -- are the ones on which most of the surveys` respondents say they will base their vote in November.

Thankfully, Bush`s exploitive use of scenes from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in his campaign-opening television ads was seen as inappropriate by a majority (54 percent) of the USA Today-CNN-Gallup respondents. Not that it will have any effect on Bush`s refusal to drop the ads. While raising even more campaign funds in Texas on Monday, Bush again defended the use of the images by recalling how he had gone to Ground Zero. Fine. He can use pictures of himself standing on the rubble, not the flag-draped corpse of a fireman being carried from the wreckage.

Bush also used his trip back home to pounce on what he called Kerry`s attempt "to gut" the budget of the nation`s intelligence services. Kerry proposed in 1995 to cut $1.5 billion from the CIA`s appropriation over five years. How kind of the president to point out a sensible proposal that would have helped to shut down what Kerry`s campaign called "essentially a slush fund for defense contractors." Kerry`s proposed cut would have amounted at the time to about 1 percent of the CIA`s annual budget. Some gut.

The best news for Bush came in the USA Today-CNN-Gallup poll. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they think that Bush will win the election. Bush would take that margin in a heartbeat.

Hines is a Houston Chronicle columnist based in Washington, D.C. ([e-mail])

[Joerver]

Wednesday, March 10, 2004
War News for March 10, 2004
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
Bring ‘em on: Spanish troops under mortar fire near Diwanlya.

Bring ‘em on: Two American contractors and Iraqi interpreter killed in ambush near Hilla.

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers wounded in unspecified explosion.

Bring ‘em on: More explosions and small arms fire reported in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Bomb at SCIRI office in Baquba wounds one Iraqi.

Bring ‘em on: One Italian Carabinieri wounded, four Iraqi policemen killed in firefight with Shi’ite militia near Nasiriyah.

Bring ‘em on: Mosul police chief survives attempted assassination.

CPA awards contract to run pro-democracy advertising campaign in Iraq.

Halliburton reports $85 million profit on $3.6 billion revenue from Iraq contracts.

Iraqi farmers claim US occupation is damaging agriculture.

Arab-Kurd tensions continue to build in Kirkuk.

Armed guards for schoolchildren. “His is a typical story of the new Iraq: a man with a thriving business selling satellite dishes but who lives in fear in a lawless country.”

The US Fourth Estate and Iraq. “The study, by the university`s Center for International and Security Studies, concluded that newspaper coverage generally failed to adequately question the U.S. administration`s efforts to link its campaign against Iraq and the ‘war on terror’…’Too many journalists acted as virtual stenographers for the current administration, in effect validating President (George W.) Bush`s linkage of terrorism, Iraq and weapons of mass destruction,’ said University of Maryland journalism professor Susan Moeller, the report`s author.”

Rummy’s end-run on the CIA. “Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tenet said he was unaware until recently that the Pentagon unit had presented its findings to the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. It is not clear whether Cheney or Rice was present for the briefing, which was mentioned in a Defense Department letter released by the Armed Services Committee on Tuesday… The Pentagon unit was created by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Feith has said the unit comprised a handful of intelligence analysts, and that it was established to examine state sponsorship of terrorism, but it is principally known for its efforts to assemble evidence linking Iraq to al Qaeda.”

Northern oil pipeline still requires major repairs.

The Problem of the Grudge Informer. Where is Lon Fuller when we need him?

Commentary

Opinion: “The coalition’s track record of rule in Iraq is a pitiful one ­ a catalogue of errors and misjudgments. It is time for the coalition to step down and pass responsibility to a democratically elected Iraqi government. Despite the UN verdict, which is also a truly fallible institution that has made its share of mistakes in the past, and repeated claims by the coalition that the security situation makes elections impossible, it is time to accept that it is the coalition’s presence that creates such a situation.”

Editorial: “President Bush also wants Iraq to be someone else`s worry when the fall campaign begins in earnest. That`s why the June 30 deadline originally was set. Bush isn`t about to let it slip.”

Editorial: “Constitution-making is a classic Muslim crisis. The demand for the ‘shariah’ is a latent emotion that becomes overpowering after the achievement of a state. Pakistan began as a secular state under the Quaid-e-Azam, then trimmed its sails a bit under Liaquat Ali Khan and his Objectives Resolution, only to fall in the trap of General Ziaul Haq and his ‘shariah’. The worst years of Pakistan were experienced under the ‘shariah’ and the jihad it unleashed in the region. The irony is that after the Muslims have achieved a legal shipwreck they tend to go into denial and refuse to accept that the ‘shariah’ is responsible for it. Indeed, often they insist that the shipwreck is due to a scarcity of shariah rather than an abundance of it. When Ayatollah Khomeini imposed his ‘shariah’, the Pakistani clergy started coveting it; when Mullah Umar went one better on him in Afghanistan, Pakistan began yearning for Talibanisation. No one learns any lessons; in fact, lessons don’t even register. That is why the news that Iran’s ‘shariah’ has abolished ‘rijm’ (stoning to death) and Egypt’s ‘shariah’ has allowed ‘riba’ (bank interest) has not reached Pakistan.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Louisiana soldier dies in Iraq.

Local story: Florida soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Pennsylvania soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: North Dakota Marine dies in Kuwait.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 3:25 AM
Comment (1)

[Joerver]

_________________

[Joerver]

Deja Vu

by ROBERT FISK; March 10, 2004

A DRIVE to the former Saddam Hussein International Airport to meet a colleague. Palm trees cut down on the airport road by the Americans to deprive snipers of cover, the wood given free of charge to Iraqis who sell it in turn to bakeries in Baghdad.

In a dusty car park, I find eight recruits to the new Iraqi army, standing to attention in uniforms that would do credit to a takeaway. Some are in the clothes of the old Iraqi army of the 1960s, heavy khaki that just might have once been British, a few old camouflage fatigues. Two have beards, two are giggling and one stares forlornly at his Iraqi officer, a fat man smoking a cigarette with three large golden stars on his shoulders. "Attention!" The eight men put their hands to their sides, holding plastic bags of clothes.

An American soldier with "Wilkins" written on his helmet and with an "Old Ironsides" badge on his sleeve - Old Ironsides was the most shelled gunboat of the American civil war - is watching this parade. "When I see this," he says to me, "I don`t like what I see." When I suggest that I`d rather have my job than his, he grins. "I bet you would," he says.

The men march through a dust storm to a prefabricated building and halt. Mr Wilkins turns to the two Iraqi officers, the fat man with the stars and a thin, stooped youth with a tiny moustache, and asks them to board the truck to the airport. The man with the stars says he wants to go to the building where the soldiers are. "Get on the truck," says Mr Wilkins. The man with the stars repeats that he wants to go to the building. "Please get on the truck," Mr Wilkins says kindly and he gently wafts his clipboard towards them. "Get on the truck." He is obeyed, slowly. Then he turns to look at me. "And these," he says meaningfully, "are the officers."

I come across a Nepalese with a rifle over his shoulder, one of the armies of mercenaries now employed by the Americans - let us not call them sandbags - to secure the airport perimeter. He sleeps at the airport and has been here for five months. Does he like it, I ask? "Boring but not much sleep," he smiles. "Too many mortars and too much gunfire."

Overhead, a four-engined military transport aircraft is groaning into the sky, turning tight 1,000-metre circles to keep outside missile range. Go over the 1,000 metres and you can be hit. It streams four dirty fuel trails behind its engines as they fight to gain height.

At the terminal stands an American officer in his forties, a lieutenant colonel in civvies but with a flak jacket covered with camouflage cloth. And how does he like the airport? "We`re leaving here soon. We`re leaving the airport. The Iraqis are taking over." In other words, I suggest, the Americans are going to let the Iraqi army or the Iraqi "Civil Defence" or any of the other fancy Iraqi outfits being trained by the Americans, take the nightly fire of the resistance here? "That`s pretty much it," he said.

I don`t entirely believe this. The US occupation forces fly their transports into Baghdad airport and won`t leave their security to Iraqis. But they could let the new Iraqi army do the dirty work, hunting and patrolling in the grass and muck outside the 1,000 metre perimeter at night, guarding the perimeter wire, withdrawing the massive US presence to save American lives.

And then I remember that most famous of dates - 30 June - when Iraq`s "sovereignty" will be handed over by the Americans to the American-appointed Iraqi "Governing Council", and it begins to make sense. The Americans aren`t leaving on 30 June, of course; they are retreating to secure barracks. The airport will become an Iraqi responsibility. Iraqis will risk their lives to defend it from the "resistance".

And it dawns on me that this will happen in a thousand other areas of Iraq. The dams on the Euphrates west of Fallujah, the walls of the old RAF Habbaniya airbase which is now home to the 82nd Airborne, the street patrols in Baghdad. Even now, you see fewer US patrols in the old Caliphate capital. No bad thing for a people who don`t want to be occupied.

But the Americans are not leaving Iraq and the Iraqis know this. On my way back to Baghdad, I see two of the new recruits in the middle sandswept parade ground. They are taking their military trousers down and pulling on jeans, right there in front of the Americans. Time to go home for the night, the war over for another 12 hours. Until the Americans leave. Why does this remind me of Afghanistan?

[Joerver]

Published on Wednesday, March 10, 2004 by Salon.com
The New Pentagon Papers
A High-Ranking Military Officer Reveals how Defense Department Extremists Suppressed Information and Twisted the Truth to Drive the Country to War

by Karen Kwiatkowski

In July of last year, after just over 20 years of service, I retired as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. I had served as a communications officer in the field and in acquisition programs, as a speechwriter for the National Security Agency director, and on the Headquarters Air Force and the office of the secretary of defense staffs covering African affairs. I had completed Air Command and Staff College and Navy War College seminar programs, two master`s degrees, and everything but my Ph.D. dissertation in world politics at Catholic University. I regarded my military vocation as interesting, rewarding and apolitical. My career started in 1978 with the smooth seduction of a full four-year ROTC scholarship. It ended with 10 months of duty in a strange new country, observing up close and personal a process of decision making for war not sanctioned by the Constitution we had all sworn to uphold. Ben Franklin`s comment that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia had delivered "a republic, madam, if you can keep it" would come to have special meaning.

In the spring of 2002, I was a cynical but willing staff officer, almost two years into my three-year tour at the office of the secretary of defense, undersecretary for policy, sub-Saharan Africa. In April, a call for volunteers went out for the Near East South Asia directorate (NESA). None materialized. By May, the call transmogrified into a posthaste demand for any staff officer, and I was "volunteered" to enter what would be a well-appointed den of iniquity.

The education I would receive there was like an M. Night Shyamalan movie -- intense, fascinating and frightening. While the people were very much alive, I saw a dead philosophy -- Cold War anti-communism and neo-imperialism -- walking the corridors of the Pentagon. It wore the clothing of counterterrorism and spoke the language of a holy war between good and evil. The evil was recognized by the leadership to be resident mainly in the Middle East and articulated by Islamic clerics and radicals. But there were other enemies within, anyone who dared voice any skepticism about their grand plans, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Gen. Anthony Zinni.

From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon`s Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it.

I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.

I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.

While this commandeering of a narrow segment of both intelligence production and American foreign policy matched closely with the well-published desires of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, many of us in the Pentagon, conservatives and liberals alike, felt that this agenda, whatever its flaws or merits, had never been openly presented to the American people. Instead, the public story line was a fear-peddling and confusing set of messages, designed to take Congress and the country into a war of executive choice, a war based on false pretenses, and a war one year later Americans do not really understand. That is why I have gone public with my account.

To begin with, I was introduced to Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA. A tall, thin, nervously intelligent man, he welcomed me into the fold. I knew little about him. Because he was a recently retired naval captain and now high-level Bush appointee, the common assumption was that he had connections, if not capability. I would later find out that when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense over a decade earlier, Luti was his aide. He had also been a military aide to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich during the Clinton years and had completed his Ph.D. at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. While his Navy career had not granted him flag rank, he had it now and was not shy about comparing his place in the pecking order with various three- and four-star generals and admirals in and out of the Pentagon. Name dropping included references to getting this or that document over to Scooter, or responding to one of Scooter`s requests right away. Scooter, I would find out later, was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president`s chief of staff.

Co-workers who had watched the transition from Clintonista to Bushite shared conversations and stories indicating that something deliberate and manipulative was happening to NESA. Key professional personnel, longtime civilian professionals holding the important billets in NESA, were replaced early on during the transition. Longtime officer director Joe McMillan was reassigned to the National Defense University. The director`s job in the time of transition was to help bring the newly appointed deputy assistant secretary up to speed, ensure office continuity, act as a resource relating to regional histories and policies, and help identify the best ways to maintain course or to implement change. Removing such a critical continuity factor was not only unusual but also seemed like willful handicapping. It was the first signal of radical change.

At the time, I didn`t realize that the expertise on Middle East policy was not only being removed, but was also being exchanged for that from various agenda-bearing think tanks, including the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Interestingly, the office director billet stayed vacant the whole time I was there. That vacancy and the long-term absence of real regional understanding to inform defense policymakers in the Pentagon explains a great deal about the neoconservative approach on the Middle East and the disastrous mistakes made in Washington and in Iraq in the past two years.

I soon saw the modus operandi of "instant policy" unhampered by debate or experience with the early Bush administration replacement of the civilian head of the Israel, Lebanon and Syria desk office with a young political appointee from the Washington Institute, David Schenker. Word was that the former experienced civilian desk officer tended to be evenhanded toward the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, but there were complaints and he was gone. I met David and chatted with him frequently. He was a smart, serious, hardworking guy, and the proud author of a book on the chances for Palestinian democracy. Country desk officers were rarely political appointees. In my years at the Pentagon, this was the only "political" I knew doing that type of high-stress and low-recognition duty. So eager was the office to have Schenker at the Israel desk, he served for many months as a defense contractor of sorts and only received his "Schedule C" political appointee status months after I arrived.

I learned that there was indeed a preferred ideology for NESA. My first day in the office, a GS-15 career civil servant rather unhappily advised me that if I wanted to be successful here, I`d better remember not to say anything positive about the Palestinians. This belied official U.S. policy of serving as an honest broker for resolution of Israeli and Palestinian security concerns. At that time, there was a great deal of talk about Bush`s possible support for a Palestinian state. That the Pentagon could have implemented and, worse, was implementing its own foreign policy had not yet occurred to me.

Throughout the summer, the NESA spaces in one long office on the fourth floor, between the 7th and 8th corridors of D Ring, became more and more crowded. With war talk and planning about Iraq, all kinds of new people were brought in. A politically savvy civilian-clothes-wearing lieutenant colonel named Bill Bruner served as the Iraq desk officer, and he had apparently joined NESA about the time Bill Luti did. I discovered that Bruner, like Luti, had served as a military aide to Speaker Gingrich. Gingrich himself was now conveniently an active member of Bush`s Defense Policy Board, which had space immediately below ours on the third floor.

I asked why Bruner wore civilian attire, and was told by others, "He`s Chalabi`s handler." Chalabi, of course, was Ahmad Chalabi, the president of the Iraqi National Congress, who was the favored exile of the neoconservatives and the source of much of their "intelligence." Bruner himself said he had to attend a lot of meetings downtown in hotels and that explained his suits. Soon, in July, he was joined by another Air Force pilot, a colonel with no discernible political connections, Kevin Jones. I thought of it as a military-civilian partnership, although both were commissioned officers.

Among the other people arriving over the summer of 2002 was Michael Makovsky, a recent MIT graduate who had written his dissertation on Winston Churchill and was going to work on "Iraqi oil issues." He was David Makovsky`s younger brother. David was at the time a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and had formerly been an editor of the Jerusalem Post, a pro-Likud newspaper. Mike was quiet and seemed a bit uncomfortable sharing space with us. He soon disappeared into some other part of the operation and I rarely saw him after that.

In late summer, new space was found upstairs on the fifth floor, and the "expanded Iraq desk," now dubbed the "Office of Special Plans," began moving there. And OSP kept expanding.

Another person I observed to appear suddenly was Michael Rubin, another Washington Institute fellow working on Iraq policy. He and Chris Straub, a retired Army officer who had been a Republican staffer for the Senate Intelligence Committee, were eventually assigned to OSP.

John Trigilio, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was assigned to handle Iraq intelligence for Luti. Trigilio had been on a one-year career-enhancement tour with the office of the secretary of defense that was to end in August 2002. DIA had offered him routine intelligence positions upon his return from his OSD sabbatical, but none was as interesting as working in August 2002 for Luti. John asked Luti for help in gaining an extension for another year, effectively removing him from the DIA bureaucracy and its professional constraints.

Trigilio and I had hallway debates, as friends. The one I remember most clearly was shortly after President Bush gave his famous "mushroom cloud" speech in Cincinnati in October 2002, asserting that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction as well as ties to "international terrorists," and was working feverishly to develop nuclear weapons with "nuclear holy warriors." I asked John who was feeding the president all the bull about Saddam and the threat he posed us in terms of WMD delivery and his links to terrorists, as none of this was in secret intelligence I had seen in the past years. John insisted that it wasn`t an exaggeration, but when pressed to say which actual intelligence reports made these claims, he would only say, "Karen, we have sources that you don`t have access to." It was widely felt by those of us in the office not in the neoconservatives` inner circle that these "sources" related to the chummy relationship that Ahmad Chalabi had with both the Office of Special Plans and the office of the vice president.

The newly named director of the OSP, Abram Shulsky, was one of the most senior people sharing our space that summer. Abe, a kindly and gentle man, who would say hello to me in the hallways, seemed to be someone I, as a political science grad student, would have loved to sit with over coffee and discuss the world`s problems. I had a clear sense that Abe ranked high in the organization, although ostensibly he was under Luti. Luti was known at times to treat his staff, even senior staff, with disrespect, contempt and derision. He also didn`t take kindly to staff officers who had an opinion or viewpoint that was off the neoconservative reservation. But with Shulsky, who didn`t speak much at the staff meetings, he was always respectful and deferential. It seemed like Shulsky`s real boss was somebody like Douglas Feith or higher.

Doug Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, was a case study in how not to run a large organization. In late 2001, he held the first all-hands policy meeting at which he discussed for over 15 minutes how many bullets and sub-bullets should be in papers for Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. A year later, in August of 2002, he held another all-hands meeting in the auditorium where he embarrassed everyone with an emotional performance about what it was like to serve Rumsfeld. He blithely informed us that for months he didn`t realize Rumsfeld had a daily stand-up meeting with his four undersecretaries. He shared with us the fact that, after he started to attend these meetings, he knew better what Rumsfeld wanted of him. Most military staffers and professional civilians hearing this were incredulous, as was I, to hear of such organizational ignorance lasting so long and shared so openly. Feith`s inattention to most policy detail, except that relating to Israel and Iraq, earned him a reputation most foul throughout Policy, with rampant stories of routine signatures that took months to achieve and lost documents. His poor reputation as a manager was not helped by his arrogance. One thing I kept hearing from those defending Feith was that he was "just brilliant." It was curiously like the brainwashed refrain in "The Manchurian Candidate" about the programmed sleeper agent Raymond Shaw, as the "kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I`ve ever known."

I spent time that summer exploring the neoconservative worldview and trying to grasp what was happening inside the Pentagon. I wondered what could explain this rush to war and disregard for real intelligence. Neoconservatives are fairly easy to study, mainly because they are few in number, and they show up at all the same parties. Examining them as individuals, it became clear that almost all have worked together, in and out of government, on national security issues for several decades. The Project for the New American Century and its now famous 1998 manifesto to President Clinton on Iraq is a recent example. But this statement was preceded by one written for Benyamin Netanyahu`s Likud Party campaign in Israel in 1996 by neoconservatives Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Douglas Feith titled "A Clean Break: Strategy for Securing the Realm."

David Wurmser is the least known of that trio and an interesting example of the tangled neoconservative web. In 2001, the research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute was assigned to the Pentagon, then moved to the Department of State to work as deputy for the hard-line conservative undersecretary John Bolton, then to the National Security Council, and now is lodged in the office of the vice president. His wife, the prolific Meyrav Wurmser, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, is also a neoconservative team player.

Before the Iraq invasion, many of these same players labored together for literally decades to push a defense strategy that favored military intervention and confrontation with enemies, secret and unconstitutional if need be. Some former officials, such as Richard Perle (an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan) and James Woolsey (CIA director under Clinton), were granted a new lease on life, a renewed gravitas, with positions on President Bush`s Defense Policy Board. Others, like Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz, had apparently overcome previous negative associations from an Iran-Contra conviction for lying to the Congress and for utterly miscalculating the strength of the Soviet Union in a politically driven report to the CIA.

Neoconservatives march as one phalanx in parallel opposition to those they hate. In the early winter of 2002, a co-worker U.S. Navy captain and I were discussing the service being rendered by Colin Powell at the time, and we were told by the neoconservative political appointee David Schenker that "the best service Powell could offer would be to quit right now." I was present at a staff meeting when Bill Luti called Marine Gen. and former Chief of Central Command Anthony Zinni a "traitor," because Zinni had publicly expressed reservations about the rush to war.

After August 2002, the Office of Special Plans established its own rhythm and cadence separate from the non-politically minded professionals covering the rest of the region. While often accused of creating intelligence, I saw only two apparent products of this office: war planning guidance for Rumsfeld, presumably impacting Central Command, and talking points on Iraq, WMD and terrorism. These internal talking points seemed to be a mélange crafted from obvious past observation and intelligence bits and pieces of dubious origin. They were propagandistic in style, and all desk officers were ordered to use them verbatim in the preparation of any material prepared for higher-ups and people outside the Pentagon. The talking points included statements about Saddam Hussein`s proclivity for using chemical weapons against his own citizens and neighbors, his existing relations with terrorists based on a member of al-Qaida reportedly receiving medical care in Baghdad, his widely publicized aid to the Palestinians, and general indications of an aggressive viability in Saddam Hussein`s nuclear weapons program and his ongoing efforts to use them against his neighbors or give them to al-Qaida style groups. The talking points said he was threatening his neighbors and was a serious threat to the U.S., too.

I suspected, from reading Charles Krauthammer, a neoconservative columnist for the Washington Post, and the Weekly Standard, and hearing a Cheney speech or two, that these talking points left the building on occasion. Both OSP functions duplicated other parts of the Pentagon. The facts we should have used to base our papers on were already being produced by the intelligence agencies, and the war planning was already done by the combatant command staff with some help from the Joint Staff. Instead of developing defense policy alternatives and advice, OSP was used to manufacture propaganda for internal and external use, and pseudo war planning.

As a result of my duties as the North Africa desk officer, I became acquainted with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) support staff for NESA. Every policy regional director was served by a senior executive intelligence professional from DIA, along with a professional intelligence staff. This staff channeled DIA products, accepted tasks for DIA, and in the past had been seen as a valued member of the regional teams. However, as the war approached, this type of relationship with the Defense Intelligence Agency crumbled.

Even the most casual observer could note the tension and even animosity between "Wild Bill" Luti (as we came to refer to our boss) and Bruce Hardcastle, our defense intelligence officer (DIO). Certainly, there were stylistic and personality differences. Hardcastle, like most senior intelligence officers I knew, was serious, reserved, deliberate, and went to great lengths to achieve precision and accuracy in his speech and writing. Luti was the kind of guy who, in staff meetings and in conversations, would jump from grand theory to administrative minutiae with nary a blink or a fleeting shadow of self-awareness.

I discovered that Luti and possibly others within OSP were dissatisfied with Hardcastle`s briefings, in particular with the aspects relating to WMD and terrorism. I was not clear exactly what those concerns were, but I came to understand that the DIA briefing did not match what OSP was claiming about Iraq`s WMD capabilities and terrorist activities. I learned that shortly before I arrived there had been an incident in NESA where Hardcastle`s presence and briefing at a bilateral meeting had been nixed abruptly by Luti. The story circulating among the desk officers was "a last-minute cancellation" of the DIO presentation. Hardcastle`s intelligence briefing was replaced with one prepared by another Policy office that worked nonproliferation issues. While this alternative briefing relied on intelligence produced by DIO and elsewhere, it was not a product of the DIA or CIA community, but instead was an OSD Policy "branded" product -- and so were its conclusions. The message sent by Policy appointees and well understood by staff officers and the defense intelligence community was that senior appointed civilians were willing to exclude or marginalize intelligence products that did not fit the agenda.

Staff officers would always request OSP`s most current Iraq, WMD and terrorism talking points. On occasion, these weren`t available in an approved form and awaited Shulsky`s approval. The talking points were a series of bulleted statements, written persuasively and in a convincing way, and superficially they seemed reasonable and rational. Saddam Hussein had gassed his neighbors, abused his people, and was continuing in that mode, becoming an imminently dangerous threat to his neighbors and to us -- except that none of his neighbors or Israel felt this was the case. Saddam Hussein had harbored al-Qaida operatives and offered and probably provided them with training facilities -- without mentioning that the suspected facilities were in the U.S./Kurdish-controlled part of Iraq. Saddam Hussein was pursuing and had WMD of the type that could be used by him, in conjunction with al-Qaida and other terrorists, to attack and damage American interests, Americans and America -- except the intelligence didn`t really say that. Saddam Hussein had not been seriously weakened by war and sanctions and weekly bombings over the past 12 years, and in fact was plotting to hurt America and support anti-American activities, in part through his carrying on with terrorists -- although here the intelligence said the opposite. His support for the Palestinians and Arafat proved his terrorist connections, and basically, the time to act was now. This was the gist of the talking points, and it remained on message throughout the time I watched the points evolve.

But evolve they did, and the subtle changes I saw from September to late January revealed what the Office of Special Plans was contributing to national security. Two key types of modifications were directed or approved by Shulsky and his team of politicos. First was the deletion of entire references or bullets. The one I remember most specifically is when they dropped the bullet that said one of Saddam`s intelligence operatives had met with Mohammad Atta in Prague, supposedly salient proof that Saddam was in part responsible for the 9/11 attack. That claim had lasted through a number of revisions, but after the media reported the claim as unsubstantiated by U.S. intelligence, denied by the Czech government, and that Atta`s location had been confirmed by the FBI to be elsewhere, that particular bullet was dropped entirely from our "advice on things to say" to senior Pentagon officials when they met with guests or outsiders.

The other change made to the talking points was along the line of fine-tuning and generalizing. Much of what was there was already so general as to be less than accurate.

Some bullets were softened, particularly statements of Saddam`s readiness and capability in the chemical, biological or nuclear arena. Others were altered over time to match more exactly something Bush and Cheney said in recent speeches. One item I never saw in our talking points was a reference to Saddam`s purported attempt to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger. The OSP list of crime and evil had included Saddam`s attempts to seek fissionable materials or uranium in Africa. This point was written mostly in the present tense and conveniently left off the dates of the last known attempt, sometime in the late 1980s. I was surprised to hear the president`s mention of the yellowcake in Niger in his 2002 State of the Union address because that indeed was new and in theory might have represented new intelligence, something that seemed remarkably absent in any of the products provided us by the OSP (although not for lack of trying). After hearing of it, I checked with my old office of Sub-Saharan African Affairs -- and it was news to them, too. It also turned out to be false.

It is interesting today that the "defense" for those who lied or prevaricated about Iraq is to point the finger at the intelligence. But the National Intelligence Estimate, published in September 2002, as remarked upon recently by former CIA Middle East chief Ray McGovern, was an afterthought. It was provoked only after Sens. Bob Graham and Dick Durban noted in August 2002, as Congress was being asked to support a resolution for preemptive war, that no NIE elaborating real threats to the United States had been provided. In fact, it had not been written, but a suitable NIE was dutifully prepared and submitted the very next month. Naturally, this document largely supported most of the outrageous statements already made publicly by Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld about the threat Iraq posed to the United States. All the caveats, reservations and dissents made by intelligence were relegated to footnotes and kept from the public. Funny how that worked.

Starting in the fall of 2002 I found a way to vent my frustrations with the neoconservative hijacking of our defense policy. The safe outlet was provided by retired Col. David Hackworth, who agreed to publish my short stories anonymously on his Web site Soldiers for the Truth, under the moniker of "Deep Throat: Insider Notes From the Pentagon." The "deep throat" part was his idea, but I was happy to have a sense that there were folks out there, mostly military, who would be interested in the secretary of defense-sponsored insanity I was witnessing on almost a daily basis. When I was particularly upset, like when I heard Zinni called a "traitor," I wrote about it in articles like this one.

In November, my Insider articles discussed the artificial worlds created by the Pentagon and the stupid naiveté of neocon assumptions about what would happen when we invaded Iraq. I discussed the price of public service, distinguishing between public servants who told the truth and then saw their careers flame out and those "public servants" who did not tell the truth and saw their careers ignite. My December articles became more depressing, discussing the history of the 100 Years` War and "combat lobotomies." There was a painful one titled "Minority Reports" about the necessity but unlikelihood of a Philip Dick sci-fi style "minority report" on Feith-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney`s insanely grandiose vision of some future Middle East, with peace, love and democracy brought on through preemptive war and military occupation.

I shared some of my concerns with a civilian who had been remotely acquainted with the Luti-Feith-Perle political clan in his previous work for one of the senior Pentagon witnesses during the Iran-Contra hearings. He told me these guys were engaged in something worse than Iran-Contra. I was curious but he wouldn`t tell me anything more. I figured he knew what he was talking about. I thought of him when I read much later about the 2002 and 2003 meetings between Michael Ledeen, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar -- all Iran-Contra figures.

In December 2002, I requested an acceleration of my retirement to the following July. By now, the military was anxiously waiting under the bed for the other shoe to drop amid concerns over troop availability, readiness for an ill-defined mission, and lack of day-after clarity. The neocons were anxiously struggling to get that damn shoe off. That other shoe fell with a thump, as did the regard many of us had held for Colin Powell, on Feb. 5 as the secretary of state capitulated to the neoconservative line in his speech at the United Nations -- a speech not only filled with falsehoods pushed by the neoconservatives but also containing many statements already debunked by intelligence.

War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to the Congress and to the American people for this one were inaccurate and so misleading as to be false. Moreover, they were false by design. Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq -- more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and occupying could have been argued on their merits -- an angry and aggressive U.S. population might indeed have supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn`t get the chance for an honest debate.

President Bush has now appointed a commission to look at American intelligence capabilities and will report after the election. It will "examine intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and related 21st century threats ... [and] compare what the Iraq Survey Group learns with the information we had prior..." The commission, aside from being modeled on failed rubber stamp commissions of the past and consisting entirely of those selected by the executive branch, specifically excludes an examination of the role of the Office of Special Plans and other executive advisory bodies. If the president or vice president were seriously interested in "getting the truth," they might consider asking for evidence on how intelligence was politicized, misused and manipulated, and whether information from the intelligence community was distorted in order to sway Congress and public opinion in a narrowly conceived neoconservative push for war. Bush says he wants the truth, but it is clear he is no more interested in it today than he was two years ago.

Proving that the truth is indeed the first casualty in war, neoconservative member of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle called this February for "heads to roll." Perle, agenda setter par excellence, named George Tenet and Defense Intelligence Agency head Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby as guilty of failing to properly inform the president on Iraq and WMD. No doubt, the intelligence community, susceptible to politicization and outdated paradigms, needs reform. The swiftness of the neoconservative casting of blame on the intelligence community and away from themselves should have been fully expected. Perhaps Perle and others sense the grave and growing danger of political storms unleashed by the exposure of neoconservative lies. Meanwhile, Ahmad Chalabi, extravagantly funded by the neocons in the Pentagon to the tune of millions to provide the disinformation, has boasted with remarkable frankness, "We are heroes in error," and, "What was said before is not important."

Now we are told by our president and neoconservative mouthpieces that our sons and daughters, husbands and wives are in Iraq fighting for freedom, for liberty, for justice and American values. This cost is not borne by the children of Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld and Cheney. Bush`s daughters do not pay this price. We are told that intelligence has failed America, and that President Bush is determined to get to the bottom of it. Yet not a single neoconservative appointee has lost his job, and no high official of principle in the administration has formally resigned because of this ill-planned and ill-conceived war and poorly implemented occupation of Iraq.

Will Americans hold U.S. policymakers accountable? Will we return to our roots as a republic, constrained and deliberate, respectful of others? My experience in the Pentagon leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq tells me, as Ben Franklin warned, we may have already failed. But if Americans at home are willing to fight -- tenaciously and courageously -- to preserve our republic, we might be able to keep it.

Karen Kwiatkowski now lives in western Virginia on a small farm with her family, teaches an American foreign policy class at James Madison University, and writes regularly for militaryweek.com on security and defense issues.

Copyright 2004 Salon.com

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FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE SHOCK JOCKS

The Censoring of Howard Stern
NEW YORK--During the Fifties, actors and screenwriters sympathetic to progressive and radical causes found it nearly impossible to get work. Though they couldn`t prove it, blackballed Hollywood talent knew why their telephones had stopped ringing. Somewhere behind the scenes, someone powerful, someone who believed that America was composed only of two kinds of people--communists and right-thinking souls like themselves--was working to silence them.

We tell our kids that America learned from McCarthyism, but a new version of the Red Scare is being born in this new century. Powerbrokers connected to what Hillary Clinton clumsily called the "vast right-wing conspiracy"--the Bush-Cheney`s neoconservative war profiteers, the Christian Right and their media allies at Fox News and Clear Channel Communications--operate out in the open. Their goal: to crush personalities whose influence and eloquence threatens their plan to recast the United States in their white, heterosexual, pro-business image.

Ironically two of the hard right`s recent high-profile speech martyrs, Bill Maher and Howard Stern, are libertarians--a group whose distrust of big government traditionally prompts them to vote Republican. ABC, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company--a major political contributor to Bush`s 2000 presidential campaign and other Republicans--canceled Maher`s "Politically Incorrect" TV show after 9/11.

Now, over on AM radio, the Bush-controlled Federal Communications Commission has targeted Howard Stern for trumped-up decency violations. In a classic tag-team move, Clear Channel Communications, the thousand-station-plus behemoth so closely allied with the White House that it organized pro-Bush "Rallies for America" during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, declared Stern in violation of a brand-new "zero tolerance" policy for on-air indecency. "Clear Channel drew a line in the sand today with regard to protecting our listeners from indecent content, and Howard Stern`s show blew right through it," Clear Channel Radio president John Hogan said before dropping Stern`s popular syndicated program--Clear Channel is willing to lose money to promote its political agenda--from its stations.

Citing three separate FCC sources, Stern says he expects to be hit by a huge fine--then fired. "It`s over for me as a broadcaster," he said last week. "I`m checkmated. All they gotta do is fine [Infinity Broadcasting, Stern`s employer] and then we`re gone. And there`s nothing we can do about it." On March 5, he added: "I`m guessing that sometime next week will be my last show on this station. There`s a cultural war going on. The religious right is winning. We`re losing."

If Clear Channel truly had a true zero tolerance policy on decency, Stern points out, it wouldn`t have hired foul-mouthed right-wing Republican Michael Savage at its KPRC-AM in Houston. (Savage infamously shouted that homosexuals should "get AIDS and die" on MSNBC.) The real reason he`s being attacked, Stern says, is that he dared criticize George W. Bush.

"If you don` t think me going after Bush got me thrown off those stations, you got another thing coming," says the "shock jock." "My days here are numbered because I dared to speak out against the Bush administration and say that the religious agenda of George W. Bush concerning stem cell research and gay marriage is wrong. And that what he is doing with the FCC is pushing this religious agenda. And also the fact that the guy takes more vacation than any President ever...I don`t think we can stop it, short of me calling up President Bush and saying `Look man, I`m going to support you, so don`t do this.`"

The New McCarthyism doesn`t always flow from the top down. The New York Times, which has published my editorial cartoons for 13 years through three presidents, suddenly excised them from its website on March 1--leaving a Soviet-style hole on its comics page. In an Orwellian twist, it even deleted the archives.

"After two years [sic] of monitoring cartoons by Ted Rall we decided that, while he often does good work, we found some of his humor was not in keeping with the tone we try to set for NYTimes.com," stammered a Times Digital spokesperson to Editor & Publisher magazine when anti-censorship complaints began coming in. "We...recognize an obligation to assure our users that what we publish...does not offend the reasonable sensibilities of our audience."

To his credit, the paper`s ombudsman wrote that he disagreed with the decision.

Those "reasonable sensibilities," a Times insider tells me, have less to do with tone than political content: as the most liberal cartoonist in a group of ten, my work drew a disproportionate number of emails from annoyed Republicans--adding to an already short-staffed department`s workload. "It wasn`t tone. [Times Digital] were sick of the hassle," my source says. "They kept other cartoons that were far more objectionable."

Cowardice, meet laziness. Time magazine was so afraid of the possibility of right-wing hate mail that it stopped running political cartoons after 9/11.

The Internet has become the tool of choice for the previously powerless. Email forwarding, hyperlinks and blogs--a genre dominated by right-wingers--allow anyone with a used Gateway computer and a dial-up connection to rally hundreds of likeminded individuals to point and click, instantly firing off fiery letters to the bosses of radio talk show hosts, cartoonists and columnists who offend their sensibilities.

"Here`s the feedback form for Yahoo!`s opinion syndicate," a blog called "The Agitator" suggests. "Write and tell them it`s time to drop Ted Rall`s column." "No paper should ever run Rall again," howls Andrew Sullivan, a Time magazine columnist who also writes the country`s most prominent extreme-right blog. "I urge all of our readers to write to the NY Times," urges another hate site. "Here is their Contact page. I wrote to the publisher this morning."

A few liberals try to censor conservatives, but most opponents of the First Amendment reside on the right.

Unlike Congressional staffers accustomed to the phenomenon of mass letter-writing campaigns, aging editors at old-school print outlets like the Times don`t comprehend that they`re being fooled and manipulated by fringe interest groups--most of whose members don`t even buy their newspaper--into believing these orchestrated correspondence campaigns reflect genuine reader outrage. And so the bullies get their way.

The Right is running scared. Their wars and economic schemes are revealed to be as fraudulent as their fake president, whose poll numbers are plummeting as he turns to face uncharacteristically unified Democrats. Because they have no record worth defending and no ideas anyone will believe, the new McCarthyites have only one line of defense left: censoring their opponents. The question this time is, will anyone stand up for free speech?

(Ted Rall is the author of "Wake Up, You`re Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right," coming in April. Ordering information is available at amazon.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2004 TED RALL

RALL 3/9/04

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Die gestrigen Primaries. Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi und Texas.

Florida Democratic Presidential Primary
Updated 3/10/04 11:17 AM ET
99% Precincts Reporting Incumbent* declared winner
Candidates Votes %

Sen. John F. Kerry 574,355 77%
Sen. John Edwards 73,751 10%
Al Sharpton 20,588 3%
Howard Dean 20,456 3%
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich 17,119 2%
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman 13,887 2%
Gen. Wesley K. Clark 10,000 1%
Carol Moseley Braun 6,639 1%
Rep. Richard A. Gephardt 6,056 1%



Source: AP


Florida Politics

Democratic Sen. Bob Graham will not seek re-election for the seat he has held since 1986, ending his political career of 35 years. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, but ended his bid after struggling to gain momentum and failing to raise cash in the crowded Democratic field.


Graham`s decision to retire plunges both major parties into a political free-for-all, with four Florida Democrats already jockeying to replace him and Republicans crowing about their own chances of taking the seat.


Larry Klayman, the prosecutor-turned-watchdog has entered the race for the Republican nomination for Graham`s seat. Other Republicans include state House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, state Sen. Dan Webster, and former U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum, the unsuccessful Republican nominee in 2000 when Democrat Bill Nelson captured the open seat vacated by Republican U.S. Sen. Connie Mack.


Hopeful Democrats include U.S. Reps. Alcee Hastings and Peter Deutsch, Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas and former state lawmaker Betty Castor.


In the 2002 elections, Gov. Jeb Bush, the president`s brother, beat Democrat Bill McBride to become the state`s only Republican governor to win re-election.


Among the House winners: Former Secretary of State Katherine Harris, famous and infamous from the 2000 presidential imbroglio.


Voters approved amending their constitution to reduce public school class sizes, ban most smoking in public buildings, and ban the crating of pregnant pigs.


The Republicans not only retained the governership, the congressional delegation and both houses of the legislature, they also won all three state Cabinet races.


"I think right now you`d have to say Democrats would be at the lowest point they`ve been in the history of Florida," said Former Attorney General Bob Butterworth, a Democrat who was derailed in his state Senate race.


To counter lagging state revenues, the state Legislature voted to raise $160 million in fees, but no taxes. "I don`t consider an increase in fees to be a tax increase," said GOP state Rep. Joe Negron. "There are many services provided by the government where it`s appropriate for users to contribute to their cost _ from tuition to drivers licenses to people in agriculture paying for an autopsy on a dead cow."


--The Associated Press






Previous Presidential Votes

2000 Primary Winners
Democrats: Gore with 81.8%
Republicans: Bush with 73.8%

2000 General Election
Gore (D): 48.8%
Bush (R): 48.8%

1996 General Election
Clinton (D): 48.0%
Dole (R): 42.3%







Election Dates
Presidential primary
March 9, 2004

State primary
August 31, 2004

Delegates/Electoral Votes
Democratic Delegates:
Pledged: 177
Unpledged: 24
Total: 201
Republican Delegates: 112
Electoral Votes: 27


Louisiana Democratic Presidential Primary
Updated 3/10/04 11:20 AM ET
100% Precincts Reporting Incumbent* declared winner
Candidates Votes %

Sen. John F. Kerry 111,818 70%
Sen. John Edwards 25,806 16%
Howard Dean 7,892 5%
Gen. Wesley K. Clark 7,052 4%
Bill McGaughey 3,142 2%
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich 2,395 1%
Lyndon H. LaRouche 2,314 1%



Source: AP


Louisiana Politics

Louisiana is one of three states to have gubernatorial elections in 2003. Rep. Gov. Mike Foster cannot run for a third term.


Breaking the decades-old hold of white men on the governor`s race in this and other Southern states, Republican Bobby Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants, will face off against Democratic Lt. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, a Cajun woman.


Jindal, a political neophyte, easily topped a field of veteran politicians, to advance to a runoff for the state`s highest office. The 32-year-old defied the predictions of pundits who said his ethnicity and his age would surely defeat him, despite a stellar resume.


Jindal is considered the protege of popular incumbent Foster, who made Jindal secretary of the state Department of Health and Hospitals at the age of 24, then appointed him head of Louisiana`s university system. Jindal later became an assistant secretary in the Health and Human Services Department when Bush entered the White House.


Democratic Sen. John Breaux comes up for re-election in 2004.


In the November 2002 election, Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu was forced into a runoff after failing to get 50 percent of the vote in a race that included three Republicans. In the December runoff, she beat her Republican challenger, outgoing state Elections Commissioner Suzanne Haik Terrell.


Voters passed an amendment to the state constitution eliminating a 3.9 percent state sales tax on food, utilities and prescription medicine in exchange for higher income taxes on those who earn more than $50,000.


Foster said of the approved constitutional amendment: "The people made a strong statement tonight for common sense. I`m delighted and frankly pleasantly surprised."


National Republicans shied away from supporting John Cooksey`s Senate bid after he remarked that police should stop anyone with "a diaper on his head" after the Sept. 11 attacks. He finished a distant third.


--The Associated Press






Previous Presidential Votes

2000 Primary Winners
Democrats: Gore with 73.0%
Republicans: Bush with 83.6%

2000 General Election
Gore (D): 44.9%
Bush (R): 52.6%

1996 General Election
Clinton (D): 52.0%
Dole (R): 39.9%







Election Dates
Presidential primary
March 9, 2004

State primary
September 18, 2004

Congressional runoff
December 4, 2004

Delegates/Electoral Votes
Democratic Delegates:
Pledged: 60
Unpledged: 12
Total: 72
Republican Delegates: 45
Electoral Votes: 9

Mississippi Democratic Presidential Primary
Updated 3/10/04 11:19 AM ET
100% Precincts Reporting Incumbent* declared winner
Candidates Votes %

Sen. John F. Kerry 58,927 78%
Sen. John Edwards 5,562 7%
Al Sharpton 3,865 5%
Howard Dean 1,955 3%
Gen. Wesley K. Clark 1,884 2%
Uncommitted 1,638 2%
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich 773 1%
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman 764 1%
Lyndon H. LaRouche 249 0%
Rep. Richard A. Gephardt 29 0%



Source: AP


Mississippi Politics

In the 2003 elections, former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour defeated incumbent Democrat Ronnie Musgrove, becoming the state`s second Republican governor since Reconstruction.


The wealthy Washington lobbyist beat Musgrove, who was seeking a second term, with 53 percent of the vote, with almost 95 percent of the state`s precincts reporting.


The race was the most expensive in Mississippi political history; Barbour raised $10.6 million and Musgrove raised $8.5 million.


Nearly 100,000 more votes were cast in the election than in the governor`s race four years ago, the most ever in a race for the state`s top elected post. The previous record was set in 1995.


As RNC chairman from 1993-1997, Barbour helped engineer the GOP takeover of the U.S. House and Senate in 1994. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani stumped for Barbour while Musgrove tried in vain to turn his opponent`s experience as a Beltway insider against him. Barbour is chairman and CEO of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, a top-ranked Washington lobbying firm.


During his campaign, Barbour blamed Musgrove for Mississippi`s economic woes, while the incumbent took credit for bringing a Nissan plant and its promise of more than 5,000 jobs to the state.


Musgrove had become governor in the closest race in Mississippi history in 1993. Because neither he nor former U.S. Rep. Mike Parker won a majority of the popular vote or a majority of state House districts, the race has decided by state House members in January 2000.


Also in the 2003 elections, Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck defeated Democratic state Sen. Barbara Blackmon, who had sought to become the first black official elected statewide since Reconstruction. Blackmon, who defeated two opponents in the Democratic primary, was the state`s first black major party nominee for the office.


In the 2002 elections, Republican Senator Thad Cochran cruised to a fifth term, beating his lone opponent, independent Shawn O`Hara.


GOP Rep. Chip Pickering defeated Democratic Rep. Ronnie Shows in a race forced by redistricting.


Voters rejected amending their constitution to increase the term of trial judges to six years.


--The Associated Press






Previous Presidential Votes

2000 Primary Winners
Democrats: Gore with 89.6%
Republicans: Bush with 87.9%

2000 General Election
Gore (D): 40.7%
Bush (R): 57.6%

1996 General Election
Clinton (D): 44.1%
Dole (R): 49.2%







Election Dates
Presidential/state primary
March 9, 2004

Runoff
March 30, 2004

Delegates/Electoral Votes
Democratic Delegates:
Pledged: 33
Unpledged: 8
Total: 41
Republican Delegates: 38
Electoral Votes: 6

Texas Democratic Presidential Primary
Updated 3/10/04 11:21 AM ET
100% Precincts Reporting Incumbent* declared winner
Candidates Votes %

Sen. John F. Kerry 562,287 67%
Sen. John Edwards 120,452 14%
Howard Dean 39,991 5%
Al Sharpton 31,146 4%
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman 25,599 3%
Gen. Wesley K. Clark 18,385 2%
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich 15,993 2%
Rep. Richard A. Gephardt 12,357 1%
Lyndon H. LaRouche 7,090 1%
Randy Crow 6,446 1%



Source: AP


Texas Politics

After six months, two walkouts and three special legislative sessions, Texas lawmakers signed off on a new congressional redistricting map that likely will send more Texas Republicans to Washington.


Democrats have opposed every attempt by Republicans to pass a new plan, saying the current congressional boundaries drawn by a court in 2001 should remain in place. House Democrats broke a quorum in their chamber, killing the redistricting effort, when they fled to Ardmore, Okla., in May. Senate Democrats held their own quorum bust when they fled to Albuquerque, N.M., for the full second special legislative session.


The Senate Democrats returned reluctantly after one of their group decided to go back to Texas.


Because the Legislature took so long to approve the plan, it also was forced to vote to push back the Texas primary election by one week to March 9 to allow for the new congressional districts to be incorporated on the ballot.


Republicans pushed for new congressional districts this year even though it was a non-census year, saying that lawmakers _ not judges _ should draw the boundaries.


Under the plan, Republicans could win as many as seven additional seats in the state`s congressional delegation, which Democrats now dominate 17-15. Republican Gov. Rick Perry has since signed the bill into law.


No Senators are up for re-election in 2004, meaning only House seats will be on the ballot.


In the 2002 elections, Attorney General John Cornyn won the Senate race to replace fellow Republican Phil Gramm, beating Democrat Ron Kirk, a former Dallas mayor. Kirk would have been the state`s first black Senator.


Gov. Rick Perry fought off big-spending banker Tony Sanchez, a Democrat, to keep the office in Republican hands.


In the House races, Rep. Chet Edwards, a Democrat, defeated Republican Ramsey Farley, keeping President Bush`s home district in Democratic hands.


Longtime state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos won re-election despite an ad aired by his Republican opponent featuring a police video of Barrientos staggering through a roadside sobriety test before his 2001 drunken-driving arrest.


--The Associated Press






Previous Presidential Votes

2000 Primary Winners
Democrats: Gore with 80.2%
Republicans: Bush with 87.5%

2000 General Election
Gore (D): 38.0%
Bush (R): 59.3%

1996 General Election
Clinton (D): 43.8%
Dole (R): 48.8%







Election Dates
Presidential/state primary
March 9, 2004

Runoff
April 13, 2004

Delegates/Electoral Votes
Democratic Delegates:
Pledged: 195
Unpledged: 38
Total: 233
Republican Delegates: 138
Electoral Votes: 34

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Thu., March 11, 2004 Adar 18, 5764
Sharon says U.S. should also disarm Iran, Libya and Syria

By Aluf Benn

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=2…

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday that Iran, Libya and Syria should be stripped of weapons of mass destruction after Iraq. "These are irresponsible states, which must be disarmed of weapons mass destruction, and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve," Sharon said to a visiting delegation of American congressmen.

Sharon told the congressmen that Israel was not involved in the war with Iraq "but the American action is of vital importance."

In a meeting with U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton yesterday, Sharon said that Israel was concerned about the security threat posed by Iran, and stressed that it was important to deal with Iran even while American attention was focused on Iraq.

Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials that he had no doubt America would attack Iraq, and that it would be necessary thereafter to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea.

Bolton, who is undersecretary for arms control and international security, is in Israel for meetings on preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Bolton said Syria would get a chance to prove it was behaving in a way worthy of the international community and that dealing with North Korea had not been pushed aside, but postponed.

Bolton said the United States was striving to get a new UN Security Council resolution regarding Iraq and that the result of the vote would affect the U.S.`s relations with Western Europe and Russia, after the war in Iraq.

Bolton also met with Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Housing and Construction Minister Natan Sharansky.

Sharansky warned Bolton that the Quartet`s (U.S., UN, European Union and Russia) plan for the Israelis and Palestinians deviated from President Bush`s vision.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/administration…


washingtonpost.com
Inside the Real West Wing


By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, March 10, 2004; 10:15 AM


It`s the most powerful place on Earth.

The West Wing of the White House is the part you don`t get to see on the tours. It`s where the Oval Office is located, and where a few dozen other people have offices only a few steps away.

You`ve heard of some of those people -- Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scott McClellan. But some you`ve probably never heard of.

Today, I`m uncorking a rare thing -- unique on the Internet, as far as I can tell. It`s a floor plan of the West Wing, showing precisely who sits where.

Click here to see it.
: Linda Gambatesa, Deputy Assistant to the President for Management, Administration and Oval Office Operations
2: Personal Secretary and Personal Aide to the President
3: Scott McClellan, Assistant to the President and White House Press Secretary
4: Pamela Stevens, Assistant Press Secretary
5: Erin Healy, Assistant Press Secretary
6: Steve Hadley, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor
7: Condoleezza Rice, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
8: Richard B. Cheney, Vice President
9: Jonathan Burks, Special Assistant to the President for Policy and Veronica Vargas Stidvent, Special Assistant to the President for Policy
10: Joseph Hagin, Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations
11: Harriet Miers, Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy
12: Andrew H. Card, Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff
13: Dan Bartlett, Assistant to the President for Communications
14: Mike Gerson, Assistant to the President for Speechwriting
15: David Hobbs, Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs
16: Eric Pelletier, Deputy Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs
17: Steve Friedman, Assistant to the President for Economic Policy
18: Keith Hennessey, Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy
19: Suzy DeFrancis, Deputy Assistant to the President for Communications
20: Dina Powell, Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel
21: David Leitch, Deputy Counsel to the President
22: Margaret Spellings, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy
23: Kristen Silverberg, Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy
24: Karl Rove, Senior Advisor to the President
25: Israel Hernandez, Deputy Assistant to the President and Assistant to the Senior Advisor
26: Alberto Gonzales, Counsel to the President

Lower Press Office
* Claire Buchan, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Press Secretary
* Trent Duffy, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Press Secretary
* Josh Deckard, Assistant Press Secretary

West Wing Basement
* Melissa Bennett, Special Assistant to the President for Appointments and Scheduling
* Brett Kavanaugh, Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary
* Karin Torgerson, Special Assistant to the President and Associate Staff Secretary
* Eric Draper, Director of Photography
* Paul Morse, Deputy Director of Photography
* Gen. John Gordon, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security
* Dr. Richard Falkenrath, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Homeland Security Advisor
* Brian Montgomery, Deputy Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary
* Colleen Litkenhaus, Special Assistant to the President for Management and Administration


In the West Wing, the two greatest indicators of status are proximity to president and quality of view. Exterior offices with windows, especially on corners, are considered the most desirable.

But here in the West Wing, even an office in the basement means you`re at the pinnacle of power.

There`s actually been quite a lot of movement in and out of the West Wing over the past three years. (The links below go to the mini-profiles I`ve put together on my Who`s Who in the White House page.)http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/administration…

The first floor has been the most stable. These folks have been there all along: Vice President Cheney, of course; national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Steve Hadley; Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card and his deputy Joseph Hagin; and Linda Gambatessa, who runs Oval Office operations.

But on the second floor, the only folks who haven`t budged are senior adviser Karl Rove; counsel Alberto Gonzalez and his deputy Israel Hernandez; and domestic policy adviser Margaret Spellings. Communications director Dan Bartlett has been on the second floor all along, but upgraded to Karen Hughes`s old office when she resigned.

Who`s no longer around from the original West Wing crew? Among the more notable departures: Press secretary Ari Fleischer, who started his own PR firm; adviser Hughes, who moved back to Texas and is active on the lecture circuit (see below); communications adviser Margaret Tutwiler, now at the State Department; legislative director Nicholas Calio, now a senior vice president at Citigroup Inc.; economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey, who was fired in 2002; and deputy chief of staff Joshua B. Bolten, now director of the Office of Management and Budget.

One note to help you decipher the White House org chart: Aside from Cheney and Rove, Bush`s top advisers have the words "Assistant to the President" in their title; "Special Assistant" is one step down; "Deputy Assistant" is another.

You can also get a sense of rank by perusing this White House staff list, circa July of last year, ordered by salary.

After the Real West Wing


So what do you do after you leave one of those wonderful offices?

Leslie Wayne has a story in today`s New York Times about how former White House officials are a hot commodity on the lecture circuit.

"With the campaign season heating up, former Bush officials, in particular, are in high demand, largely for their fresh insights into the inner workings of the White House."

"Ms. Hughes`s fee is $50,000, a person familiar with the contracts said. In just three weeks in January, the person said, Ms. Hughes gave seven speeches, four in a single week. . . .

"Mr. Fleischer`s Web-based promotional material provides a streaming-media version of his basic speech, in which he talks about life close to the president on themes big and small -- `Boy, did I like Air Force One` -- as well as what it was like to be traveling with President Bush on Sept. 11, 2001 -- `It sounds like we`ve got a war here,` he recalls Mr. Bush saying on hearing that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon."

And indeed, on Fleischer`s lecture-booking page, you can find video clips of him talking about his travels with the president, about peace in the Middle East and 9/11.

Fleischer`s fee is on a need-to-know basis only. By contrast, according to this page, you can rent Nicholas Calio for $10,000 - $15,000.

Meanwhile, Over in the East Wing


Sharon Theimer of the Associated Press reports: "President Bush opened the White House and Camp David to dozens of overnight guests last year, including foreign dignitaries, family friends and at least nine of his biggest campaign fund-raisers, documents show. . . .

"Some guests spent a night in the Lincoln Bedroom, historic quarters that gained new fame in the Clinton administration amid allegations that Democrats rewarded major donors like Hollywood heavyweights Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand with accommodations there. . . .

"Bush`s overnight guest roster is virtually free of celebrities -- pro golfer Ben Crenshaw is the biggest name -- but not of campaign supporters."

Here`s the full list.

Commission Watch


Flip-flop, course correction, clarification, whatever.

Mike Allen and Dan Eggen report in The Washington Post: "President Bush backed off yesterday from one of the major limitations he had set for cooperating with the independent commission looking into the terrorist attacks of 2001 and will now submit to open-ended questioning instead of setting a one-hour limit. . . .

"[Press secretary Scott] McClellan said the White House still considers a single hour before the commission to be `reasonable,` but he pledged that Bush `is going to answer all the questions that they want to raise.`

"`Nobody is watching the clock,` McClellan said."

Philip Shenon of the New York Times writes: "Mr. McClellan`s comments also suggested that the White House was eager to blunt criticism from Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Mr. Kerry accused Mr. Bush this week of `stonewalling` the commission, which is focusing in part on law enforcement and intelligence blunders during the Bush and Clinton administrations.

Says John King on CNN: "The issue dominated the White House briefing a day after Senator Kerry said if the president has time to attend events like this rodeo he should be able to spend more than an hour answering questions from the commission."

President/Candidate Tango Watch


When the president is in full campaign mode, it can be hard to distinguish between a "White House" question and a "campaign" question.

An ongoing challenge in the White House press room involves trying to parse when McClellan will answer a question versus when he will duck it by waving it off as a "campaign" issue.

McClellan says he doesn`t take campaign questions, but the truth is he does when he feels like it. Yesterday, he felt like it.

From the text of the briefing:

"Q The change in tone to, `nobody is watching the clock,` is that in response to the criticism from Senator Kerry yesterday?

"MR. McCLELLAN: No, I don`t think he`s someone who lets the facts get in the way of his campaign."

But then a few minutes later, he was back to waving them off:

"Q Well, what does the White House feel about the quote from Kerry that he wants to be considered the second black President, especially as the White House, this White House, is not seen as being a friend --

"MR. McCLELLAN: I think some people have already spoken to that, and I`ll leave questions like that to our campaign. We have a campaign office in place for that very reason."

Deciphering Tenet


Dana Priest and Walter Pincus write in The Washington Post: "CIA Director George J. Tenet said yesterday that he did not believe the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence to justify going to war in Iraq but said he spoke privately to senior officials when he believed they publicly misconstrued facts they had been given."

Douglas Jehl writes in the New York Times: "George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that he had privately intervened on several occasions to correct what he regarded as public misstatements on intelligence by Vice President Dick Cheney and others, and that he would do so again. . . .

"Mr. Tenet identified three instances in which he had already corrected public statements by President Bush or Mr. Cheney or would do so, but he left the impression that there had been more."

John Diamond writes in USA Today: "CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged Tuesday that his agency was `wildly inconsistent` about policing White House statements on Iraq before the invasion last year."

And Jonathan S. Landay writes in Knight Ridder Newspapers: "CIA Director George Tenet on Tuesday rejected recent assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq cooperated with the al-Qaida terrorist network and that the administration had proof of an illicit Iraqi biological warfare program."

The March Surprise


I wrote at length in yesterday`s column about how it`s unseasonably early for President Bush to be making direct, personal attacks on his Democratic opponent.

Adam Nagourney has more today in the New York Times, writing that the president himself is behind the White House "moving with unusual speed and force to try to discredit John Kerry, the president`s likely Democratic challenger.

"Several Republicans said Mr. Bush had grown impatient at his advisers` counsel to stay in the White House, particularly as Mr. Kerry enjoyed a bath of mostly favorable publicity in what turned out to be a largely uncontested primary season."

But Nagourney says Bush may try to return to the high ground soon. "As much as Mr. Bush appears to be enjoying going on the attack, he will stop soon, aides said, and leave the whacking and attacking to surrogates and his television advertisements."

Today`s Calendar


Steve Holland of Reuters got thoroughly briefed on today`s agenda.

"After months of Democrat attacks over slow growth in U.S. jobs, President Bush will fight back on Wednesday with a strong defense of his economic policies and will accuse his opponents of having a `tired defeatist mind-set.` . . .

"Bush will forcefully advocate what the White House called his `pro-growth and free and fair trade agenda` in a speech to women business leaders in Cleveland. He will say Democrats like the party`s presumptive nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, would respond in `old ways` to the economic challenges facing the country.

" `Their agenda is to increase federal taxes, build a wall around our economy and isolate America from the rest of the world. That old policy of tax and spend is the enemy of job creation. The old policy of economic isolationism is a recipe for economic disaster,` Bush will say.

" `America has moved beyond that tired defeatist mind-set and we`re not going back,` he will say, according to speech excerpts given out by a senior White House official.

Scott Lindlaw of the Associated Press notes that "For the 15th time as president, Bush on Wednesday visits Ohio, where unemployment is stuck at 6.2 percent and where nearly 200,000 jobs were lost during the recession from 2001 through last March -- nearly two-thirds in manufacturing. The national unemployment rate for February was 5.6 percent."

The Week Ahead


Paul Bedard in his Washington Whispers column for U.S. News writes: "He won`t stand under a `Mission Accomplished` banner this time, but that will be the general theme next week as President Bush -- and his whole war council -- celebrate the anniversary of the March 19 Iraq invasion. Insiders described the effort as an aggressive, weeklong plan to remind the country of what U.S. and coalition troops have faced and what they`ve accomplished so far. . . .

"The overriding theme will be that America is safer a year later. But, officials added, nobody will be spiking the ball."

My question: Will Bush explicitly pay homage to the 552 American service members who have died in the war? Stay tuned: This will be an issue.

Which of These Is Not Like the Other?


As Tom Brune reported last week in Newsday, the federal grand jury investigating the leak of Valerie Plame`s identity as a covert CIA operative has subpoenaed White House records on contacts with 25 journalists.

The list (low on the page) is full of familiar names: Columnist Robert Novak, of course, and MSNBC`s Chris Matthews, Time`s James Carney, The Post`s Mike Allen, Newsweek`s Evan Thomas.

And then there`s Jeff Gannon of Talon News.

Who? Of what?

I first wrote about Gannon in my Feb. 19 column. Gannon works for a tiny, supremely conservative organization called Talon News which publishes a Web site by the same name as well as one called GOPUSA.com. With the sole exception of Gannon, who says he is compensated, all the "reporters" are volunteers.

Gannon`s presence in the White House briefing room, where the White House has actually given him his own chair, is something of an irritant to most of the press corps, which considers his questions at briefings to be preposterous softballs.

And in return, Gannon sometimes writes on his own Web site about his views of the corps and how there is "perhaps no depth to which it will not sink in order to undermine a presidency."

Anyway, the reason Gannon is on the list is most likely an attempt to find out who gave him a secret memo that he mentioned in an interview he had with Plame`s husband, former ambassador and administration critic Joseph Wilson.

Gannon asked Wilson: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?"

According to a December Washington Post story by Mike Allen and Dana Milbank, "Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband`s trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it."

On top of being secret, CIA officials said it was wrong.

Gannon won`t talk about it. But he does keep lobbing those softballs. Sometimes he even brings props. And press secretary McClellan seems to appreciate it.

Yesterday, for instance, McClellan was getting hammered with questions about the 9/11 commission and the possible inappropriate juxtaposition of a visit to a 9/11 memorial with a fundraiser on Thursday.

It was getting ugly. "I`m not even going to dignify that with a response," McClellan said in response to a jibe. (See the full text of the briefing.)

Then he saw daylight:

"Go ahead, Jeff."

Gannon: "Thank you. First of all, I hope the grand jury didn`t force you to turn over the wedding card I sent to you and your wife. (Laughter.) Do you see any hypocrisy in the controversy about the President`s mention of 9/11 in his ads, when Democratic icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt`s campaign issued this button, that says, `Remember Pearl Harbor`? I have a visual aid for folks watching at home."

McClellan: "You`re pointing out some historical facts. Obviously, Pearl Harbor was a defining moment back in the period of World War II, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was strongly committed to winning World War II and talked about it frequently."

Gannon: "So you think it certainly is valid that the President does talk about it and --"

McClellan: "Yes, he addressed this this weekend, when he was first asked about it. September 11th was a defining moment for our nation. We all shared in that experience. And it`s important that we look at how we lead in a post-September 11th world. And that`s an important discussion to have with the American people, and to talk about the differences in approaches to winning the war on terrorism and preventing attacks from happening in the first place."



© 2004 washingtonpost.com

[Semikolon]

!

Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

[Joerver]

!

Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

[Semikolon]

@Joerver,

versuchs doch mal ganz normal:

Sag, in Deutsch, was du sagen willst.
Oder stelle einen Artikel von Dir, aber bitte kommentiert zur Diskussion.

Aber was bringt das bloße Aneinanderreihen von US-Arttikeln in einem deutschen Diskussions-Board?

Posting-Schinderei oder pflegst du einen imaginären Fan-Club?

;

[Joerver]

March 11, 2004
Britain Frees 5 Citizens Sent Home From U.S. Jail
By REUTERS

LONDON, Thursday, March 11 — The police have freed all five Britons flown home from the jail at the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, raising questions about why they were held for two years, and on Thursday a lawyer for one of the men denounced their captors.

The men were turned over to British custody on Tuesday, and by late Wednesday, the British police and prosecutors had released all of them without charge.

This could cause trouble for Prime Minister Tony Blair, with the public asking why it took so long for him to win the men`s freedom if the British authorities concluded so quickly that they need not face trial.

One man was released Tuesday and the other four on Wednesday. Four other Britons remain at the prison in Cuba; Washington says they are more dangerous than the five men sent home. More than 600 men, most seized in Afghanistan in late 2001, are still in prison.

Greg Powell, a lawyer for one of the freed men, Ruhal Ahmed, 21, from Tipton, said Thursday that Mr. Ahmed was on his way to meet his family. Mr. Powell said he had met his client in a London jail and found him in good health, but said the treatment by the Americans had amounted to "torture."

"What I have learned from him is, Guantánamo Bay is a kind of experiment in interrogation techniques and methods," he said. "And they do have extremely interesting stories to tell about what went on there."

He declined to give further details about the prisoners` treatment, or to explain what his client was doing in Afghanistan when he was arrested. None of the five men appeared in public immediately.

Jamal al-Harith, 35, from Manchester, was the first to go free, shortly after the group landed Tuesday at a British air base.

Britain`s most famous publicist, Max Clifford, whose client list ranges from top nobility to O. J. Simpson, said he had been hired by the family of Tarek Dergoul, 24, another former detainee.

Mr. Dergoul, a Londoner, was freed Wednesday, followed by the three Tipton detainees: Mr. Ahmed; Asif Iqbal, 20; and Shafiq Rasul, 24. Their families said they had traveled to Pakistan in late 2001 to find a wife for one of them.

A fourth young man from Tipton, Monir Ali, had traveled with them to Pakistan and disappeared. His family hopes the others will provide clues to his whereabouts.

While Mr. Blair`s supporters see the prisoners` return as a reward for his support of President Bush, the Guantánamo issue could be a major political headache, and the prospects for the four Britons still in Guantánamo is high on the political agenda.

Britain says Washington`s plans for special military tribunals to try the suspects do not meet fairness standards. It wants either the rules to be modified or the suspects sent back to Britain for trial. Procedures at Guantánamo, where captives are not given lawyers, make it difficult to try the men in Britain because courts here do not accept evidence gathered in the absence of a lawyer.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

;
Wenn jeden Tag die Dummposter ein bis zwei Artikel, außer der Bild, in Deutsch und Englisch lesen würdenn, würde die meisten schwachsinnigen Postings nicht geschrieben werden.

Wenn ich Deinen Thread über Schröder und Bild verfolge, sehe ich exhibitionistische Wichtigtuerei, anstelle irgendwelcher Erkenntnissen.

Nebenbei kommentiere ich den einen oder anderen Artikel hier im Thread und beteilige mich an den mich interessierenden Diskussionen.

Hauptsächlich stört Dich doch nur die Tendenz des Threads.

J.

[Joerver]

March 9, 2004
Q&A: Leslie Gelb on Foreign Policy and Presidential Politics

From the Council on Foreign Relations, March 9, 2004

Leslie H. Gelb, who headed the Council on Foreign Relations for 10 years until he retired last year, predicts that the November elections will focus on U.S. foreign policy issues like no race has since Richard M. Nixon won re-election over Senator George S. McGovern in 1972. Gelb says the issues will be fought over unilateralism in foreign policy versus cooperation with other countries. He says that, if he were to endorse a candidate this year, it would be Democrat John Kerry.

On Iraq, Gelb repeats his contention that only a confederated state can hold the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites together. He was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on March 8, 2004.

How important will foreign policy be in the expected Kerry-Bush campaign?

I think for the first time in over three decades, since the race between George McGovern and Richard Nixon in 1972, we are likely to have a major foreign policy, national security debate in a presidential election.

Nixon, a Republican, was running for re-election against McGovern, a liberal Democratic senator from South Dakota. Nixon won in a landslide. What were the issues?

In 1972, the debate took off from Vietnam, but really was about America`s role in the world. The Vietnam part of it was quite clear. McGovern said "get out, and get out as quickly as possible." Nixon was saying "you could only get out in a negotiated settlement `with honor.`" As far as the world was concerned, McGovern was saying that the United States had conducted a foreign policy that was overly dominated by a sense of a communist threat: While the Soviet Union was a problem, it wasn`t an omnipresent superior power that was likely to overwhelm us, and every time a conflict broke out in some country around the world, it didn`t mean that our national interests were engaged.

Richard Nixon countered that it was still a very dangerous world, that the communist threat, though perhaps limited to the Soviet Union rather than both the Soviets and the Chinese, was still very dangerous and had to remain the focus of U.S. foreign policy.

There were the makings of a real debate between President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980, but the debate never really came to the forefront because it was all overwhelmed by Iran and Carter`s mishandling of the Iran situation, which hurt him deeply.

Carter and Reagan had profoundly different views on how to manage the world, and it is unfortunate that the issue wasn`t joined. Even now, it is going to be hard to get to the substance of it because of all the name-calling. Democrats are going to accuse Bush of unilateralism and arrogance, and the Bush people will accuse Kerry of being weak on terrorism. You will have to break through those slimy slogans to get to the substance. A lot will depend on how the press treats this. The press, for nearly 20 years now, has seemed much more interested in the slime than in the substance. It doesn`t cover the substance, so it doesn`t give the candidates much incentive to focus on the substance.

What do you think the issue will be this year?

Unilateralism versus cooperation with other countries. It is a real issue. Basically, President Bush and his key advisers have come to the view that cooperation with other countries involves compromise, and compromise means selling out important American interests. They haven`t been interested in compromising or cooperating. And by and large we have been isolated on issue after issue because of that. John Kerry will make this a major issue. He will say that anti-Americanism has reached such proportions in countries around the world that the leaders in those countries will find it politically difficult to cooperate with us.

What are the positive aspects of the administration`s approach?

I think the best thing about what President Bush brought to American national security policy was an overall sense of toughness. That was lacking in the Clinton administration. I don`t think countries around the world feared the United States under Clinton. I don`t think terrorists much feared the United States, or countries that might support terrorists feared the United States. They didn`t see the necessary kind of resolve and toughness in Clinton and his key advisers.

Bush changed that. I think [terrorists and their supporters] are afraid of Bush. But they`ve got to be more than afraid of him. They`ve got to fear that we can bring the influence and power of other states to bear against them as well, because I think they understand now that we can`t defeat them by military force alone, and it`s not clear to me that that message has really gotten through at the level of action for the Bush people.

So this is an advantage for Kerry?

I think it is an advantage with some Americans. This election is going to be very, very tight. I think they each start out with roughly 45 percent of the vote. Bush is going to try to convince the remainder that Kerry is not tough enough, that he is a typically weak Democratic liberal, and he won`t be able to stand up to the terrorists. Kerry will have to convince the American public or enough of them that Bush is not winning the war against terrorism with toughness alone; that he, Kerry, will be tough, but that he will bring the dimension of international cooperation to bear as well.

Do you see some signs that the Bush administration seems to recognize this and in recent months has been trying harder to attract international cooperation?

Yes, I think that`s so, particularly in Iraq. After initially rejecting U.N. involvement, the Bush administration a few months ago was practically begging for it, in terms of having the United Nations run the political side of the situation in Iraq, and the elections in particular. In Afghanistan, administration officials want more participation by non-American military forces, so they were more conciliatory on that front. But this has been long in coming and it is still not very substantial.

Given the chance, will other countries cooperate with the United States?

Yes. There is a much better chance they would cooperate if we try to fashion a policy together with them. If we say it is "my way or the highway," they won`t do it. Cooperation means taking some of their views on how to handle these situations, and they are much less inclined to lead with force than we are. I don`t think they would dismiss force, and I don`t think they mind the fact that the United States is there playing "bad cop." But you have to unify the policy. We didn`t do badly with that approach in Iran. It was a breakthrough. The Europeans worked out a deal with the Iranians to open up some of their [disputed nuclear] facilities at least to international inspection. I think that behind [Tehran`s concessions] was the concern in Iran of U.S. military force. But the lead was political, economic, and diplomatic.

Would you say the same about the interplay with North Korea and its nuclear program?

I think the battle is still going on there between the Bush administration on the one hand and our friends on the other--China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia [which are participating in talks with North Korea and the United States to resolve the dispute]. They still want more of a diplomatic lead than we do, and they are willing to have a different element of timing in what they expect the North Koreans to deliver and when. We`re still taking a tougher position on that. I think in the end, if there is to be any settlement there, it will have to be a diplomatic settlement because the South Koreans above all don`t want any chance of military conflict.

Administration officials seem to recognize that now.

I do think they recognize it now. They`ve backed off and are participating in the diplomacy. But there is still a difference on how conciliatory to be in terms of timing and "goodies" for the North between us on the one side and our friends and allies on the other.

Why hasn`t "what happened to Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction" been more of a political factor so far?

It is hard to figure out, because the evidence seems pretty clear that, even though people in the administration believed that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, they did not have the hard evidence to back that up and knew they did not have the hard evidence. Nevertheless, they spoke publicly as if they knew Saddam had all the stuff, and as if it were a matter of fact. You would guess that the public by now would be angered, but I think that as the debate has played out, people have been more content with the idea of having gotten rid of Saddam than they were angry at being duped over why we did it.

If in fact the administration can establish an Iraqi government that seems capable of running the country after the United States returns sovereignty at the end of June, how important will that be for Bush?

I hope he can put together a political solution in Iraq, a constitution, elections, and cooperation among the different ethnic groups. I don`t think he will be able to do it. If he does do it, and things are relatively quiet in Iraq between now and the election, there is no doubt it will help him in the campaign.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani gave in on the issues that had been holding up the signing of the interim constitution.

But I see continuing major conflicts of interest among the three ethnic/religious groups, and an unwillingness to roll the dice on their basic interests and values in terms of giving power to any one of the other groups. I just don`t think the Kurds will turn over the running of their three provinces to any Shiite-led government in Baghdad. Nor do I think the Sunnis are going to accept a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad on issues of major concern to them. They don`t have the kind of trust and confidence in each other that is absolutely necessary for the functioning of a democracy. You`ve got to believe that whoever holds power is not going to take your basic interests and rights away. That belief is not widely held or shared in Iraqi society.

They may fashion compromises like [the agreement on the interim constitution] from time to time, but I think underlying it there are deep conflicts of interest that can be resolved only by having a highly confederal Iraqi state: a central government in Baghdad with limited powers--essentially common defense, a sharing of finances--with the three ethnic/religious groups essentially running affairs in their own areas.

If the Democrats win the presidential election, what would they do in Iraq?

I don`t think they know. I don`t think they have had to confront the issue of what, exactly, their policy would be. They basically have been attacking the Bush approach, saying--and this criticism is absolutely justified--that the Bush administration was not prepared to deal with the postwar situation in Iraq, and even now it always seems to be behind the power curve. The administration seems surprised by what`s going on and unprepared.

Who`s advising Kerry on Iraq policy?

I don`t think he has any Iraq experts advising him. He has a foreign-policy team that is too heavily centered on former Clinton administration officials. There is Sandy Berger, the former national security adviser; Warren Christopher, Clinton`s first secretary of state; Bill Perry, a defense secretary in the Clinton administration. I think it is important to broaden that group, to include some people from Congress in it. The Clinton team did not exit power with the greatest reputation in the management of foreign affairs. While it did some things quite well, its overall reputation in Washington and around the world wasn`t all that hot.

The brunt of this interview suggests to me that you are a Kerry supporter. Is that right?

I was asked that on C-Span yesterday. I was really surprised by the question. I said that for the first time since 1970, when I supported [former Maine Senator Edmund S.] Muskie for the Democratic nomination, I am actually considering supporting a candidate. In between, I didn`t support anyone and I didn`t much care. If I do [support a candidate in 2004], I will support Kerry.



Copyright 2004

[Joerver]

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
East Meets West, at Least on Paper
By CHIBLI MALLAT

BEIRUT, Lebanon

It was a rare scene of historical redemption on Monday when Sayyed Muhammad Bahr al-Uloum, a 76-year-old religious scholar and one of the first Iraqis imprisoned and exiled by the Baathist regime in the 1960`s, presided over the Iraqi Governing Council as it unanimously approved the country`s interim Constitution. But beyond the symbolism of Mr. Uloum`s role, the document should be seen as an important text for the entire world: in it, East and West meet in an unprecedented manner; it incorporates a salute to Islamic law along with the adoption of federalism and Western-style personal rights for citizens.

Perhaps the most important phrase in the Constitution is in the preamble: the people of Iraq "reject violence and coercion in all their forms, and particularly when used as instruments of governance." Agreement on this principle, so contrary to an inordinately cruel 35-year rule, is the most remarkable achievement of the members of the Governing Council. If it holds in their future dealings, and is respected by their followers in power, then Iraq will have achieved its democratic transition.

However, having read the entire 62-article text in Arabic, I have a few problems. It may seem minor, but the language lacks literary elegance, which is particularly unfortunate considering the richness of the classical tradition. It is vital that the final Constitution incorporate phrasing that takes into account the unique Mesopotamian contributions to world legal history — from Hammurabi`s tablets to the Iraq Civil Code of 1953, which incorporated concepts and rules of both secular and Islamic law.

As for the document`s content, the West`s main concern should not be about the prevalence of Islam — it and all other religions of the Iraqi population are protected against excesses and provocations. Nor should one worry that federalism is not sufficiently stressed — it is frequently mentioned in the text and has been a shared desire of most of Iraq`s new leaders since at least 1992, when their colleagues at the University of London demonstrated to them how Malaysia and Nigeria were strengthened as nation-states by the adoption of federalism. So long as the Kurdish political leaders, who have enjoyed de facto autonomy for the last decade, accept that federalism means a single nation-state, the risk of the issue turning sour is limited.

What most concerns me, however, is the fuzziness and uncertainty over the transition to a permanent and democratically elected government. Sovereignty is to be returned to the Iraqis at the end of June, but there will be no elections this year and no referendum on a final Constitution until 2006. Who will rule in the interim?

The new document mentions the emergence of a government to be decided upon after "wide consultations." This body will adopt a series of laws for the creation of a National Assembly of 275 members, to be elected before February 2005. But the text does not further specify how electoral law will be organized. With no stated criteria and no models better than the one that led to the emergence of the unelected Governing Council, how can we hope for smooth and fair elections?

Once the 275-member Assembly is created, not only will it have to do the long work of drafting a final Constitution, it will also choose a "presidency council" of three officials, who will decide on a variety of matters including the appointment of a temporary government and prime minister.

Those familiar with the Iraqi opposition in its long exile have seen this sort of leadership structure before. The Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella group of exile organizations created in Vienna in 1992, had a leadership council of three men, who chose an "executive committee" with a president. The Iraqi National Congress fell apart because of personal dissension at the top, and the onset of the civil war among the two main Kurdish factions in 1993. Is it truly sensible to resurrect this power-sharing scheme?

In addition, Article 37 of the Constitution holds that once this Presidency Council is chosen, it can rule only by unanimous decision. That apparently means one man can effectively paralyze the council.

Two weeks ago in Baghdad I talked with several Governing Council members about my concerns. It became clear to me, if not to them, that disbanding the council and dismissing the governmental ministers in June will create uncertainty and tension that will far outweigh the benefits gained from forging a more representative body.

It is hard to advocate any shift from the vision of this wonderful new Constitution. But in the interest of Iraq`s stability, it would seem wise to abandon the vague plan for new interim bodies and simply have the Governing Council continue to carry out its task for another year. This would allow each of the 25 Governing Council members to get a chance to hold the rotating presidency, including the three women waiting their turns. It would enhance the strength of the Governing Council, allow the return of sovereignty to Iraqis, and remove the stigma of continued occupation. And it is likely the best way to ensure that the Iraqi people will have a chance to vote on the truly democratic government and final Constitution they need.


Chibli Mallat is a law professor at the University of St. Joseph.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

March 11, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Great Indian Dream
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

BANGALORE, India

Nine years ago, as Japan was beating America`s brains out in the auto industry, I wrote a column about playing a computer geography game with my daughter, then 9 years old. I was trying to help her with a clue that clearly pointed to Detroit, so I asked her, "Where are cars made?" And she answered, "Japan." Ouch.

Well, I was reminded of that story while visiting an Indian software design firm in Bangalore, Global Edge. The company`s marketing manager, Rajesh Rao, told me he had just made a cold call to the vice president for engineering of a U.S. company, trying to drum up business. As soon as Mr. Rao introduced himself as calling from an Indian software firm, the U.S. executive said to him, "Namaste" — a common Hindi greeting. Said Mr. Rao: "A few years ago nobody in America wanted to talk to us. Now they are eager." And a few even know how to say hi in proper Hindu fashion. So now I wonder: if I have a granddaughter one day, and I tell her I`m going to India, will she say, "Grandpa, is that where software comes from?"

Driving around Bangalore you might think so. The Pizza Hut billboard shows a steaming pizza under the headline "Gigabites of Taste!" Some traffic signs are sponsored by Texas Instruments. And when you tee off on the first hole at Bangalore`s KGA golf course, your playing partner points at two new glass-and-steel buildings in the distance and says: "Aim at either Microsoft or I.B.M."

How did India, in 15 years, go from being a synonym for massive poverty to the brainy country that is going to take all our best jobs? Answer: good timing, hard work, talent and luck.

The good timing starts with India`s decision in 1991 to shuck off decades of socialism and move toward a free-market economy with a focus on foreign trade. This made it possible for Indians who wanted to succeed at innovation to stay at home, not go to the West. This, in turn, enabled India to harvest a lot of its natural assets for the age of globalization.

One such asset was Indian culture`s strong emphasis on education and the widely held belief here that the greatest thing any son or daughter could do was to become a doctor or an engineer, which created a huge pool of potential software technicians. Second, by accident of history and the British occupation of India, most of those engineers were educated in English and could easily communicate with Silicon Valley. India was also neatly on the other side of the world from America, so U.S. designers could work during the day and e-mail their output to their Indian subcontractors in the evening. The Indians would then work on it for all of their day and e-mail it back. Presto: the 24-hour workday.

Also, this was the age of globalization, and the countries that succeed best at globalization are those that are best at "glocalization" — taking the best global innovations, styles and practices and melding them with their own culture, so they don`t feel overwhelmed. India has been naturally glocalizing for thousands of years.

Then add some luck. The dot-com bubble led to a huge overinvestment in undersea fiber-optic cables, which made it dirt-cheap to transfer data, projects or phone calls to far-flung places like India, where Indian techies could work on them for much lower wages than U.S. workers. Finally, there was Y2K. So many companies feared that their computers would melt down because of the Year 2000 glitch they needed software programmers to go through and recode them. Who had large numbers of programmers to do that cheaply? India. That was how a lot of Indian software firms got their first outsourced jobs.

So if you are worried about outsourcing, I`ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that a unique techno-cultural-economic perfect storm came together in the early 1990`s to make India a formidable competitor and partner for certain U.S. jobs — and there are not a lot of other Indias out there. The bad news, from a competition point of view, is that there are 555 million Indians under the age of 25, and a lot of them want a piece of "The Great Indian Dream," which is a lot like the American version.

As one Indian exec put it to me: The Americans` self-image that this tech thing was their private preserve is over. This is a wake-up call for U.S. workers to redouble their efforts at education and research. If they do that, he said, it will spur "a whole new cycle of innovation, and we`ll both win. If we each pull down our shutters, we will both lose."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

March 11, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Whence the Wince?
By MAUREEN DOWD

CHICAGO

A few years back, some Hollywood TV producers I know were thinking about making a sitcom with Cher. Before they committed, they wanted to be sure that, after all the work she`d had done on her face, Cher could still actually move it.

They went to her house and secretly tested her ability to react, asking questions to elicit various emotions.

With all the fuss about the 60-year-old John Kerry going from Shar-Pei to whippet, I figured a physiognomic quiz might be in order. The candidate`s more serene visage has spurred rampant speculation that his attractive 65-year-old wife, Teresa, a Botox aficionado, turned him on to the wrinkle diffuser, which paralyzes the muscles that deepen wrinkles.

How could we elect a president who couldn`t show his emotions? After all, the leader of the free world has even more reason to frown, wince and be startled than a sitcom star.

I tracked down Senator Kerry on Tuesday in Evanston, Ill. My plan was to start by needling him into a frown. (Dermatological entrapment.)

I observe that the Republicans have cast him as the melancholy, indecisive Hamlet to President Bush`s vigorous Prince Hal.

Nary a Kerry glower. "They`ll try to be destructive," he says. "I`m a tough fighter." [Yesterday, he called them "the most crooked, you know, lying group I`ve ever seen."]

I press on, trying for an extreme facial expression: "Do you think that you were rolled on Iraq by the administration?" "There was a sense of that at first," he replies placidly. "But the answer is no because then Scowcroft and Jim Baker went very public in their dissent about the U.N. and not doing this properly."

Desperate for furrows, I recite unflattering depictions: Roger Simon saying he put the "grave" into gravitas; The New Yorker calling him "sepulchral"; the Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway saying he looks as if he "sucked on a lemon."

"Sometimes it`s been my own fault," he says, his voice, and face, stubbornly affectless. "I can be as wild and crazy as the next person."

O.K., I think, I`ll go for a wince. I`ve been struck by the nasty Republican habit of portraying opponents as less than fully masculine. They called John Edwards the "Breck girl" and John Kerry French-looking.

I figure that the skin on Senator Kerry`s face will certainly rise at the mention of Dick Cheney`s Gridiron speech, teasing that since Botox is related to botulism toxin, maybe David Kay should search for missing biowarfare agents in Senator Kerry`s forehead. Is this a way to mock him for an effeminate vanity?

"No, I don`t have it," he says coolly. "Vanity or Boxtox?" I ask, grimacing. "I don`t have Botox, but whatever their game is, I don`t care," he replies without a wisp of a wince. "That sort of thing is so childish. In the end, people will care about real choices that affect their lives."

O.K., I decide, I`ll escalate. I broach Hillary Clinton`s plans for 2008, with the implication that she and her gang can`t be genuinely committed to a Kerry victory. I tell him that after Rudy Giuliani joked at the Gridiron that the one thing he and Hillary had in common was that they were both voting for George W. Bush, Hillary grinned and playfully high-fived him.

Mr. Kerry does not rise to the bait. "I have confidence that Hillary and the president will be part of this team," he says without excess emotion, adding that, unlike Al Gore, he wants Bill Clinton`s help.

This isn`t working. I have to shock him. I mention Skull and Bones, in the hope that it will show on his skull and bones. But instead of bolting from the room in horror, he simply smiles and notes that he and W. had a "nice" phone conversation.

On the other hand, maybe a poker face could be an advantage in the Oval Office. After all, Hollywood agents get Botox so they can be expressionless while making big deals.

And think of all the pols who could have benefited from modern cosmetic techniques. William Howard Taft could have been liposuctioned. Richard Nixon could have used Botox to stop his sweating, as Fortune 500 execs do now. And Al Gore could have frozen those condescending eyebrows during the 2000 debate.

Finally, I give up. The interview ends with a frown — not John Kerry`s.


E-mail: [e-mail]



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

Female bank cashiers from across Iraq sit in a locked room at a Baghdad police station after they were held responsible for missing funds.
washingtonpost.com
Iraqi Currency Exchange Comes Up Millions Short
Cashiers Held Responsible for Missing Funds

By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Omar Fekeiki
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A16


BAGHDAD -- For the past month, Nadhima Hussein and 12 other women have been locked inside a dark, fly-infested room at a police station here. The Iraqi Finance Ministry says Hussein, a bank manager, owes them millions of dollars to compensate for counterfeit or missing money her branch accepted during the currency exchange that ended in mid-January. She says she did nothing wrong.

The cash swap, designed to erase the image of former president Saddam Hussein from Iraqi bills, was among the most visible projects of the U.S.-led reconstruction, and, on the surface, things appeared to go smoothly. The transport trucks were not hijacked, the banks were not held up. The exchange, which took place between Oct. 15 and Jan. 15, was credited with helping to stabilize the economy.

But a Finance Ministry audit that began a few weeks ago turned up a surprise: The amount of new money given out exceeded the amount of old money taken in by more than $22 million. The ministry has accused bank employees, almost all of whom are female cashiers, of stealing the money for themselves or for organized crime groups. It has sent out notices to hundreds of them, demanding that they repay the money or face imprisonment.

The accused say others had access to the money after it had been counted and that the new government, in a rush to judgment, is acting just like the old government, putting the blame for its own mistakes or corruption on rank-and-file workers. Demonstrations this month have called for the release of the cashiers, who are believed to be the largest group of women to be detained since Hussein was toppled last year.

"They took these women as a sacrifice, so that their colleagues will be frightened to pay the money back and that their problem of the shortage will be solved," said Falih Maktuf, a lawyer who has volunteered to represent the women without pay.

Suspects who maintain their innocence are eligible for release on bail, but few can afford it. Maktuf has asked that the women be released without bail pending trial. They will be tried by a special judge with expertise in economic crimes.

Law is still a fluid concept in the new Iraq. On Monday, the Iraqi Governing Council approved an interim constitution with a bill of rights, but it is a legal framework that does not address the nitty-gritty of crime and punishment. Committees are drafting new foreign exchange laws and guidelines for the role of regulatory bodies. In the meantime, most of the laws in effect during Hussein`s rule are still being followed.

The banking scandal is one of several examples of alleged government corruption in postwar Iraq that have hampered reconstruction efforts. The Oil Ministry spent months waiting for spare parts for pumping stations and then discovered forged records showing the equipment had been paid for but never shipped from Amman, Jordan. The Interior Ministry has fired border police who took bribes to let people enter the country from Iran without proper identification. Officials at Iraq`s five ports have disciplined workers for stealing from humanitarian aid shipments.

The Governing Council and the U.S.-led occupation authority began a crackdown on corruption a few weeks ago, creating commissions with independent authority to investigate possible crimes in government ministries. A new law governing the operations of the Central Bank authorizes the creation of a financial services tribunal, which will determine the fate of the cashiers.

"In the past, employees did not have any respect for laws. We want to teach people this respect," said Sabah Nouri, head of the Finance Ministry`s bank audit committee.

One cashier has confessed to accepting counterfeit old dinars and exchanging them for new ones because she pitied the old man who brought them to the bank. Another said she inserted some white papers in place of old bills and paid herself in new Iraqi dinars. But the rest of the accused say they are innocent and that either someone else tampered with the money, they made an honest mistake in counting it or they unknowingly accepted counterfeit currency.

Their attorneys said the women were arrested because they were easy targets. Samir Adel, the head of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, accused the new Iraqi ministries of using "the same old Baathist ways."

"They don`t have evidence," he said, "but they imprison people."

Nadhima Hussein was summoned to the Finance Ministry in February for what she was told was urgent business. There, she recalled, a government representative laid out several bricks of forged money and told her they had come from the bank she manages -- a branch of Rafidain Bank in Nasiriyah, about 200 miles south of Baghdad. Hussein, 35, said she was called a thief and told to repay $6.9 million.

"This is fiction," she said she replied. She told them she knew nothing about the fake money and therefore could not return it. A few hours later, she was in jail.

The currency exchange followed months of planning by experts from the U.S. Treasury Department and other foreign government agencies. Occupation officials hoped to get rid of dinars with Hussein`s portrait and replace them with bills carrying images from Iraq`s history.

They devised an elaborate system for security. They flew the new money in on jumbo jets direct from the printers, paid for four armed escort vehicles for each truck carrying the money, and asked U.S.-led military forces to guard storage facilities.

At each bank, a cashier counted and inspected old money, then dipped it in red ink so it couldn`t be used again. With a rubber band, the cashier attached to the brick of money a credit card-sized piece of paper with her name on it. The money was sewn up in a bag and taken to be burned. But between the point where the cashiers signed off on their work and the time the money was destroyed, several other people handled the money, according to a description of the process by occupation officials.

Representatives from the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, Women`s Freedom Organization and other workers` rights groups who have reviewed procedures for the cash exchange also said there were several vulnerable points. Maktuf, the lawyer, said the manager and other bank employees had access to the old cash before it was destroyed. Drivers who took the old cash to warehouses for eventual destruction -- and the Central Bank employees who accompanied each driver -- also could have tampered with the money, he said. Because the ink used to mark the obsolete bills could be washed away with special chemicals, he added, the old bills were not worthless.

But Nouri, of the Finance Ministry, said he believed it was impossible that anyone but the cashiers could have inserted forged bills or taken some of the money.

Iraqi Police Col. Wahda Nasrrat, head of the new economic crimes section, said he expected more arrests but that people other than the cashiers may be involved in the forgeries and stealing. The system that was used to transport the money "is not a good system and can be broken," Nasrrat said.

Nadhima Hussein now shares a large, drafty room with a group of other suspects. They sleep on the concrete floor on piles of blankets and spend their time sharing stories about their families and crying. Among Hussein`s roommates is Zainab Jabbar, 35, a cashier at a Rasheed Bank branch near the Shaab Stadium in Baghdad. Jabbar has been asked to pay $40,000. With her salary of about $180 a month, she calculated, it would take her 19 years to repay.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

Das scheint die Diskussion des Wahlkampfs zu werden: Offshoring.

washingtonpost.com
Bush Choice for Manufacturing Post in Question


By Mike Allen and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A01


Six months after promising to create an office to help the nation`s struggling manufacturers, President Bush settled on someone to head it, but the nomination was being reconsidered last night after Democrats revealed that his candidate had opened a factory in China.

Several officials said the nomination may be scrapped because of the political risk but said that had not been decided. Bush`s opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), has made job losses his chief point of attack, and some administration officials feared the nomination could hand him fresh ammunition.

In late afternoon, the administration announced that the new assistant secretary of commerce for manufacturing and services would be named at a ceremony this morning. Industry officials were told that the job would go to Anthony F. Raimondo, chairman and chief executive of a Nebraska company that makes metal buildings and grain silos.

But Kerry`s campaign, tipped off about the impending nomination several hours earlier, hastened to distribute news reports that Raimondo`s firm, Behlen Manufacturing Co. of Columbus, Neb., had laid off 75 U.S. workers in 2002, four months after announcing plans for a $3 million factory in northwest Beijing.

Bush aides said Behlen, founded in 1936, has four U.S. plants employing 1,000 people and a 150,000-square-foot plant in China employing 180.

A senior administration official, who refused to be named because Raimondo has not been nominated, said Behlen has exported products to China since 1984 but was losing market share to other U.S. firms. The official said that half the equipment used to build the factory was made in the United States.

"This is not a case of making goods more cheaply in China to sell back in the U.S.," the official said.

Democrats contended, however, that Raimondo`s record helps illustrate why the nation has lost 2.2 million jobs, most of them in factories, during the Bush presidency. The layoffs have been concentrated in such swing states as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio.

Seventy-five minutes after the administration announced a news conference with Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans to name the official, an advisory went out saying the event had been "postponed due to scheduling conflicts."

By last night, three senior administration officials said Raimondo`s nomination might be scuttled but said they did not know for sure. Bush announced the new office with fanfare on Labor Day, and Democrats had been saying for weeks that the long delay in naming the new assistant secretary reflected the low priority that Bush puts on preserving jobs.

An aide close to Bush said last night the uncertainty about the nomination had "nothing to do with Senator Kerry or his baseless charges." This aide, who thought the nomination would go forward, said the delay "more has to do with congressional notification issues and things like that than it does anything else."

The congressional issues concerned one of the senators from Raimondo`s home state, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R). An aide said last night that Hagel had no comment.

Bush`s White House prides itself on orderliness but has been on the defensive on economic issues. Last month, the White House had to disavow its own estimate that 2.6 million jobs would be created this year. The same economic report, issued under Bush`s signature, touted the economic efficiencies of sending certain types of U.S. work overseas.

Business groups praised plans for the new position, which quickly became known among industry officials as a "manufacturing czar."

Raimondo, who is chairman of the Omaha Branch Board of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Board, contributed the maximum of $2,000 toward Bush`s reelection in June, a month after the campaign opened for business.

Raimondo is a longtime board member of the National Association of Manufacturers. Michael E. Baroody, the group`s executive vice president, called Raimondo "a class act who understands manufacturing and understands public policy."

When Bush announced the new position Sept. 1, he noted that the nation had "lost thousands of jobs in manufacturing . . . some of it because production moved overseas." He made the announcement in Ohio, which last year suffered the second-worst job losses of any state, mostly in manufacturing.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

washingtonpost.com
Financial Agencies Criticize U.S. for Detaining Spanish IMF Worker at Dulles


By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A12


A Spanish economist working for the International Monetary Fund was handcuffed as he got off a flight at Dulles International Airport last weekend and questioned for three hours, an incident that prompted startled complaints from international financial institutions in Washington.

Alex Segura, 33, who lives in Springfield, said he was detained Saturday by U.S. Homeland Security officials as he returned from a work trip to Senegal. He said the officials questioned him about his travels and passport and searched his luggage before freeing him with no explanation.

A Homeland Security spokeswoman said Segura`s name and birth date matched those of a "dangerous individual" listed in federal security databases.

"It was unfortunate. But his name came up as a match when we do our advanced passenger information. Obviously Mr. Segura is not a terrorist," said the spokeswoman, Christiana Halsey, who works for the Customs and Border Protection agency within Homeland Security.

She added that "with the new focus on terrorism . . . these mistakes are going to happen."

Since the incident, e-mails have ricocheted through international financial institutions in Washington, with employees expressing outrage and concern that they, too, could be detained. The agencies employ thousands of people from around the globe, who routinely travel abroad for work.

A spokesman for the IMF, William Murray, said the agency had complained to the U.S. executive director`s office at the fund, which represents the U.S. government.

"The management of the IMF is extremely concerned about the development and asked the U.S. executive director`s office to raise this with the appropriate authorities," Murray said.

The World Bank also contacted U.S. authorities to see "what can be done to avoid this sort of incident happening in the future," the bank said in a memo to its staff.

Segura said Homeland Security officials boarded his Air France plane shortly after it arrived from Paris and made a beeline for him. He said he showed them his Spanish passport, which carried the G-4 visa given to employees of international organizations, and also handed over his United Nations identification. The officials asked him to leave the plane and promptly handcuffed him, Segura said.

The officers then drove Segura to the main terminal, took off the handcuffs and questioned him. They refused to let him call his wife, who was waiting in the terminal, but eventually sent an officer to contact her, according to Segura and the Customs spokeswoman.

"What`s really annoying, when you come to the U.S. . . . you feel like they can do anything to you," Segura said. He added, however, that the officers were polite.

Segura said his previous trip abroad, a visit to Peru in December, occurred without incident.

Halsey, the spokeswoman, said agents have to follow security procedures when they believe a dangerous person is arriving. She said she could not provide details about the person named Segura who was on the government`s lookout list.

Segura said he told the U.S. officials that his previous passport had disappeared about five years ago, when he submitted it to the U.S. Embassy in Madrid for a visa. It was not clear whether the person on the lookout list might be using that document.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

[Joerver]

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washingtonpost.com
Flip-Flop, Hedge and Straddle




Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A26


SEN. JOHN F. KERRY of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, said last week that he would have saved Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide from forced exile. "I would have been prepared to send troops immediately, period," Mr. Kerry said in an interview with the New York Times. Purposeful and decisive, no doubt, and useful as a riposte to Republican portrayals of him as a waffler. But on Feb. 24, when Mr. Aristide`s fate still hung in the balance, Mr. Kerry did not sound quite so decisive. He called then for the administration to "do more to preserve the democratic process" and to support a multilateral force including police from Caribbean nations and others. But the most he was ready to advocate in terms of U.S. troops was "a visible show of U.S. military force off the coast."

That kind of bet-hedging helps explain the resonance of some of the partisan attacks on Mr. Kerry. Flip-flops aren`t always bad; there`s nothing to admire in politicians who never change their minds and never learn from experience. Though Mr. Kerry has been in public life longer than President Bush, his supporters can find a Bush flip for just about every Kerry flop. Mr. Bush fought the creation of a homeland security department until one day he loved the idea. As a candidate he supported regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants; as president he opposed it. Most famously, the great belittler of nation-building has dispatched American troops on hugely ambitious projects to rebuild the nations of Afghanistan, Iraq and now Haiti.

But Bush reversals differ from Kerry waffles. Mr. Bush seems to his detractors to change course with worrisomely little thought -- and to feel just as sure of himself in his new position as he was in his old. Earlier, he was jauntily certain that the United States should conduct a humble foreign policy; now he is jauntily certain that it should pursue a grand campaign against evil. Because the administration rarely admits that its positions have changed, even when the change is obvious, and because no introspection or process of deliberation is evident, the depth of commitment may be suspect.

Mr. Kerry has a similar problem for a different reason: It`s not always clear what, if anything, he`s committed to. The senator`s supporters say that what sometimes looks like indecision reflects his devotion to thinking through a problem, to weighing every nuance and potential consequence before leaping to a decision. That`s an admirable trait in a world more complex than Mr. Bush at times seems to recognize. But the hedging and subsequent grandstanding on Haiti raise the same question as do Mr. Kerry`s campaign-trail straddles on a wide range of issues (trade, No Child Left Behind, the Patriot Act and more): Where are the bedrock principles that would guide him in office? Mr. Kerry`s challenge over the coming months will be to convince voters that his decisions are informed by more than caution and political calculation. A president has to know when to send in the Marines, and when not to. Sending them halfway -- keeping them "visible" but "off the coast" -- isn`t often going to be the right answer.

[Semikolon]

#13582

Nein, Joerver, die "Tendenz" dieses threads stört mich nicht, da ich keine "Tendenz" erkenne.

Andere Leute mit abfälligen Bemerkungen wie Dummposter zu bezeichnen, verkneife ich mir in meinen Threads. Da hast du Recht.

Wichtigtuerei ist für mich, wenn, Leute, meinen, sie können über Bildzeitungleser herziehen, wohingegen deren einzige "Leistung" darin besteht, am Tag 20 Artikel und ein paar Bildchen einer US-Zeitung per copy und paste hier reinzustellen. Aber Jedem das Seine. Wichtigtuerei ist für mich, Artikel in Englisch zu posten, um wohl der Welt zu zeigen, dass man dieser besonderen Sprache mächtig sei. (Übersetzen kann man sie aber wohl nicht).

;

[Joerver]

washingtonpost.com
Terror and Transatlantic Politics


By Jim Hoagland

Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A27


The American and British governments are planning a joint training exercise to respond to a major, coordinated terrorist attack on both countries. "This will not be a desk-top exercise," says Britain`s home secretary, David Blunkett, "but an actual test of our readiness to deal with a joint attack."

The tough, plain-spoken Labor Party politician who directs Britain`s police and counter-terrorist forces is routinely explaining why he is in Washington this week. But what he says next -- when I ask about the timetable for this major undertaking -- is revealing and unsettling.

The joint exercise, which will build on mock attacks staged in Britain last autumn, is unlikely to occur before the U.S. presidential election in November. But it also needs to take place before next spring, the home secretary adds, since that is when a window opens for Britain`s next general election.

At one level, Blunkett is merely reminding me of something no practical politician ever forgets: The political calendar in an election year will determine the timing and shape of other events that can be planned, managed or moved.

But Blunkett`s explanation also offers a glimpse of one of the most difficult tasks politicians face in this particular campaign season. They will constantly have to balance fear and reassurance on a campaign trail that stretches into a troubling new era.

Voters in the United States will elect a president for the first time in the continuing psychological shadow of Sept. 11. Candidates must sound neither alarmist nor complacent about the terrorist threat.

Trying to stage a national civil defense exercise in the run-up to an election "would be very difficult," given the current corrosive political moods in both countries, Blunkett says. The incumbents would risk being accused of playing politics with national security.

"Politics and the people who comment on politics are now much more cynical than they used to be," he adds. "They would use your grandmother`s birthday against you if they could."

But that seems to me to be only part of the answer. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, and both sides of the aisle in each country, need to decipher and respond to the innate awareness of electorates that they live under new threats that are difficult to quantify, to respond to and at times even to imagine.

It is perhaps simpler to reduce discussions of the politics of Sept. 11 to a tactical level. Thus, George W. Bush and John Kerry argue over Bush`s initial campaign ads, which visually exploit that epoch-altering day of horror. Kerry`s campaign in turn sought to make hay from the exploitation.

The campaign debate must quickly rise above that level and address how an open society can protect itself "even when so many comforts seem unaffected, and the threat so far off, if not illusory," in the words of Blunkett`s boss, Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The phrase comes from a remarkable speech Blair gave March 5 in his home district of Sedgefield. Not surprisingly, Blair, who is under unrelenting attack for allegedly lying about or distorting the reasons for going to war in Iraq, sounded defensive in the talk.

But he also probed the uncertainty that pervades the beginning of a new century. For Blair, Sept. 11 "altered crucially the balance of risk" in the world. It "was a declaration of war by religious fanatics who were prepared to wage that war without limit" at a time when weapons of mass destruction would give them the potential to do just that.

This horrifying new reality is difficult for societies to absorb. Blair went on to argue that the psychological dislocation "is partly why the conspiracy theories or claims of deceit have such purchase" in the United States and Britain, and elsewhere for that matter. "How much simpler to debate those than to analyze and resolve the conundrum of our world`s present state."

The speech should be required reading, and emulation, for candidates for national office here this year. This is no time to substitute arguments over campaign ads or political tactics for the needed discussion of America`s role in a rapidly changing and more threatening world. Blair`s speech points the way to such a discussion.

One way to bring that about might well be to do the opposite of what Bush and Blair seem to have decided. Organizing a joint security exercise before November would focus Americans on the stakes involved in an election that does truly count.

•

The Russian presidential election law, which is not part of the constitution as I stated in my March 7 column, sets terms under which elections and candidacies can be nullified. Moreover, those terms are more complex than I indicated. Apologies and thanks to alert reader Robert Otto.

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Would FDR Run Those 9/11 Ads?


By David S. Broder

Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A27


It`s no mystery why President Bush and his campaign aides have fought so hard to establish the legitimacy of their TV ads that include scenes from the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.

When the commercials came under criticism from survivors of some of those killed by the terrorists and also from some members of the firefighters union, Republicans rushed to insist that the visual references were well justified by the significance of that day for the country -- and for the Bush presidency.

The importance of their defending that proposition was amply demonstrated by the Washington Post-ABC News poll released earlier this week. Amid almost a dozen topics on which Bush had anemic and mostly negative ratings, one strong positive approval score stood out. By a margin of 63 percent to 34 percent, those surveyed applaud his handling of the campaign against terrorism.

Much of that approval goes back to the stalwart performance from the president in the first 10 days after the terrorists struck New York and Washington. When the country really needed a president, he was there, his words and his actions serving as the rallying point for a shaken nation. It is no wonder he wants to recall the emotions of the time; it was, in Churchill`s phrase, his "finest hour."

But is it, as supporters of John Kerry and other critics suggest, wrong for Republicans to convert the emotions of that national tragedy into grist for a political campaign?

To answer that question, I went back, with help from Washington Post researcher Brian Faler, to 1944, when Franklin D. Roosevelt, almost three years after Pearl Harbor, was running for reelection. What you learn from such an exercise is that Bush is a piker compared with FDR when it comes to wrapping himself in the mantle of commander in chief.

Item: FDR did not go to the Democratic convention in Chicago where he was nominated for a fourth term. A few days before it opened, he sent a letter to the chairman of the Democratic Party explaining his availability for the nomination. And what an explanation!

"All that is within me cries out to go back to my home on the Hudson River, to avoid public responsibilities and to avoid also the publicity which in our democracy follows every step of the nation`s chief executive."

But, he wrote, "every one of our sons serving in this war has officers from whom he takes his orders. Such officers have superior officers. The President is the Commander in Chief, and he, too, has his superior officer -- the people of the United States. . . . If the people command me to continue in this office and in this war, I have as little right to withdraw as the soldier has to leave his post in the line."

Item: Roosevelt delivered his acceptance speech to the convention by radio from where? From the San Diego Naval Station, because, he said, "The war waits for no elections. Decisions must be made, plans must be laid, strategy must be carried out."

Item: If FDR`s politicizing of his wartime role seems blatant, what does one say of the main speakers at the convention? Keynoter Robert Kerr, then governor of Oklahoma, declared that "the Republican Party . . . had no program, in the dangerous years preceding Pearl Harbor, to prevent war or to meet it if it came. Most of the Republican members of the national Congress fought every constructive move designed to prepare our country in case of war."

So much for bipartisanship!

Item: Kerr was restraint personified compared with the convention`s permanent chairman, Sen. Samuel Jackson of Indiana. As he contemplated the possibility of a Republican victory, he was moved to ask: "How many battleships would a Democratic defeat be worth to Tojo? How many Nazi legions would it be worth to Hitler? . . . We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler`s secret weapon."

If you accept President Bush`s premise that this nation is at war with terrorism, then you have to applaud the restraint his campaign has shown so far in exploiting the attack that began that war.

Far better than criticizing his ads, ask why Bush is not calling on comfortable Americans to make any sacrifices for the war effort and why he refuses to raise the revenue to pay for what he calls a life-and-death struggle.

Those are the legitimate issues.

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To the Bay of Goats, via the Panama Canal

By KEVIN HORRIGAN

07/19/03: (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) The president is a first-term Republican who believes in projecting U.S. power, a scion of privilege who fancies himself a rancher. His advisers bring him a brilliant foreign national who promises to deliver a new government in a country where the United States badly wants a new government.

With the president`s tacit approval, the foreign operative goes to work. The president sends the U.S. military to help. In short order, the old government is ousted, a new one is put in place and they all live happily ever after.

That was Panama, 1903. With the exception of the happily-ever-after-part, the same scenario is being played out in Iraq, 2003.

In 1903, the president was Theodore Roosevelt. The brilliant foreign national was Phillipe Bunau-Varilla, a bantam-size French engineer who stood to make millions if the United States bought out the French firm that had failed to complete the Panama Canal. The trouble was that Panama then belonged to Colombia, and Colombia wanted no part of the deal.

Bunau-Varilla delivered a revolution. Roosevelt delivered the USS Nashville to enforce it. Bunau-Varilla had himself named Minister Plenipotentiary to Washington and quickly sold the Canal Zone to the United States for $10 million and $250,000 a year in rent.

In late 2001, President George W. Bush read "Theodore Rex," the second volume of Edmund Morris` Roosevelt trilogy. According to news accounts, the president touted it widely, telling one interviewer that TR was the president he modeled himself after.

As it happens, at the same time Bush was reading Morris` book, some of own advisers had fallen under the spell of another foreign national, Ahmad Chalabi of Iraq.

Chalabi`s history has been well-documented. He was 13 in 1958 when his family, Shiite Muslims and members of the Iraqi elite, fled to the west after a revolution overthrew the monarchy. Educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he received a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Chicago (his doctoral thesis was on the theory of knots) under Albert Wohlstetter, one of the original neoconservative theorists.

Through Wohlstetter, Chalabi was introduced to powerful neocons in and out of government. By then he was a powerful man in his own right as head of the Petra Bank of Jordan. In 1989, the bank collapsed spectacularly, and Chalabi fled to London with nothing but $70 million in his pockets.

There, he formed a government in exile for expatriates called the Iraqi National Congress. For a while, he did a lot of business with the CIA, but fell out of favor in 1996 when an INC offensive in Northern Iraq collapsed. Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of the U.S. Central Command, derided the INC as "silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London" whose war plan "could turn the Bay of Pigs into the Bay of Goats."

But Chalabi`s powerful neoconservative friends in the Bush administration were undaunted. In the months following Sept. 11, 2001, as Bush read "Theodore Rex," Chalabi and his supporters started banging the drums for taking out Saddam Hussein.

Installing Chalabi as president could transform the Middle East, they argued, not to mention the world`s economy. Chalabi promised American oil companies first dibs on Iraq`s oil reserves. Saudi Arabia might quickly fall in line, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries would be cut off at the knees. Arab states would find themselves sandwiched between staunch American allies in Israel and Iraq. Terrorists would tremble.

It would have been beautiful, except for one thing: Unlike Phillipe Bunau-Varilla, Chalabi couldn`t deliver. He was wrong about Iraqis welcoming American troops, wrong about stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, wrong about his own popularity. ("Ahmad the Thief," some call him.)

If this is the "darn good" intelligence Bush says he gets, imagine what "darn bad" looks like.

Chalabi did get himself appointed as one of the 25 members of the Iraqi governing council, so maybe he still has a chance. And maybe those weapons of mass destruction will still turn up. Otherwise, George W. Bush`s exercise in big-stick diplomacy could still turn into the Bay of Goats.

Copyright: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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ANGRY GLUTTONS MARCH ON MCDONALD’S

Lardasses Protest Supersize Phase-out

Angry gluttons staged an “eat-in” at a McDonald’s flagship restaurant in Orlando, Florida today to protest the restaurant corporation’s recent decision to phase out its so-called Supersize portions of French fries and colas.

The so-called “Million Man Munch” drew a crowd of approximately 300,000 gluttons and featured several rousing speeches, as well as a mile-long sundae bar with over four thousand fixins.

“I came for the sundae but I stayed to make a statement,” said Toby Kovetch, a 32-year-old glutton from Shreveport, Louisiana. “McDonald’s has been taking gluttons for granted for way too long, and this decision to get rid of Supersizing is just the latest and most egregious example.”

The marchers, who spent over seven hours making the two-mile trek, were “peaceful but easily winded,” one Orlando policeman said.

Shirlee Durkin, a prominent glutton who spends much of her time as a lobbyist for the sin of Gluttony on Capitol Hill, said that the march was “pound for pound the biggest protest demonstration in modern American history.”

Ms. Durkin said that, in her capacity as a spokesman for Gluttony, she had recently reached out to representatives of Sloth, hoping to form a political action group representing two of the Seven Deadly Sins and some of McDonald’s most important customers.

Many of the lardasses assembled seemed disappointed that Elton John, the blimp-like pop star whose presence the organizers had touted, did not join the corpulent protesters on their exhausting two-mile journey.

But a cheer went up from the sweaty crowd when celebrity glutton Elizabeth Taylor addressed the rally via satellite.

“When Elizabeth Taylor came up on that screen, it was huge,” Ms. Durkin said.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-rebuild…
Contract Flaws in Iraq Cited
Rebuilding tasks suffer from poor oversight and questionable spending, agencies find. A delay in equipping the security forces draws criticism.
By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer

March 11, 2004

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon`s effort to rebuild Iraq came under the sharpest fire yet Wednesday from critics who described a process rife with poor oversight, questionable spending and long delays that endanger the country`s security.

A government audit memo and a briefing given to congressional Democrats indicated systematic problems in the contracts awarded to Halliburton Inc., the largest contractor in Iraq. And a senior U.S. military officer criticized delays resulting from the recent collapse of a crucial contract to equip Iraqi security forces.

The revelations cast new doubts on the rebuilding effort on the eve of what could be a combative congressional review of one of the largest such U.S. initiatives undertaken in any country.

Pentagon officials fought back by insisting that their effort was on track. They pointed to the award late Wednesday of the first of an expected wave of new reconstruction contracts totaling $5 billion.

The latest contracts, worth $129 million and awarded to five companies, including three from California, were handed out a month behind schedule.

"Work is moving along very nicely," retired Adm. David Nash, the Iraq reconstruction czar, said in a Pentagon news briefing Wednesday. "We do have construction underway in this country, and there`s more to follow."

But the contract award announcement was swamped by criticism from several fronts.

The Pentagon`s dealings with Halliburton, an oil company run by Vice President Dick Cheney between 1995 and 2000, came under fresh questioning in a memo circulated among Democratic members of the House Government Reform Committee, which was to hold a hearing today on the rebuilding effort.

Halliburton is facing several investigations, including charges that it overbilled the government $61 million in fuel costs and that it charged up to $177 million for meals never served to U.S. troops. A criminal investigation in the U.S. and Kuwait also has been launched into an incident in which one or two Halliburton employees allegedly took kickbacks for helping a contractor overcharge by $6 million. Halliburton has returned that money.

The memo, from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), described a briefing given by the General Accounting Office to investigators from the Government Reform Committee on Feb. 13. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, is independently examining Iraq reconstruction contracts.

In the briefing, GAO officials described a lack of sufficient government oversight of the Halliburton contract, the memo said. They told committee staffers that some of the contract monitoring was being done by military reservists with only two weeks` training. In another case, the memo said, the GAO found that a $587-million contract had been approved in 10 minutes based on six pages of documentation.

They also described a single, $700-million "discrepancy" in which Halliburton told the government that it would cost $2.7 billion to provide food and other logistics services, the memo said. After questioning by the Defense Department, the company slashed its estimate for the work to $2 billion — though it never fully explained how it had reached the new figure, the memo said.

A GAO spokesman confirmed that a briefing had taken place, but declined to comment on its contents.

The Waxman memo also excerpted material from a December preliminary audit of Halliburton`s activities that was conducted by the Defense Contract Audit Agency.

The audit found "significant deficiencies" in Halliburton`s system for billing estimates submitted under a multibillion-dollar contract with the Army to provide meals, housing and other logistics support, the memo said. Pentagon officials confirmed that an audit had been issued, but declined to release it.

Specifically, the memo said the audit found that Halliburton inflated the billing estimates given to the Army by failing to update information on its subcontractors. The estimates eventually became the basis of billing agreements with the government.

The memo said the audit found that Halliburton had violated federal government regulations on contracting, and that the company`s problems in estimating its costs was "systemic."

The Waxman memo also mentions an audit agency letter sent to the Army Corps of Engineers on Jan. 13, which Pentagon officials released to The Times.

The letter, coming on the heels of the audit, warned that Halliburton`s internal systems for estimating costs to be submitted to the Army were "inadequate." The letter advised the Army to contact the auditing agency before entering into any future negotiations.

"Collectively, the deficiencies described above bring into question [Halliburton`s] ability to consistently produce well-supported proposals that are acceptable as a basis for negotiation of fair and reasonable prices," the letter said.

Yet a few days later, on Jan. 16, the Army Engineers issued a new contract to Halliburton for up to $1.2 billion to improve the oil infrastructure in southern Iraq. Army Corps of Engineers officials did not respond to a request for comment.

"The new information has major implications for contracting in Iraq," Waxman`s memo concludes. "It depicts a situation where costs are virtually uncontrolled and Halliburton can overcharge the taxpayer by phenomenal sums."

Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said she was disappointed by the memo, saying that the release of audit excerpts is "inappropriate because the true and complete story cannot be conveyed."

Hall said Halliburton changed its billing estimate by $700 million in the one case cited by Waxman because the government had changed its demands. She also said Halliburton had disclosed changes in its subcontractors.

She noted that the billing estimates were for planning purposes and that final budgets were locked in only with the approval of the government contracting agency.

"We have not been given a chance to respond to accusations before they are released publicly," Hall said in a statement. "We believe that every point in Mr. Waxman`s letter has a reasonable explanation, or could be refuted outright."

Halliburton`s contracts were not the only ones subject to criticism Wednesday.

Speaking just hours before Nash, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the Army`s 82nd Airborne Division, criticized the failure of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to deliver equipment needed by newly formed Iraqi security forces.

Swannack said his division had successfully trained more than 10,000 Iraqis to be police, security and border guards in the volatile region stretching from Fallouja to the Syrian border. But, he said, the forces lacked the equipment needed to fight insurgents and protect the vast Iraqi border.

Swannack voiced frustration that the lack of equipment had hampered Iraqi efforts to secure the region.

The equipment was to be delivered under a controversial $327-million contract that the Pentagon canceled last week, a move that could delay the process for months.

The contract had been awarded to a small Virginia firm with no history of arms dealing. The president of Nour USA, A. Huda Farouki, has close ties with Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council and a close ally of some Pentagon officials.

The contract was canceled after protests by several competing companies and a report in The Times that found Nour had claimed to be partners with high-profile companies and individuals who said in interviews they had no links to the firm.

"Not only are the security forces bravely leading the fight against terrorists, they are in some cases insisting on doing it alone, not depending on coalition forces," Swannack told reporters. "If we had the equipment for these brave young men, we would be much farther along."

Pentagon officials, blaming irregularities in the contracting process for the cancellation, said they were rushing to finalize a new contract. But they predicted it would take 60 to 90 days before a new supplier was selected.

The officials said U.S. commanders in the meantime could use other sources of funding to supply the needed equipment. And they pointed to the contracts awarded Wednesday as evidence that the process, while slow, was moving along.

Aecom Technology Corp., a Los Angeles-based company, was given a $21.6-million contract for managing and coordinating the reconstruction, which begins in earnest later this month with the rebuilding of water, power and other infrastructure. Pasadena-based Parsons and San Francisco-based URS Group are taking part in joint ventures that were awarded contracts to manage rebuilding in specific fields.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cindere…
COLUMN ONE
Wölfe im Yellowstone. Der Tod der alten Wölfin.

The Day Cinderella Vanished
`The Hollywood wolves` were fixtures in Yellowstone and objects of fascination. Then the female went missing and the howling began.
By Rosemary McClure
Times Staff Writer

March 11, 2004

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — A grim chorus of howls shattered the predawn stillness. As darkness gave way to dim light, a wolf emerged in a clearing.

He was charcoal gray, with a splash of black fur marking his snout and eyes. He sat up tall, his head thrown back in a long, desolate moan. His hot breath froze when it hit the air, leaving shards of ice dangling from his muzzle.

Two miles to the southwest, two other wolves howled excitedly from the crest of 9,000-foot Specimen Ridge. Their calls were answered by another group whose voices echoed from the direction of Tower Junction, near the Yellowstone River.

"There are three packs out there," said wildlife biologist Greg Wright as he watched the animals through a high-powered lens. "You don`t usually hear this much howling. It could be a territorial dispute, but I`m not sure what`s going on."

Soon, it would be clear. The gray lady — the Cinderella wolf — was missing.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


When gray wolves returned to Yellowstone National Park nearly a decade ago, the park became one of the few places in the Lower 48 states where the secretive animals could be seen in the wild.

Their reappearance in Yellowstone after a nearly 70-year absence has rekindled an ancient fascination with Canis lupus, the planet`s largest wild dog. The wolves have inspired websites, books and a cult of wolf-watchers who monitor their activities from dawn to dusk.

Of 174 wolves in the park, two attained celebrity status: the female nicknamed Cinderella and her longtime mate, a charcoal gray male. Park researchers called the pair "the Hollywood wolves," because of two National Geographic documentaries that focused on them and their family, the Druid Peak Pack. To many, they became the embodiment of Yellowstone`s wild wolf program.

So Cinderella`s absence and her mate`s disconsolate wails on that Sunday morning in February stirred special concern among the wolf-watchers.

Wolf populations in the western U.S. were wiped out in the late 1800s and early 1900s by settlers and bounty hunters. The last wolf in Yellowstone was shot in 1926. The animals were not reintroduced to the park until 1995 and 1996, when biologists captured 31 gray wolves in the Canadian Rockies and let them loose in Yellowstone.

Cinderella, then a jet-black pup, was part of this original group. She was later given the name 42, indicating that she was the 42nd Yellowstone wolf to be collared with a radio device. She was set free with her mother and two sisters, eventually becoming part of a pack in Yellowstone`s Lamar Valley — prime grazing ground for huge herds of elk and bison, prime hunting ground for wolves.

The Lamar is wide and open — a long, glacier-scoured basin — allowing anyone with a good pair of binoculars to see the wolves from the Lamar Valley road, near the park`s northern boundary and the Wyoming-Montana border.

"Wolves are the essence of wildness, but people can come to the Lamar Valley and within a few minutes see one running free," said wildlife biologist Doug Smith, head of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, a team of National Park Service researchers who released the wolves and now monitor them. "People used to think it was amazing to see one wolf in the wild in their entire lives. But we`ve seen them here daily for more than 1,100 days."

Supplementing the work of professional scientists are the observations of amateur wolf-watchers, who make yearly, monthly or even weekly pilgrimages to the park.

Arriving before dawn, they set up expensive spotting scopes, stay in touch with other "wolfies" by radio, and take detailed notes on the canines` behavior. Thanks to their diligence, the Druid Peak Pack — named for a nearby dome-shaped mountain — has become the most closely observed wild pack in the world.

Some wolf-watchers form attachments to individual animals. "Our favorite is 42," said Carol Yates, a radiation therapist from Scappoose, Ore., who spends about eight weeks in the park each year with her husband, Richard.

Their license plate is WOLF 42. Cinderella was their first sighting. "She`s a pretty special girl," said Richard as the couple stood along the Lamar Valley road the day after the wolf`s disappearance. They were worried. "I hope she`s OK," Carol said.

A Domineering Sibling

The Cinderella wolf got her nickname from the harsh treatment inflicted on her by her sister. The assaults were filmed by Montana cinematographer Bob Landis, who spent eight years working on the National Geographic documentaries.

In the complex social hierarchy of wolves, each pack has two leaders: an alpha male and an alpha female. The Cinderella wolf`s sister was the alpha female in the Druid pack.

"She was a fierce wolf who ruled with an iron fist," Smith said. She eventually drove her mother and other sister out of the pack. Then she concentrated on Cinderella.

The documentaries, aired in 1999 and 2003, showed the alpha female tearing into her sister, leaving scars and bloody wounds. Then the Cinderella wolf`s litter of pups disappeared from her den, probably killed by the sister, Smith said.

A year later, after more beatings and the birth of another litter, the domineering sister visited Cinderella`s den one evening. This time, she met a whirlwind of violent resistance. Cinderella`s 6-week-old pups survived; the alpha female did not.

Cinderella assumed the role of alpha female of the Druids. She moved her seven puppies to her sister`s den, where there were another seven pups. She raised all of them.

The day before she went missing, Cinderella spent several hours lying in the afternoon sun on the flats near frozen Slough Creek, on the western edge of the Lamar Valley. To the north loomed the high, barren ridges of the Beartooth Range, including massive Granite Peak, 12,799 feet high.

Cinderella was big for a female — 100 pounds — and like her mate, who is known simply as 21, she had turned a silvery gray as she aged. Their charcoal coats distinguished them from the rest of the pack, most of whom are black or multicolored.

That afternoon, as usual, she was lying next to 21, a strapping 8-year-old alpha male. The pair had been inseparable for four years. They snuggled now and then in the clear, cold sunlight, licking each other`s face.

The rest of the Druid pack — three adults and nine pups — were napping nearby, two of them curled in tight circles with their tails wrapped around their bodies for warmth.

Like other alpha pairs, the Cinderella wolf and 21 made all the decisions for their pack: when to rest, where and when to hunt, where to live. The alpha pair usually are the only wolves that breed. The entire pack raises the pups, which are born each April.

"Their thick winter coats glistened in the sun that day," said Carol Rickman, who watched them with other wolfies from a roadside vantage point. "She never looked more beautiful than this winter."

Rickman and her husband, Mark, an anesthesiologist, live in Pueblo, Colo., and make the 15-hour drive to Yellowstone three or four times a year.

"We`ve been infatuated with wolves since we were young," said Carol, a medical technologist. "We persecuted the wolf for so long and yet they`re playful, intelligent and devoted to their families."

Another wolfie, Diane Hargreaves of Bozeman, Mont., was impressed by the closeness of the alpha pair. "Even though she was a strong wolf in her own right, he always seemed to want to protect her," she said. "And when there were pups, he always played with them and brought food to the den for them. He`d even bring sticks and other things for them to play with."

Hargreaves and her husband, Steve, took courses on wolves at the nonprofit Yellowstone Assn. Institute and became so devoted to the animals that they moved from Denver to Bozeman to be closer to them.

"We were hooked," she said, laughing. A photographer, she spends six months in the park each year. "The Druids have almost become family members. You assume they`ll always be there."

Rick McIntyre, a wildlife technician with the Yellowstone Wolf Project, can be found on the Lamar Valley road even on his days off, dictating observations on wolf behavior into a tape recorder.

He was the first to notice something was wrong that gray Sunday morning.

He`d seen the wolves howling atop Specimen Ridge. They were from Mollie`s Pack, archrivals of the Druids. Later, McIntyre spotted the Druid pack about two miles away on a low, snow-covered hill north of the Lamar River.

The alpha male, 21, was howling. Other members of the pack were there. But the Cinderella wolf wasn`t.

"That never happens. She`s always with the pack," McIntyre said. "You never see 21 without 42. He`s never more than a couple of steps away from her."

McIntyre pointed a homing antenna in various directions, trying to pick up a signal from Cinderella`s collar. When he couldn`t, he climbed into his truck and drove seven miles to Elk Creek, where transmission is usually better. He received a weak signal that seemed to come from Specimen Ridge.

The Killing Season

Winter is the killing season in the Lamar Valley. Deepening snow in the Rocky Mountain high country forces elk and bison into the basin, where they try to find enough grass and other forage to survive until spring. Temperatures sometimes reach 50 below, devastating for the old or weak.

But the Druids and their rival packs delight in the cold. Their wide paws carry them across the snow with a loping grace. Usually, elk are faster than wolves, and their strong kicks can kill the pursuing canines. But in deep winter, the wolves` odds are better.

The Lamar`s easy hunting grounds make it attractive to other wolf packs too. Mollie`s Pack settled in the Lamar in 1995, but a year later the Druids forced it out. The wolves retreated to Pelican Valley, an 8,000-foot-high meadow that offers little prey for wolves in winter.

"The Mollies would love to claim the Lamar Valley as their territory again," said Smith, the head of the Wolf Project. "But they need to drive the Druids out to get it. They`d kill to get it."

By Monday morning, members of the project team were gravely worried about Cinderella. On the Lamar Valley road, the regulars were somber.

McIntyre told the group that a researcher and a pilot were going up in the "Wolf Plane," a yellow, single-engine Piper Super Cub used to monitor canines in the deeper reaches of the park. "They`ll try to pick up her signal from the air," he said.

Although he didn`t tell the wolf-watchers, he had started to receive a mortality signal from 42`s collar — an indicator that she hadn`t moved in several hours. "But it doesn`t always mean anything," he said. "Sometimes there`s a glitch or the collar falls off and that sets it off."

This time there was no glitch. From the plane, a researcher spotted the Cinderella wolf`s bloody body on high, windy Specimen Ridge.

Smith climbed to the top of the mountain to confirm her death.

"This was incredibly difficult for me," he said. "I remembered her as a pup. She was the last of the original wolves still in the park. A lot of my life has been spent with these wolves, and she`s always been here."

Smith struggled for a positive note: "She died in one of the most scenic spots I`ve ever seen — 9,000 feet high, overlooking the Yellowstone River."

It was left to McIntyre to break the news to the wolf-watchers. They had gathered on a hillside overlooking Slough Creek. Below were 21 and the rest of the Druid family, again lying in the afternoon sun.

In a calm, low tone, McIntyre told the watchers that 42 had been killed. "We`re trying to put it all together now, but it probably was the Mollies," he said.

Carol Yates cried softly. "I guess we`re glad we were here when it happened," said Richard Yates. "It`s the way of the wolf. A least she wasn`t shot."

Mate`s Lonely Howl

On Tuesday morning, 21, the big gray wolf, went to the den site he`d shared with Cinderella in a wooded glen. Together they`d reared two dozen pups, most of them born here. The Druids` top dog sat in the snow and howled. His deep moans filled the Lamar Valley for days.

"He howled his guts out," Smith said. "People say they heard him howl more since she died than he did in the five years before that."

Was 21 in mourning?

"I can`t say that wolves mourn," Smith said. "I`m a scientist and that`s not a scientific thing to say. But I do know he acted differently than he ever did before. You can draw your own conclusions."



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-immig11…
EDITORIAL
Samuel P. Huntington: "The immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially Mexico, and the fertility rates of these immigrants compared to black and white American natives."

Melting Pot Still Bubbles

March 11, 2004

In his 1996 bestseller "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington raised eyebrows around the world by declaring that a global conflict of cultures, primarily Christianity versus Islam, would define the 21st century. Now, in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Huntington warns that "the single most immediate and most serious challenge to America`s traditional identity comes from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially Mexico, and the fertility rates of these immigrants compared to black and white American natives." In this apocalyptic vision, the United States itself may well be headed for a crackup as Mexicans and other Latinos form their own political enclaves instead of embracing what Huntington calls Anglo-Protestant values.

But does the fact that the name Jose replaced Michael in 1998 as the most popular for male newborns in California and Texas really spell the end of the American way of life? Huntington`s warning is provocative, sweeping — and utterly unconvincing.

As Huntington sees it, the proximity of Mexico and regional concentration of Mexicans in the American Southwest imperil the United States. Certainly Mexicans dominate illegal and legal immigration; perhaps 5 million are in the U.S. illegally, and Mexicans make up one-fifth of legal immigrants currently here. But Huntington wrongly ascribes separatist tendencies to what he calls a Mexican reconquista of chunks of Southwest territory that the U.S. grabbed from Mexico in the 19th century.

Instead of congregating, Mexicans are on the move: The share of new immigrants from Mexico traveling to southeastern states like Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee, as well as Midwest states such as Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin, has greatly increased over the last decade. The share of Mexican immigrants living outside Texas, California, Illinois and Arizona has increased from about 500,000 to at least 2.7 million.

The real problems associated with Latino immigration aren`t the cultural ones spotlighted by Huntington. There are real social and hard-dollar costs to immigration, particularly in California. Immigrant children cost more to educate; that should be weighed in part against what their parents contribute. These and other trade-offs are complex and bear scrutiny, but they are not the stuff of simplistic conclusions.

The truth is that Huntington`s complaints about Latinos have a familiar ring. Founding father Benjamin Franklin said that German immigrants were "the most stupid of their nation" and that "few of their children knew English." The Know-Nothing Party in the mid-1850s warned that a papal plot jeopardized America`s Protestant culture and demanded that immigrants be prevented from voting until they had lived in the United States for 21 years.

As successive waves of immigration show, however, U.S. culture is constantly changing as it absorbs new influences. Stagnation, not change, is the enemy of the American dream.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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The Hispanic Challenge
Siehe vorhergehender Kommentar von LATimes
By Samuel P. Huntington Page 1 of 12

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2495&pa…

March/April 2004

The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.


America was created by 17th- and 18th-century settlers who were overwhelmingly white, British, and Protestant. Their values, institutions, and culture provided the foundation for and shaped the development of the United States in the following centuries. They initially defined America in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, and religion. Then, in the 18th century, they also had to define America ideologically to justify independence from their home country, which was also white, British, and Protestant. Thomas Jefferson set forth this “creed,” as Nobel Prize-winning economist Gunnar Myrdal called it, in the Declaration of Independence, and ever since, its principles have been reiterated by statesmen and espoused by the public as an essential component of U.S. identity.

By the latter years of the 19th century, however, the ethnic component had been broadened to include Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians, and the United States` religious identity was being redefined more broadly from Protestant to Christian. With World War II and the assimilation of large numbers of southern and eastern European immigrants and their offspring into U.S. society, ethnicity virtually disappeared as a defining component of national identity. So did race, following the achievements of the civil rights movement and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Americans now see and endorse their country as multiethnic and multiracial. As a result, American identity is now defined in terms of culture and creed.

Most Americans see the creed as the crucial element of their national identity. The creed, however, was the product of the distinct Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding settlers. Key elements of that culture include the English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law, including the responsibility of rulers and the rights of individuals; and dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create a heaven on earth, a “city on a hill.” Historically, millions of immigrants were attracted to the United States because of this culture and the economic opportunities and political liberties it made possible.

Contributions from immigrant cultures modified and enriched the Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding settlers. The essentials of that founding culture remained the bedrock of U.S. identity, however, at least until the last decades of the 20th century. Would the United States be the country that it has been and that it largely remains today if it had been settled in the 17th and 18th centuries not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is clearly no. It would not be the United States; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil.


In the final decades of the 20th century, however, the United States` Anglo-Protestant culture and the creed that it produced came under assault by the popularity in intellectual and political circles of the doctrines of multiculturalism and diversity; the rise of group identities based on race, ethnicity, and gender over national identity; the impact of transnational cultural diasporas; the expanding number of immigrants with dual nationalities and dual loyalties; and the growing salience for U.S. intellectual, business, and political elites of cosmopolitan and transnational identities. The United States` national identity, like that of other nation-states, is challenged by the forces of globalization as well as the needs that globalization produces among people for smaller and more meaningful “blood and belief” identities.

In this new era, the single most immediate and most serious challenge to America`s traditional identity comes from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico, and the fertility rates of these immigrants compared to black and white American natives. Americans like to boast of their past success in assimilating millions of immigrants into their society, culture, and politics. But Americans have tended to generalize about immigrants without distinguishing among them and have focused on the economic costs and benefits of immigration, ignoring its social and cultural consequences. As a result, they have overlooked the unique characteristics and problems posed by contemporary Hispanic immigration. The extent and nature of this immigration differ fundamentally from those of previous immigration, and the assimilation successes of the past are unlikely to be duplicated with the contemporary flood of immigrants from Latin America. This reality poses a fundamental question: Will the United States remain a country with a single national language and a core Anglo-Protestant culture? By ignoring this question, Americans acquiesce to their eventual transformation into two peoples with two cultures (Anglo and Hispanic) and two languages (English and Spanish).

The impact of Mexican immigration on the United States becomes evident when one imagines what would happen if Mexican immigration abruptly stopped. The annual flow of legal immigrants would drop by about 175,000, closer to the level recommended by the 1990s Commission on Immigration Reform chaired by former U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. Illegal entries would diminish dramatically. The wages of low-income U.S. citizens would improve. Debates over the use of Spanish and whether English should be made the official language of state and national governments would subside. Bilingual education and the controversies it spawns would virtually disappear, as would controversies over welfare and other benefits for immigrants. The debate over whether immigrants pose an economic burden on state and federal governments would be decisively resolved in the negative. The average education and skills of the immigrants continuing to arrive would reach their highest levels in U.S. history. The inflow of immigrants would again become highly diverse, creating increased incentives for all immigrants to learn English and absorb U.S. culture. And most important of all, the possibility of a de facto split between a predominantly Spanish-speaking United States and an English-speaking United States would disappear, and with it, a major potential threat to the country`s cultural and political integrity.
Weiter:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2495&pag…

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____________

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Alles was bis jetzt berichtet wurde spricht von der ETA als Täter.
Die ETA hat schon früher Anschläge mit vielen Toten verübt.(21 Tote in Barcelona in einem Supermarkt.)
Es gilt abzuwarten, ob irgendwelche anderen Gruppen sich zu dem Anschlag bekennen.

Jedenfalls wird es zu einigen Gegenreaktionen der europäischen Staaten kommen und was am Ende dabei herauskommt, ist eine weitere Einschränkung der persölichen Freiheit und das Verstärken der Angst.

Wenn das das Ziel die Anschläge sein sollte, könnte das bei einer dementsprechenden Reaktion erreicht werden.

Eine Unabhängigkeit des Baskenlandes wird mit solchen Anschlägen eher unwahrscheinlich.

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The case for Bush
The president and San Francisco aren`t exactly soul mates, but there is reason to reconsider
Bill Whalen
Sunday, March 7, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/07/ING0I5BSDR1.DTL



This past week, President Bush flew into Los Angeles, made a quick stop in Bakersfield, then wended his way upstate to Santa Clara before hopping back on board Air Force One for the flight back to his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

It`s a familiar pattern for Bush. He came to California a day after the Democratic presidential primary -- just as he touched down in New Hampshire, Missouri and South Carolina immediately after those states went to the polls. Presidential elections are wars of words, and the Republican strategy this spring is the commander-in-chief as last-word freak.

The other constant: The California itinerary did not include San Francisco. That`s 12 presidential visits to the Golden State since Bush took office, but nary a stopover in the 415 area code. Which is a curious thing, considering that Felix Unger and Oscar Madison figured out a way to get along -- and, in this case, the even odder couple of Mr. Bush and San Francisco do share some common ground.

Wanna talk paranoia? Even the capital of Iraq, scene of last year`s stealth Thanksgiving visit by the president, has had more Bush sightings than San Francisco. If you`re keeping score at home, that`s Baghdad 1, Baghdad by the Bay 0.

Granted, Bush has been in the neighborhood, just not within view of The City. The president landed at San Francisco International Airport last June, but the motorcade took him away from San Francisco, south on Highway 101 to a fund-raiser in Burlingame.

Forget about the Governator and "I`ll be back." San Franciscans want to hear the Michael Jackson`s line, "I`ll be there." So just how left out is this Left Coast metropolis? San Francisco is America`s 13th largest city, according to the 2000 census. It`s also the only one of the nation`s 25 largest cities that Bush has yet to visit as president.

Call it the politics of triskaidekaphobia: 13 has been unlucky number for San Francisco. Or perhaps Bush is simply getting even for lack of support. After all, he received a meager 16.2% of San Francisco`s vote in November 2000 -- his worst showing in any of California`s 58 counties.

The truth, of course, is the president`s absence from San Francisco has little to do with mathematics or numerology. Rather, it`s the story of a relationship that is, shall we say, problematic.

It doesn`t have to be this bad. Yes, Bush and San Francisco have serious policy divides: Iraq, same-sex marriage and the Patriot Act, to name but three. But is the president`s agenda so desperately out of touch with 415-ers as to merit rejection by 6 out of 7 voters, plus thousands of angry protesters taking to streets anytime the president comes within driving distance of the Bay Area?

Not exactly. There`s room for common ground, and here`s where:

Homelessness

Mayor Newsom`s fifth day on the job included a meeting with Philip Mangano, who heads the federal Interagency Council on Homelessness, which the Bush administration brought back to life to better coordinate federal outlays for the various pieces of the homeless puzzle: substance abuse, job training and mental health services. Mangano is a visionary. He wants to attack homelessness through a series of 10-year regional programs that focuses on results-driven techniques. It`s a different approach, one that outside-the-box mayors might be willing to try.

Something more about the president`s point man on homelessness: He doesn`t come from Republican central casting.

Mangano is a former director of services for homeless people in Cambridge, Mass. He calls himself a "homeless abolitionist," which explains why he likes to quote William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. He says the French philosopher Simone Weil and St. Francis of Assisi are his "patron saints." After seeing Franco Zeffirelli`s "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" -- a movie about St. Francis -- he gave up his career as a music agent and manager for bands such as Buffalo Springfield and Peter, Paul and Mary.

Where did he go after leaving the music industry? To Boston, to work on a bread line.


AIDS
Under Bush, overall federal spending on HIV/AIDS has grown 28%. Bush`s 2005 budget request included increases in the HIV/AIDS in Minority Communities Fund and the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) within the Ryan White Care Act, plus an additional $53 million for the HIV/AIDS in Minority Communities Fund, which supports HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in minority communities. Bush has pledged to spend $15 billion over five years on global AIDS relief to prevent new infections, provide antiretroviral treatment and care for the sick and orphans. That`s a tripling of the nation`s global AIDS relief since 2001.

There are questions as to whether Washington will live up to that entire commitment, but give the man credit. HIV/AIDS wasn`t part of the Bush agenda or the party platform when he ran for office and he`s the first president to give more than lip service to the human tragedy in Africa. Besides, it`s a more ambitious undertaking than his predecessor`s. Bill Clinton`s most notable action came after he left office, when his foundation and four pharmaceutical companies reached an agreement to reduce the cost of HIV/AIDS drugs by at least 45 percent in about a dozen Caribbean nations and four African countries.

Nanotechnology

Last December, Bush signed into law a National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). His latest budget proposal includes nearly $1 billion, twice 2001 levels.

Nanotechnology is nerdy stuff, building materials atom by atom, creating structures on a scale one-thousandth of a millimeter through the application of materials science, engineering, physics, chemistry, and biology. But the upside is easy to grasp: new medical diagnostic tools and treatments, stronger and cheaper materials for buildings and clothing.

If Bush didn`t care about the Bay Area and a rejuvenated tech sector, he wouldn`t give nanotechnology a nanosecond of thought. The National Science Foundation sees it as a $1 trillion global market. Stanford, UCSF and NASA`s Ames Research Center are actively researching it. Silicon Valley sees it as part of its economic recovery. .

Free Trade

The Democratic presidential field hammers away at Bush on trade, hoping that the message resonates across the Rust Belt. But in the Bay Area, the consequences of higher tariffs, protectionism and trade wars would be tragic, pushing the Port of Oakland a giant step closer to Jerry Brown`s dream of his city as California`s largest Indian casino.

The Bay Area is America`s second-largest exporting region. By itself, it ranks ahead of every U.S. state except Texas. Trade is also a key to the information technology sector, as 60% of information technology products are sold overseas.

Last December, Mr. Bush signed a free trade agreement with Chile, the first ever with a South American country. This should benefit San Francisco`s service industry and San Jose`s tech sector. Oakland also stands to gain with new business opportunities for biotech, telecommunications and food processing.

And there`s more. Though roundly criticized in the Bay Area as anti-green, the Bush administration`s has called for $105 million in habitat restoration and water improvements for the Klamath River Basin, to accelerate habitat rehabilitation for endangered fish and spur water quality and quantity improvements for the Oregon-California watershed. Mr. Bush also earmarked $760 million for his Healthy Forests Initiative, to improve forest and rangeland management, restore lands to their more natural conditions, and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

The Bush budget also includes Muni`s proposed $764 million Central Subway, extending the Third Street light rail line from SBC Park and China Basin to Clay Street and Chinatown.

As for the tech sector, Mr. Bush signed an extension of the federal Internet tax moratorium, and during his tenure the FCC eased restrictions on broadband deployment.

The Bush White House also created a President`s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology to study new approaches to fighting terrorism, the nation`s research and development needs, and greater energy efficiency. That panel includes a pair of Bay Area financial stalwarts: Intel founder Gordon Moore and venture capitalist Floyd Kvamme.

You could say that the president`s absence is his loss. But then again, what is Bush missing? Another chance to be greeted by signs like "Bush lied, Iraqis and GIs die" and "President of the rich, enemy of the workers"? To hear protesters singing John Lennon`s "Imagine" -- in Arabic? To freeze here in August when he`s accustomed to sweating in the West Texas heat?

San Francisco views the Bush administration as pretty much like "The Simpsons" depiction of the Springfield Republican Party: Monty Burns, Bob Dole, Ranier Wolfcastle, a Texas oilman, and Dracula. To Bay Area liberals, Bush all too conveniently ways fits their preconceptions of all that is demonic about Republicans. To them, he`s a son of privilege, a product of the oil patch, a born-again Christian, not intellectually curious, drives a pickup truck, doesn`t own a cat, has little interest in pop culture, pumps iron instead of doing yoga and would probably rather spend the evening at Shea Stadium instead of Chez Panisse.

Time will tell if and when Mr. Bush ends this self-imposed Embarcadero embargo . Meanwhile, the city that demands tolerance should practice what it preaches. That begins with learning to better tolerate a president whose record doesn`t merit the overblown rhetorical attacks and abject rejection.

Bill Whalen is a research fellow at Hoover Institution and a former speechwriter for Gov. Pete Wilson.

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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Frühling in San Francisco, ein schöneres Bild! Skater am Pier 7 vor der Bay Bridge.

__________________________


Why it`s so darn hot / Warm inland air blots out cooling ocean breezes
From left: Skaters Roger Vallero of Antioch, Andrian Williams and Dave Blome of Alaska, and Masen Vaughan of San Francisco make the most of the heat wave at a skater hangout in San Francisco. Chronicle photo by Kat Wade

The heat blanketing the Bay Area can be explained by laws of physics: As inland air spirals downward in the atmosphere, it is heated by compressions and friction with the Earth`s surface and cancels out the usually dominant ocean breeze.

Or the bright sunshine, record temperatures and Matisse-blue skies can be explained in "Weather for Dummies" terms: The air is traveling from inland to the ocean and is warmer than air that moves from the ocean toward the land.

"It`s a pattern that we get once every two years in March, and it`s reminiscent of what we get in the late fall,`` said John Monteverdi, a professor of meteorology at San Francisco State, who was looking forward to finishing class and heading for a walk or jog in the East Bay hills. "It looks like the pattern is going to persist through at least Saturday.``

As temperatures continued to rise Wednesday, records continued to fall. The high of 81 in downtown San Francisco broke a 77 degree record set in 1916. In Oakland, the high was 85, breaking a 1997 record of 75 degrees. The high of 77 at Moffett Field inched out the 76 degree record, also set in 1997.

The anomalous weather sent sunseekers to parks, rooftops and beaches; boosted ice cream sales; raised hemlines; and made tourists in shorts look smartly clad. And it transformed the foggy city by the bay into urban tropics. The official sunrise temperature in San Francisco was 66, beating out the sunrise temperature of 61 in Hilo, Hawaii.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/11/MNGP…

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Money in his coffers, but no dirt on his shoes
Jimmy Breslin



March 11, 2004

For days now, the job at Eisenhower Park in Nassau County has been to follow the order from the White House through the Secret Service and down to the park workers:

"The president`s feet are not to touch the dirt."

So all yesterday, large crews drawn from all county parks worked to ensure that, as always in his life, George Bush`s feet do not touch the ground when he appears in the big park today.

Bush arrives for a fund-raiser at a restaurant in the park. That is indoors and he doesn`t have to worry about his feet there. But he has to go over ground to an administration building where he is to meet with families of 9/11 victims. After that, he has to go over more ground to get to the site of a memorial to the victims.

He doesn`t want his feet on the ground and he will be at a groundbreaking ceremony.

The 9/11 memorial is not up. Someday it will be a site by a pond. What happened was that Bush was coming in for this big fund-raiser. The county executive, Suozzi, a Democrat, heard about it and rushed an invitation to Bush to be at the dedication to the memorial and also to meet the 9/11 families.

There was no way for Bush to turn this down. So he appears today for a local Democrat. The county Democrats fell all over themselves to have a memorial site and the paths around it following the Secret Service regulations.

Yesterday, a big guy, who had been fixing serious pipe leaks in the county executive`s building, was on the walkway unrolling wooden storm fencing that would create an alley for Bush to walk down.

"When you get the fence up, what do you do?" he was asked.

"Cover the ground so his feet don`t touch it."

"Is that true?"

"My boss told me that. If he says so, it`s true."

"That sounds crazy."

"It sounds like I get paid every week," he said.

Bush`s day was to start with him landing in his big plane at Republic Airport. He could either drive or go by helicopter to the park. There is room to land on one of Eisenhower Park`s golf fairways. But the job of building whole concrete streets from the plane to the memorial site would be extraordinarily hard, as they would have to remove the streets immediately after today in order to have the place ready for golfers in this Republican county.

Bush was to move to a couple of locations on dirty parkland. Last Thursday, the bureaucrats in charge of the park heard from the Secret Service. The word immediately ran through the halls of local government.

Not a foot touches the earth.

And the workers went to work. First, there was the ground from a parking lot to a wood building used for special activities. This probably will be where Bush meets with the families.

"We`re not even sure he will use this," a foreman said. "They just tell us he is going to meet with families. We ask, `Where?` They won`t tell us. So we went ahead, anyway."

They put up a concrete sidewalk from the parking lot to a ramp leading into a side entrance to the building.

The rain and sleet made it impossible for the concrete to dry. So they changed from concrete to the asphalt used on streets. They hoped the president wouldn`t mind this. After all, it would protect his feet from touching the earth. Gravel and hot steaming asphalt.

When they finally had it done, a full-fledged asphalt path, a Secret Service agent put his foot through the steam and left a large footprint in the walk that was to keep the president`s feet off the ground.

The Secret Service man walked on blithely. He gave no indication that he knew where he was. The workmen muttered and had to go back and fix the walk.

That is on one side of the building. At the front entrance, they built a standard concrete sidewalk through the ground to the entrance.

Down a slight slope from the building were two white tents. Nobody knows who they are for.

"The Secret Service don`t tell us anything," a worker said.

"What do you do about the ground?" one of them was asked.

"We put wood chips there," he said.

"When do you do that?"

"When the Secret Service says."

The boss of the job was off to the side.

"They`re not wood chips," he said. "They`re fiber bark." He pointed over to a large county dump truck that carried enough fiber bark in it to cover the whole park.

Already, the dirt underneath the first of two tents was covered with fiber bark.

The walkway of storm fencing goes along the path that will be in high fiber for Bush and comes to the edge of the lake in the middle of the park.

This is the place where the 9/11 memorial will be built. Supposedly, Bush will not speak in public at the memorial service.

But you are going to have George Pataki and Rudolph Giuliani there. Both will walk through mud with bare feet for the chance to talk.

And that is my report from the ground on preparations for George W. Bush`s visit of great magnitude to Eisenhower Public Park in the county of Nassau, New York.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

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A biweekly column by Karen Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col. USAF (ret.)

http://militaryweek.com/kk030804.shtml

posted 08 March 04

For Empire or Vocation, Ever Forward!

All 129 members of National Guard Company B, 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry, have been called up for active duty. My Shenandoah County, Virginia, neighbors left this week for specialized training at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Most will go on to even warmer places. Probably Iraq, maybe Guantanamo Bay, maybe Afghanistan. Their motto: "Ever Forward!"

The farewell scenes are being played out, quietly, all over the country this election year. These private moments of anxiety mixed with love of country and pride in serving it are common today – but they have been blessedly rare in American history. The 116th was last activated was 1944. It was another world war, another global conflict of good against evil, another war that had to be fought by Americans. Today`s deployments are for police duty or insurgent suppression in Iraq or Afghanistan, or for guard duty in Guantanamo.

In 1944, the rest of the world prayed for us, and opened their hearts and homes to Americans. In 2004, much of the rest of the world sees only rapaciously bullheaded neo-colonialists. Sixty years have passed, but somehow the vision of most of its inhabitants has remained 20/20. I guess we should be grateful for that.

I missed the farewell ceremonies in the county seat, because I was in New York City to tape a segment of the History Channel`s "Hard Target." In preparation, they gave me a copy of a new book that explains our neoconservative foreign policy, the same foreign policy that mobilized my neighbors for the next two years. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum and former Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle drafted a little black book and titled it "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror."

I had already reviewed this book, in jest, but the History Channel expected me to actually read it this time.

Other conservatives have already suggested that the book is poorly written, poorly researched, puts forth false logic, and doesn`t withstand intellectual scrutiny. Much like your average bumper sticker. "An End to Evil" indeed serves as a kind of populist bumper sticker aimed at producing an instant, often emotional response, from people with very little time on their hands and no inclination to read and digest serious material.

Like those representing us in Washington.

The premise of "An End to Evil" is that the United States must destroy the evil that besets the world by forcefully imposing "democracy" on the planet, starting with the hotbeds of anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Frum and Perle explain that they "can feel the will to win ebbing in Washington," thus the need to publish this book.

Conservatives innately resist this message, pointing out that America is a Republic, not an empire. Empire, of course, is a term rejected by Perle and Frum. They say instead that "it" is the implementation of "a dream ... that will be brought into being by American armed might and defended by American might, too." It is "America`s vocation."

Vocation or empire, this dream is clearly contrary to the vision of the Founders, our American traditions, and our Constitution. But no matter.

Other reviewers point out that to suggest that any state – any government created by man – can "end evil" flies in the face of both ancient and modern Judeo-Christian ethics. I`ll leave such philosophical questions for another time. But this book does offer the "why" to families of the National Guard 116th Infantry bidding goodbye to home, hearth, and community this week.

Military people, and all Americans who love this country, need to know what Perle and Frum believe, because for the past several years, they have been helping to write the war-making script for Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush.

As I read, I was continually struck by the author`s astounding ignorance of, and disregard for, military strategy and military reality. Considering neither Perle nor Frum have personal experience in uniform, their blindness is understandable. But it should give the military reader pause.

Perle and Frum explain the current quagmire in Iraq that has many of our Majors and Lt Colonels bearing the title of "Mayor" in Iraq. They write that we had only two choices in Iraq: "To work with [convicted bank fraudmeister and `What was said before does not matter.` Ahmad] Chalabi or rule it ourselves."

Two choices, you pick.

You can be sure not even the most incompetent Second Lieutenant in any army would come up with such nonsense, much less call it a strategy.

Perle and Frum insist that we will not stay in Iraq. Never intended that.

This contradicts the current military assessment of two to five years, retired Lt General Jay Garner`s assessment of several decades, or the assessment of the military industrial complex, represented by Halliburton and Bechtel, of forever – or at least till the money runs out.

On what planet are the neoconservatives living? Or are these just soothing lies told by a civilian elite to calm the families of those sent forward to the occupation battlefields?

Demonstrating the neoconservatives` deep understanding of Middle East history and politics, they entertain only a single democratic Iraq, and broker no serious discussion of an Iraqi ethno-religious divide on three fault lines. Yet, with unusual perspicacity, they pose the probability that our erstwhile ally Saudi Arabia will split into two provinces, a western one with no oil but a lot of princes, and an eastern one with all the oil and a need for leadership. They playfully suggest that these eastern oil fields, the largest in the world, will be "secured" by U.S. troops, conveniently garrisoned in Iraq and Kuwait, and already familiar with the concept of securing oil fields.

For Perle and Frum, it is all just a chess game, static and two dimensional. They leave the bloody and dynamic three-dimensional reality to the soldiers in the field, and the generals who walk a fine line between doing the right thing for the Republic and trying to please their Neronian masters.

In terms of the fight against terror, Perle and Frum insist that to fight terror, it must be force on force, a global military war. For these neoconservatives terror is not an act, a method, a tool of political change, but is instead "the great evil of our time."

Funny, I thought maybe Hitler`s state-sponsored genocide of over seven million people, or Stalin`s murder of over 25 million during his first twenty years of power, or even Pol Pot or Mao`s cultural genocides in Cambodia and China might be considered the great evil of our time. Globally ignored cyclical genocides in Rwanda and Burundi might qualify. Perhaps King George shared the Perle-Frum perspective, as he read reports of what was happening in the American colonies. For him, General Washington and his misfits a few centuries ago might have been "the great evil" of his time, not fighting fair and resisting his dominance.

The recent, important Army War College-sponsored analysis of our fight against terrorism by Dr. Jeffrey Record puts the whole discussion on a more rationale plane, but I fear rationality is not a place Perle and Frum have visited recently.

"An End to Evil" contains several worthy conservative ideas, including a healthy criticism of the waste and corruption of the United Nations bureaucracy, and a strong pro-Taiwan position. Perle and Frum seem to recommend a traditionally conservative, non-interference approach to India and most of South and Central America. Of course, traditional conservatism is denied with the Perle-Frum loyal defense of the USA PATRIOT ACT, their only complaint that it fails to go far enough.

The big government adoration, big government solutions, and the blind militarism of the Bush foreign policy team is scary enough, especially given that some of these un-American ideas have already led to the deaths of over 550 American soldiers in Iraq alone, and the serious wounding of several thousand more. The Perle-Frum ideological team, including Vice President Cheney and the civilian leadership at the Pentagon, scamper blithely around the hard military reality of what their ideas have done and are continuing to do.

These ideas have delivered military and fiscal overextension, making us less able to deal with a concurrent proliferation of terror, in a more target-rich environment that now includes our sitting-duck soldiers in Iraq and elsewhere. It is sadly comical, and brings to mind the rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. Except, it is all of the rest of us who are rearranging the chairs on the deck, as our treasured, responsible, respected Republic sinks in a sea of neoconservative dreams.

The wives and husbands of the members of the National Guard 116th Infantry will wake up in coming days, looking for their significant other, before they remember, yes, they`re really gone. Children here and all over the country will call out for Mom and Dad, before they stop abruptly and remember – it wasn`t a dream, they really shipped out to a place we don`t understand for reasons never explained to us. Undoubtedly, some of my neighbors aren`t ever coming back.

There may be cause for a bit of optimism that rational and traditional American wisdom will ultimately prevail in our foreign policy. Frum remains a "former" speechwriter for President Bush, and Perle recently removed himself from the Defense Policy Board, in theory no longer advising the administration. One can only hope.



© 2004 Karen Kwiatkowski

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The life and unexplained death of a Palestinian militant
Mohamed Aboul Abbas, the `Achille Lauro` planner, said he never intended passengers to be held hostage or anyone to be killed, and apologised for it. The US and Israel allowed him back to Gaza. So why was he in a US prison in Iraq?
By Robert Fisk
11 March 2004


When 55-year-old Mohamed Aboul Abbas died mysteriously in a US prison camp in Iraq on Tuesday, nobody bothered to call his family.

His American captors had given no indication to the International Red Cross that he had been unwell and his wife Reem first heard that he was dead when she watched an Arab television news show.

Yet in his last letter to his family, written just seven weeks ago and shown to The Independent in Baghdad yesterday, the Palestinian militant wrote that, "I am in good form and in good health", adding that he hoped to be freed soon. So what happened to Mohamed Aboul Abbas?

Although a prominent colleague of Yasser Arafat for more than three decades, the world will forever link his name with the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985, when members of his small "Palestine Liberation Front" commandeered the vessel in the Mediterranean and, in a cruel killing that was to cause international outrage, shot dead Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly American Jew in a wheelchair, and tipped his corpse into the sea.

The other passengers were eventually released in Egypt after Aboul Abbas negotiated with the authorities in Cairo to allow the hijackers to go free.

In vain did he point out that the hijackers` plan was to stow away on the Italian liner - not harm the passengers - then storm ashore in Israel when the ship made port at Haifa. It was only their discovery by a crew member that prompted them to take over the vessel. "The media didn`t tell the world that I saved 600 passengers, only that a disabled man was killed," he was to complain later.

Yet, in a newspaper interview, he was also reported to have said that Mr Klinghoffer "was handicapped but he was inciting and provoking the other passengers. So the decision was made to kill him".

But within 10 years, the Israelis themselves would allow Aboul Abbas, now a member of the Palestine National Council, to enter the occupied territories to participate in elections in the Gaza Strip. He even visited his old family home in Haifa in Israel.

He supported Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements and favoured the annulment of the anti-Israeli articles in the PLO`s charter. Like so many of Mr Arafat`s colleagues, he had undergone that mystical Middle East transformation from "super-terrorist" to peacenik. So why was he ever incarcerated in the harsh confines of America`s airport prison camp outside Baghdad? He was never charged with any crime, never offered a lawyer, never allowed direct contact with his wife and family, allowed to communicate with the outside world only via the Red Cross. They were the ones who telephoned his wife Reem in Beirut more than 24 hours ago to tell her that her husband was dead.

"I know nothing about this, nothing," she wailed down the telephone to The Independent from Beirut yesterday. "How did he die? Why were we told nothing? When I first heard this terrible news on television I thought it had to be a rumour; this happens a lot out here. But then the Red Cross called at midnight and told me it was true." Mohamed Aboul Abbas is the most prominent prisoner to die in US custody in Iraq ,and joins a growing list of unexplained deaths among the 15,000 Iraqis and Palestinians held by US military forces. The occupation authorities in Iraq would only say yesterday that they were to hold a post-mortem examination on Aboul Abbas`s remains.

The "Palestinian Liberation Front" has long had offices in Baghdad, along with Mr Arafat`s PLO. The head of the PLF`s "political bureau", Mohamed Sobhi, said yesterday that Mohamed Aboul Abbas`s arrest by US troops on 14 April last year had "no reason in law other than the need of the American soldiers at that time to look for false victories". He added: "We all knew that Aboul Abbas had been to Palestine in 1995 for the PNC elections in Gaza and that the United States and Israel both allowed this. After that, he travelled to Palestinian areas and to other Arab states many times. We had told all this to the Americans here and demanded that he be released. In his last letter home, he said he hoped to be freed soon. So what happened to him?"

Reem Aboul Abbas, who has a child by her husband and two by an earlier marriage, says he was still living in Baghdad when American troops entered the city on 9 April last year.

"He was trying to keep away from them because many people - Iraqis and Palestinians - were being arrested, people who had done nothing. Then American troops raided our home. Mohamed wasn`t there but I saw it all on Fox Television.

"Would you believe I saw my own home on television and they had moved things around and draped a Palestinian flag over a mirror and then invited Fox Television to film it. On the evening of 14 April, Mohamed called me from a friend`s home. It was a big mistake. I think that`s how they tracked him down and found him. Not long afterwards, American soldiers came up the stairs."

The US occupation authorities initially announced the capture of the "important terrorist Aboul Abbas", making no mention of his return to the occupied territories or that the Israelis themselves - who might have been more anxious than the Americans to see him in prison - had freely allowed the PLF leader to enter their territory as a peace negotiator.

"First he was a `terrorist`," his wife Reem says. "Then he was a man of peace. Then when the Americans arrested him, they made him a `terrorist` again. What is this nonsense?"

Two years ago, Mr Sobhi said, Aboul Abbas had suffered an attack of angina and spent 12 days undergoing treatment at the Abu Nafis Hospital in Baghdad with Reem at his side.

He had suffered no other health problems and in a last request to his family via the Red Cross, he had asked them to send him two boxes of Marlboro cigarettes, running shorts, a track suit and a dishtash robe. The Independent has seen his request and its acknowledgment by US detention authorities; it does not read like the list of a sick man.

For months after the announcement of his arrest, Reem Aboul Abbas pleaded with family friends and the Red Cross to discover his whereabouts. After she asked The Independent for help, I discovered that he was being held in a special security wing at Baghdad international airport along with former prominent Baath party officials. He was in a sealed room with Saadoun Shakr, one of Saddam`s former interior ministers.

This was reconfirmed yesterday by Issa Milhem, Aboul Abbas`s 40-year-old nephew who was born in Baghdad, the city to which the family fled from their home village of at-Tira near Haifa in 1949. Mr Milhem holds hundreds of snapshots of his uncle, some with Iraqi ministers - Tariq Aziz prominent among them - and one with Saadoun Shakr, the man with whom Aboul Abbas was later to be imprisoned.

His last letter to his family, dated 19 January and written in neat Arabic on one side of a Red Cross sheet of paper, gives no indication of his fate. Addressed to his brother Khaled in the Netherlands, it is a prisoner`s familiar appeal for letters and news, of expressions of affection and hope.

"Dear Khaled," it begins, "I received your letter on 17 January and on the same day I received three letters from my wife in Beirut after a period in which I got no letters for three months. I was very happy because of your letter and it was a surprise because I didn`t expect it. Thank you so much for this and for your kindness in writing to me.

"Dear Khaled, first I present my kisses to the head of your dear mother and I hope she`s ready to prepare the `dolma` and the red chicken that I love for my first lunch (in freedom) will be at her home. What is the news about my family and my dearest Issa? ... Very special greetings to him, his wife and children and for your brothers and sisters and their families because they are my family, too, and my dearest ones."

In the same letter, Aboul Abbas complains that he has received no replies to letters he sent to Mohamed Sobhi - he uses Sobhi`s patronymic "Abu Khodr" - and urges his brother to call Reem in Beirut.

"Tell her that I received her letters and that I have sent new letters to her," Aboul Abbas writes in the most important section of his message. "I hope you can send me a dishtash ... I am in good form and in good health and I really need to know news of my family and friends. I have great hopes of being released soon - with God`s will."

Signing himself "Aboul Abbas", he includes his wife`s Beirut telephone number so Khaled can call her immediately. The letter bears the US detention authority coding US-0039C1.

Mr Sobhi holds the United States responsible for Aboul Abbas`s death and is asking the Palestinian Authority to institute its own inquiry into the PLF leader`s demise. "We blame the Americans for this," he says. "We put the responsibility of his death on the US troops. No one ever said his health was declining. I`ve been told the Americans want to send the body to Palestine although his wife may want him to be buried in Lebanon."

Issa Milhem`s archive of photographs holds the fullest record of Mohamed Aboul Abbas`s life. Black and white snapshots show him in Lebanon, Kalashnikov AK-47 in hand, standing amid a group of gunmen in West Beirut, another early coloured photo in the Lebanese mountains.

Many dozens of pictures show him in Gaza, listening to interminable lectures and speeches by ageing Palestinian nationalists. In one, two Palestinian officials have fallen asleep and Aboul Abbas is only just able to stay awake.

It was in the nature of the Palestinian revolution that ideology should become as tiresome as it was repetitive. Then there is the diplomat Aboul Abbas, dining at the Kremlin, standing to attention as Yugoslav troops formally welcome Arafat to Belgrade, Aboul Abbas walking past an Iraqi swimming pool with Arafat.

On just one occasion, he met Saddam Hussein. He salutes, in many snapshots, the armed Palestinian soldiers of the "Palestine Liberation Army" and you can see, to the left of the picture, the pot-bellied Baath party officials who gave succour to the Palestinian cause at that time.

One photo shows Aboul Abbas with Abu Jihad, Mr Arafat`s deputy, shortly before his murder by Israelis in Tunis. Abu Jihad might have proved to be Mr Arafat`s rightful successor, a man who might have been able to control Hamas and the other Islamic groups which Israel originally encouraged - as a balance to the PLO - and now so bitterly hates.

Perhaps Aboul Abbas will always be on the margins of Palestinian history. But he will be the first Palestinian leader to die in US custody, and thus is assured his place in "Palestine`s" history.

Mohamed Aboul Abbas appears to have had no premonition of his imminent death. But 49 days after he wrote his letter of hope, he was dead.
11 March 2004 20:38


© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

[Joerver]

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Spain Says Suspect Van Had Arabic Tapes
Thu Mar 11, 2004 02:51 PM ET

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain`s interior minister said a suspect van had been found on Thursday near Madrid, scene of bombings that killed 190 people, containing seven detonators and a tape in Arabic language.
Interior Minister Angel Acebes said the tape had recordings of verses from the Koran.

Spain has so far attributed the attack to Basque separatists, but Acebes` remarks appeared to raise the possibility of a link to Islamist militants.

[Joerver]

Broadcast on ABC Australia 03/11/04
Krugman calls on Bush to reign in the red

Video mit Paul Krugman:
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200403/r17224_42309.asx


Windows Media

TRANSCRIPT
TONY JONES: Well, the US is not just labouring under a record trade deficit, there are warnings tonight that its budget deficit could precipitate a Latin American style financial crisis.

Influential economist Paul Krugman says the US will face a severe downturn before the end of the decade unless the $500 billion fiscal debt is rectified.

In his latest book, The Great Unravelling, the Princeton University economist is calling on President Bush to abandon his program of trillion dollar tax cuts, otherwise, he claims, there may not be enough funds to pay for the waves of baby boomers who will soon retire.

I spoke to Paul Krugman a short time ago.

TONY JONES: Paul Krugman, history proved your predictions right over the Asian financial crisis.

You`re now warning essentially that the engine of the world economy, the United States itself, is heading for a South American style financial crisis.

What`s the evidence for that?

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN, PRINCETON ECONOMIST: Well, basically we have a world-class budget deficit not just as in absolute terms of course - it`s the biggest budget deficit in the history of the world - but it`s a budget deficit that as a share of GDP is right up there.

It`s comparable to the worst we`ve ever seen in this country.

It`s biggest than Argentina in 2001.

Which is not cyclical, there`s only a little bit that`s because the economy is depressed.

Mostly it`s because, fundamentally, the Government isn`t taking in enough money to pay for the programs and we have no strategy of dealing with it.

So, if you take a look, the only thing that sustains the US right now is the fact that people say, "Well America`s a mature, advanced country and mature, advanced countries always, you know, get their financial house in order," but there`s not a hint that that`s on the political horizon, so I think we`re looking for a collapse of confidence some time in the not-too-distant future.

TONY JONES: When you say the not-too-distant future, what does that mean?

We know there may be a crisis in paying, for example, in social security...

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: What I envision is that at some point, we have about 10 years now until the baby boomers hit the United States.

The US even more than other advanced countries has a welfare state that`s primarily a welfare state for retirees.

We have the huge bulge in the population that starts to collect benefits and earn the next decade.

If there isn`t a clear path towards fiscal sanity well before that, then I think the financial markets are going to say, "Well, gee, where is this going?"

I think, where in that 10 years the crunch comes, I don`t know.

I think there`s a real possibility that next year or one or two years from now, when they see that actually the same irresponsible tax cuts as the solution to everything continue, we might have a crisis that soon but more likely towards the end of the decade.

TONY JONES: Let me ask you this - just in the short-term, given today`s policy settings and the ones that are going to prevail, we assume, through the election period, what`s likely to happen to interest rates?

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: Right now, long-term interest rates, short-term interest rates, I think, are going to stay where there are, which is not far above zero, right through the election and probably beyond because that`s directly under the control of the Federal Reserve.

The economy is weak for the time being.

Job creation is essentially non-existent.

Long-term interest rates which should reflect all these things are actually quite low right now and it`s an interesting thing when you try to talk to people in the bond market, why, you ask, doesn`t the deficit worry you?

Don`t you wonder that there`s going to be a financing crunch?

And they say: "Well, we believe that next year Bush or whoever is in the White House is going to get responsible."

And you ask them: "What evidence do you have for that?"

And they say: "Well, I don`t know but it`s always happened before."

So right now again, the bond market is reflecting the credit built up in previous responsible governments.

TONY JONES: Actually the bond market`s quite interesting because for the present moment there seems to be a huge influence on the US economy from the Asian central banks.

Is that risky?

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: Well sure.

Although, I`m not sure that it`s particularly riskier than a lot of other things. But yeah, we have this, I didn`t say this, but we`ve got twin deficits.

We`ve got a huge budget deficit and an equally large current account deficit.

And if you ask, "How are we financing the current account deficit?", well that`s a story.

A few years ago it was foreigners investing in the United States.

It was Daimler buying Chrysler, it was people investing in the strength of the US economy.

These days it`s Asian central banks buying up US Government debt because they`re trying to keep their currencies weak against the dollar and this can`t go on forever.

TONY JONES: Your detractors - and there are quite a few of them on the Republican side of the equation - they`re accusing you of scare mongering?

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: The first thing to say is to look at what some of those same people were saying in the middle of the Clinton years when the deficit was substantially smaller as a proportion of GDP and they were carrying on about what a bad thing it was.

The other thing is the comparison.

The only time post war that the United States has had anything like these deficits is the middle Reagan years and that was with unemployment close to 10 per cent.

A lot of that was a cyclical thing which would go away when the economy recovered.

Also the baby boomers were 20 years younger than they are today.

If you look at the actual fiscal situation, it`s much, much worse than it was even at its worst during the Reagan years. One way to say this is we have social security which is a retirement program which viewed on its own is running a surplus.

If you take that out of the budget then we`re running at a deficit of more than 6 per cent of GDP and that is unprecedented.

TONY JONES: One of your fiercest critics, Donald Luskin, seems to fear you because of your very credibility and your plausibility.

As he puts it, you`re the most "dangerous liberal commentator in the United States".

He says he once admired you but now he actually runs a website called the Krugman Truth Squad?

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: Yeah.

Well, look this is good.

Something I used - let them hate as long as they fear.

I think the point is, let me quote Harry Truman: "I give them the truth and they think it`s hell."

I don`t think I`ve been saying anything that isn`t quite straight forward.

It`s just arithmetic but it`s been stuff that a lot of, very few journalists have been willing or able to say.

TONY JONES: It`s a bit more than arithmetic though, isn`t it?

Would you agree with the proposition that you`re slowly transforming yourself, in a way, from a pure economist into also something of a political activist?

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: Well, yeah, I mean, it`s not what I intended. But I came in writing as a journalist, writing occasional columns in the 90s, mostly about economical fears with a political tinge.

I came to the New York Times intending to do pretty much the same thing.

But then it became clear very early on that the President of the United States was irresponsible and dishonest on matters economic and it turned out that what I learned there was true of other kind of policies as well.

So, I was forced, if you like, just by the arithmetic of understanding how the budget works into a much broader critique of this really kind of scary thing that`s happening to my country.

TONY JONES: Let`s look a little bit at that broader critique that you outline in The Great Unravelling, your new book.

You claim that President Bush is part of the radical right and that America has become a revolutionary power.

How did you come to those conclusions?

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: If you look at the policies and in a variety of areas, they`re not within the range of normal partisan divides.

That is, Republicans always want lower taxes and Democrats a bigger state.

There are always disagreements about how strong environmental policies should be, but we`re really way outside that now.

We`re talking about repeated tax cuts in the face of enormous deficits and in the face of war.

Never done that before.

We`re talking about a shift towards unilateralist foreign policy.

We`ve just gone to war without significant allies other than the UK to destroy weapons that didn`t exist.

This is something that`s kind of unique.

We`re seeing a radical breakdown of the separation of church and state in a lot of policy issues.

This is something that`s really outside normal politics and then if you just look at the political history, where do these people come from - you discover that there is a network of think tanks, organisations, funding sources, radical activists - which really, it`s more than just an ordinary swing of the political pendulum.

If you like, the vast right-wing conspiracy isn`t a theory, it`s quite clearly visible to anyone who takes a little care to do his home work.

TONY JONES: One of those think tanks, of course, is the Heritage Foundation which was set up in a way to boost a series of ideological positions on the economy, on the social front and is now, you say, virtually running, to some degree, a lot of economic policy and one of the things they say, for example, is that social security and Medicare are violations of basic principals?

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: That`s right.

Heritage is central.

Heritage is in the middle of everything.

Almost every - if you like, the WAPs, the policy types such as they are, as opposed to the politicos - but the WAPs in this administration are almost all connected with Heritage or American Enterprise Institute but one or both of those.

And Heritage very clearly in its letters to fund raisers reminds them that our goal is to get rid of these programs, that we need to get rid of the legacy of the new deal on the great society and that means social security and Medicare.

TONY JONES: Now here`s another quote from your book: "A revolutionary power does not accept the legitimacy of the state."

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: There`s a very hardline view.

There was actually a kind of revealing moment recently - Bush gave an interview, was more or less dragooned into an interview on Meet The Press and the interviewer said: "Well, what if you lose the election?"

And he said: "I`m not going to lose the election."

And the interviewer said: "But what if you do lose?"

He said: "I`m not going lose the election."

The possibility that they just would not regard it as a legitimate thing if someone else were to take power.

Quite a few people as part of the Republican movement have said that God chose Bush to be President.

I don`t know whether they would accept the idea that mere mortal men should choose for him not to be President for another four years.

TONY JONES: You also link the personal fortunes of George Bush and Dick Cheney to what you called the epidemic of corporate malfeasance.

Are you suggesting that, in a way, their business ethics somehow leaked out into the rest of the corporate world or that they`re just representative of it?

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: Oh no, they`re representative of it.

Let`s be clear.

Most of the explosion of corporate malfeasance really took place during the 90s.

It took place with Clinton in the White House, which is not to say that he caused it.

In fact, you could say a lot of it happened despite some mild efforts on the part of Clinton to stop it.

But the point is that you ask when Bush says, "I want to reform corporations," is he credible?

Well, you have to look back and say, "Gee his own personal fortune arose, in large part, through deals that look an awful like Enron."

TONY JONES: Nor do you spare Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Fed Reserve.

I always thought under the Clinton years or during the Clinton years he was the steady hand on the tiller.

You seem to refer to him these days as a partisan hack?

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: Well, here`s a special case.

I mean, the governor of the central bank has a terribly important job, enormous responsibility and power.

He`s not an elected official.

This is an agreement that we`ve all reached - that this is a good thing to do because monetary policy is too easily politicised.

Best to have it in a technocrat.

In his role as a technocrat Greenspan has done a good job, not as stellar a job as his admirers will tell you but he`s done a very good job.

There`s an obligation that goes with this which is to stand above and outside the political fray.

Greenspan did that during the 90s.

But no sooner was Bush in office than Greenspan threw his weight behind tax cuts.

He actually went to Congress and argued that we need tax cuts because otherwise we`re going to run excessively large budget surpluses and pay down our debt too quickly.

Which he shouldn`t have done in the first place.

This was violating the role.

Then, of course, when it turned out to be completely wrong.

Instead we`ve plunged from surpluses into huge deficits, he has now said, "Well, I don`t think we should rescind the tax cut, instead we need to talk about cutting social security benefits."

That`s injecting himself into politics in a very partisan fashion.

TONY JONES: You essentially claiming the Fed is no longer independent?

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: Well Mr Greenspan is acting as a partisan figure.

He is acting as somebody who is doing whatever he can to support the agenda of this right-wing movement that is now running a large part of the Government.

I think that the star at the Fed is as good as ever.

My belief is that if you were to promote one of the other governors to chairman of the Fed we would be back to business as we`ve had it before.

I don`t think everybody has been corrupted but I do think that Mr Greenspan has gone very far - basically has abused in his position, in a way, that`s no longer recoverable.

TONY JONES: We will have to leave it there.

Paul Krugman, we thank you very much for taking the time to come and join us tonight.

PROFESSOR PAUL KRUGMAN: Well, thank you.

[Joerver]

March 11, 2004
Spain Struggles to Absorb Worst Terrorist Attack in Its History
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

MADRID, March 11 — In the bloodiest terrorist attack in modern Spanish history, 10 bombs exploded during this morning`s rush hour in three commuter train stations here. The Interior Ministry said more than 190 people were killed and more than 1,200 wounded.

Three other bombs were discovered and detonated by the police in the highly coordinated explosions, which went off within a 10-minute period.

As the country struggled to absorb the carnage just three days before general elections, Prime Minister José María Aznar appeared on television and called the attacks "mass murder." He vowed that Spain would never negotiate with "these assassins."

Mr. Aznar added, "March 11 now has it place in the history of infamy."

Already some Spaniards are calling the attacks the country`s "9/11," and the front page of a special edition of the biggest daily, El Pais, this afternoon ran the headline, "11-M."

There was no advance warning of the attacks. At first, the Spanish authorities blamed E.T.A., the Basque group that has been seeking independence from Spain for more than three decades.

Later today, however, the Interior Ministry said the police had found a van with detonators and an Arabic-language tape of Koranic verses, according to news agencies, and that it was considering all lines of investigation.

An Arabic newspaper, Al-Quds al-Arabi, said it had received a claim of responsibility for theid train bombings issued in the name of Al Qaeda.

The five-page e-mail claim, signed by the shadowy Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade, was received at the paper`s London offices. It said the brigade`s "death squad" had penetrated "one of the pillars of the crusade alliance, Spain."

"This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America`s ally in its war against Islam," the claim said.

After the purported claim of responsibility emerged, however, an American counterterrorism official said that the claim should be viewed with skepticism. Without being specific, the American counterterrorism official said that "the evidence at this point" doesn`t point in the direction of Al Qaeda involvement.

The official said the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade had a record of making false claims of responsibility and said the significance of the reported discovery by Spanish investigators of a van with Koranic verses was unclear.

"There is an Al Qaeda presence in Spain; there is an Al Qaeda presence in this country." the official said.

"Al Qaeda doesn`t normally claim responsibility for attacks. We`re not ruling anything out, but I would caution against jumping to the conclusion that this was Al Qaeda. When there are attacks sometimes people come out of the woodwork to claim responsibility for propaganda reasons."

The attacks in Spain "do represent an attack on a larger scale, but it certainly was within E.T.A.`s capability to pull that off," the official said.

The government declared a three-day period of mourning, and political parties participating in the elections called off all remaining campaign events, although elections will proceed as scheduled.

"All of Spain is suffering," said Mariano Rajoy, the front-runner and leader of the governing Popular Party, who has made the war on terrorism a centerpiece of his campaign and pledged to follow Mr. Aznar`s policies. "This is a moment to put aside differences and show unity with the victims and their families."

Most of the victims were ordinary middle- and working-class people and university students commuting into Madrid, although children were also among the dead.

At the main Atocha commuter station in the heart of Madrid, just a block from the Prado Museum, an explosion cut a train in two, sending pieces of metal high into the air. Bloody victims crawled from mangled train cars and staggered into the streets. Other victims were found burned to death in their seats.

There, as at the nearby Santa Eugenia and El Pozo stations, broken bodies and body parts were thrown along the platforms; in the aftermath, rescue workers unused to massive terrorist attacks struggled to separate the dead from the wounded.

Amet Oulabid, a 23-year-old carpenter, said he got off the front of the train at the Atocha station just seconds before the bomb went off in one of its rear cars.

"I saw bodies flying," he said. "There was a security guard dripping with blood. People were pushing and running. I saw a woman who had fallen on the tracks because people were pushing so hard. I escaped with my life by a hair."

At El Pozo, just east of downtown Madrid, Luz Elena Bustos, 42, got off a nearby bus just 10 minutes before the explosion at that station.

"There were pieces of flesh and ribs all over the road," she said. "There were ribs, brains all over. I never saw anything like this. The train was blown apart. I saw a lot of smoke, people running all over, crying. I saw part of a hand up to the elbow and a body without a head face down on the ground. Flesh all over. I started to cry from nerves. There was a 3-year-old boy all burnt and a father was holding him in his arms, crying."

People combed the city`s major hospitals in search of family members believed to be aboard the trains.

"Ay, please, God, this can`t be happening," said Carmen Gómez, 47, sobbing as she studied a patient list — in vain — at Gregorio Marañón hospital, seven hours after the terrorist attack. She said her friend`s 25-year-old daughter was aboard a train bound for Atocha station, but after traveling to four major hospitals, they had not yet located her. "How could a human being do this, how could a human being do this?" she asked.

The bombs, which were contained in plastic bags and backpacks, began exploding at about 7:50 a.m. The police quickly sealed off the bomb sites and blocked off surrounding streets; police helicopters flew over Madrid throughout the day, amid predictions that there could be other attacks.

The police had been put on a terror alert for a possible terrorist attack as the country prepares to go to the polls.

But the attacks clearly took Mr. Aznar, his government and the Spanish people by surprise. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Aznar, who survived an E.T.A. attack years ago, boasted that terrorism "is a lot weaker than it was."

The security situation seemed so stable that King Juan Carlos attended the soccer match between Spain`s star-studded Real Madrid team and Munich on Wednesday evening.

Today, the king, accompanied by his wife, Queen Sofía, their son and heir, Prince Felipe, and his fiancée, Letizia Ortiz, visited a hospital in central Madrid to comfort survivors and their families.

The attacks on Madrid`s busiest commuter train stations at the height of rush hour was clearly designed to inflict maximum civilian casualties, attract the world`s attention and illustrate that Spain is not safe.

Despite overwhelming popular opposition, Spain was one of the most fervent supporters of the American-led war in Iraq and there are 1,300 Spanish troops on Iraqi soil. Last October, two audiotapes reportedly made by Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, said that his group had the "right to respond at any suitable time and place" against countries with forces in Iraq, listing Spain as one of his targets.

If the Basque group is responsible for today`s bombings, it would be its deadliest attack; it killed 21 people in a supermarket blast in Barcelona in 1987. But E.T.A. has been severely damaged by cooperation between Spain and France, and last year, E.T.A. killed 3 people, compared with 23 in 2000 and 15 in 2001.

E.T.A. almost always gives warnings in advance and claims responsibility, and has never conducted an attack of this magnitude. But according to one Spanish government official, the bombers used a kind of dynamite also found in the bomb-laden van intercepted last month.

Arnaldo Otegi, leader of Batasuna, E.T.A.`s political wing, which has been banned in Spain, said E.T.A. probably was not behind the attacks, saying that the attack could have been the work of "Arab resistance."

Douglas Jehl contributed reporting from Washington for this article.



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March 12, 2004
Court Orders San Francisco Officials to Halt Gay Marriages
By DEAN E. MURPHY

SAN FRANCISCO, March 11 — The California Supreme Court on Thursday ordered city officials here to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, bringing at least a temporary end to a monthlong experiment that had thrust San Francisco to the forefront of a national debate on gay marriage.

"Effective immediately, we are stopping the issuance and recordation of same-sex marriage licenses," the city`s assessor-recorder, Mabel S. Teng, announced at a news conference after receiving word of the court`s unanimous decision.

The court did not rule on the legality of the marriages, nor did it address the constitutional issues raised by city officials in defense of them. It also left open the possibility that the city could issue the licenses again after further review of two lawsuits on the matter.

"The people who were seeking to stop the marriages prevailed for the time being," said Jesse H. Choper, professor of constitutional law at the University of California, Berkeley. "The only question was who would win for the time being, and they won for the time being."

The ruling came as Massachusetts legislators moved a step closer to amending the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage but allow civil unions. [Page A12.]

Opponents of the marriages, stymied in several efforts to block them in the lower courts, declared a long-awaited victory.

"It is an overdue day, but a good day," said State Senator William J. Knight, a Palmdale Republican who was the author of a successful ballot measure in 2000 opposing same-sex marriages. "Finally the courts have taken action to put an end to the anarchy in San Francisco."

The ruling came as a shock to city officials and groups who support same-sex marriages despite a state ban in state law. The advocacy group Marriage Equality California organized a march from the Castro District to the Supreme Court building for a rally.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said the city would continue to challenge the constitutionality of the state`s ban in court. The city filed a lawsuit Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court raising some of its concerns.

"I believe confidently that when we get to the constitutional question, I will prevail," Mr. Newsom said at a news conference. "But I wouldn`t be surprised if there weren`t other setbacks in this process. This is the beginning of a struggle, hardly the end."

The Supreme Court said it would consider in May or June whether city officials, under Mr. Newsom`s direction, acted beyond their authority "in refusing to enforce the provisions" of the state`s family code that define marriage as between a man and a woman.

In the meantime, the justices directed San Francisco officials "to enforce and apply the provisions" of the family code without regard to their "personal view of the constitutionality" of the laws. In allowing the licenses to be issued, Mayor Newsom had argued that the State Constitution`s guarantee of equal protection took precedence.

The court issued the ruling in two separate cases. One was brought by the California attorney general, Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, at the urging of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. The other was filed by the Alliance Defense Fund, a religious group based in Arizona.

"I am pleased to learn the justices of the California Supreme Court determined this matter to be an issue of fundamental statewide importance," Mr. Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

Erwin Chemerinsky, professor of public interest law at the University of Southern California, said the court`s ruling amounted to "a freezing of the status quo," as it existed before the first license was issued to a same-sex couple on Feb. 12.

Professor Chemerinsky, who had predicted that the court would not get involved in the matter, described the ruling as "extraordinary" and said it offered hints about the justices` thinking about the legality of the marriages.

"I think what we know at this stage is it means they are troubled with what San Francisco is doing," he said.

Several couples who were waiting at City Hall for appointments to receive licenses were turned away, some of them in tears.

"They were heartbroken," said the county clerk, Nancy Alfaro, whose office issues marriage licenses. "It was very sudden."

At last count, Mr. Newsom said that more than 4,100 licenses had been issued to same-sex couples. An additional 2,600 couples had made appointments for a license.

Kate Kendell, the executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and among the witnesses at the first same-sex marriage ceremony, said proponents were disappointed but not deterred. Ms. Kendell warned against reading too much into the court`s order.

"I think the California Supreme Court has signaled one thing and one thing only," she said, "and that is a desire to approach this historic moment cautiously, deliberately and slowly. We consider this to be simply a pause."

The reaction among some couples at City Hall was more emotional. Patricia Egan, 46, a real estate agent, and Meghan Wharton, 29, a lawyer, were among the first would-be newlyweds who were turned away from the county clerk`s office.

The two women had flown to San Francisco in the morning from Phoenix for a 2:30 p.m. appointment. They had filled out the proper paperwork for the license, but when they approached the counter for their appointment they learned that they were two minutes too late.

"I thought they were kidding," Ms. Wharton said. " I didn`t think it was possible, and certainly it wasn`t possible to happen to me. I started crying. I`m devastated."


Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting for this article.



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March 12, 2004
G.I.`s May Be Targets of Kidnappers and Rebels Posing as Policemen
By THOM SHANKER

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 11 — American forces arriving in Iraq are being singled out for kidnapping by insurgents, according to senior military officers. The insurgents, they say, may make a symbolic spectacle of abducted soldiers or use captives to negotiate the release of Iraqi prisoners.

Military commanders are also concerned about a possible new terrorist tactic: posing as police officers. Two American civilians and their translator were killed Tuesday, and initial reports indicated that their attackers were dressed in Iraqi police uniforms.

The warning on kidnapping is being given to Marine Corps and Army ground forces rotating into Iraq. The military officers say the information has come from a number of intelligence discoveries, though they would specify only one: a seized letter the Americans say was written by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian suspected of ties to Al Qaeda.

The highly protective measures now in place for American troops in Iraq are considered sufficient, commanders say, adding that security measures are constantly being reviewed. Some 110,000 American troops are rotating into Iraq.

Security briefings for arriving troops include a stern reminder to never walk or travel alone.

"The terrorists want to capture one of our soldiers," a senior American military officer said. "It`s always harder to take two."

At a news conference on Thursday, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, spoke about the possibility that terrorists were posing as Iraqi police officers.

"We are very concerned about it," he said. There are no indications yet, he said, that the attackers who killed the two Americans and their translator on Tuesday were actually Iraqi policemen.

Military officers declined to disclose the information other than the Zarqawi letter, which American officials in Iraq said was found in mid-January in the possession of a Qaeda suspect arrested in Iraq. One passage in the letter, which was translated by American officials, broadly describes a strategy of kidnapping American troops.

"As you know, these are the biggest cowards that God has created and the easiest target," it says. "And we ask God to allow us to kill and detain them so that we can exchange them with our arrested sheiks and brothers."

Army and Marine Corps commanders say that arriving troops express concern about the threat of kidnapping, but that, as one officer put it, any anxiety will diminish "once they`re inside the country, once they`ve got their feet on the ground."

"You drive down the road and you`ve got a gun in your hands, and you`ve got more than enough for a fair fight," the officer said.

The insurgent threat in Iraq is evolving from one of small-unit firefights with supporters of the former government, many of whom have formal military training, to terrorist-style suicide bombings that wreak spectacular violence.

The kidnapping or capture of American troops would also have a powerful effect, military officers warn. In 1993, images of two dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, shocked Americans and deterred the United States for many years from deploying ground troops.



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March 12, 2004
U.S. Muffles Sweeping Call to Democracy in Mideast
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, March 11 — The Bush administration, yielding to protests from European and Arab leaders, has set aside its plan to issue a sweeping call for economic, political and cultural reform in the Middle East at a June conference of major industrial nations, American and Arab officials said Thursday.

Because of Arab objections that such a call would give the appearance that change was being dictated from without, the officials said, the summit conference will instead proclaim its endorsement of reforms under way in the Middle East.

Administration officials said they would work with European leaders to encourage Arab nations to proclaim their own reform measures before the meeting, which is to take place at Sea Island, Ga., with President Bush as host.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with Jordan`s foreign minister, Marwan Muasher, and discussed Jordan`s attempt to persuade the Arab League to call for more open societies and democratic institutions at a meeting this month in Tunisia.

"Reform is important and needed in the Arab world," Mr. Muasher said in an interview on Thursday. "We agree with that completely. But for it to work we need ownership of the process, not a one-for-all blueprint from Washington."

A draft of the American call for change was circulated to some European countries and then leaked to Al Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, in February — all before the administration had shown it to Arab leaders, angering many of them.

"Our objective is for this document never to see the light," Mr. Muasher said of the draft. He said Secretary Powell had accepted the idea that the Sea Island meeting would not adopt the proposal.

In recent years King Abdullah II of Jordan has led the way in encouraging independent political activities. The United States was so eager to highlight those reforms that it was considering inviting the king and leaders from Morocco, Bahrain and other countries to the meeting.

That idea has receded, say various officials involved in planning the meeting. A European diplomat said there was a fear that those leaders would be viewed sneeringly as "good students" in the Arab world.

A senior State Department official said that in his meeting with Mr. Muasher, Mr. Powell understood that "nothing is going to work if it looks like it is being imposed" and that aid, investment and trade preferences should be used to "enhance" the reforms under way.

Another administration official said the lengthy draft published by Al Hayat was considered dead. It has been denounced by two close allies of Washington, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

"All peoples by their nature reject whoever tries to impose ideas on them," Mr. Mubarak said.

European leaders also criticized the draft, citing as well its failure to discuss the need for a peaceful end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The administration last week dispatched Marc Grossman, the under secretary of state for political affairs, to Europe and the Arab world.

Mr. Muasher, who was visiting Washington on Thursday, said his comments reflected a "broad consensus among the Europeans as well."

Mr. Powell, testifying before the House International Relations Committee, said the text in Al Hayat had caused much misunderstanding. The document, he said, was never intended to be anything more than a draft for discussion.

"I think we are now getting a better understanding with the Arab nations that it has to be something that comes from them," Mr. Powell said. "If you don`t want us to help, you don`t want us to help."

Some administration officials said confusion had arisen because the administration had to draft its proposed declaration to be able to present it to Arab leaders, but by then it appeared to be a definitive pronouncement.

The summit meeting will bring together the leaders of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia, and leaders of the European Union.

Arafat Calls for Israeli Pullout

JERUSALEM, March 11 — The Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, said Thursday that he would welcome an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, provided that it was coordinated with the Palestinians and was part of a broader peace effort.

Mr. Arafat and other Palestinian leaders at first dismissed the proposal for unilateral action as a limited step intended to undermine a more comprehensive peace plan.

Mr. Arafat reiterated the Palestinian demand for a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.



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March 12, 2004
Ground Zero, Madrid

The terrorist attacks in Madrid yesterday were a monstrous crime against innocent humanity. They were also a reminder that terrorism is a worldwide threat and that fighting it is not America`s problem alone. Combating terrorism effectively requires the fullest possible international cooperation, especially in intelligence, law enforcement and the tracking of terrorist finances. Most of the hard work will be far less dramatic than the successful military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, each new terrorist act demonstrates that military action alone is not the solution. Terrorism cannot be eradicated simply by driving the Taliban out of Kabul or capturing Saddam Hussein.

The series of bombs in Madrid that killed nearly 200 people and injured more than 1,400 came three days before national elections. Whether the bombers came from the Basque terrorist group ETA, as the Spanish government initially presumed, Al Qaeda or elsewhere, comparisons to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are inevitable and appropriate. Neither Spain nor America stand alone.

The list of terrorist outrages around the world has been grimly lengthening since that Sept. 11. Fanatics have sown carnage in places like Bali, Mombasa, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Moscow, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh and Istanbul. Europe has been a particular target for decades. Britain and Northern Ireland have endured the bombings of the Irish Republican Army, French civilians have been killed by radical Algerian groups, and hundreds of Spaniards have been murdered by ETA.

At a time like this, trans-Atlantic squabbling about the nature of the terrorist threat and how to fight it seems tragically misplaced. Terrorism threatens all of us, everywhere, every morning. Terrorists respect no national boundaries, political systems, ideologies or religions. The fight against them must be just as multinational. We are all Madrileños now.



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March 12, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Another Silent Noon in Madrid
By Javier Marías

MADRID

The terrorist attacks almost always happen in the early morning. Whether it turns out that yesterday`s train-station bombings were the work of the usual suspects — the Basque terrorist group ETA — or of Al Qaeda or another group altogether, the murderers stuck to the usual timetable.

Spain has developed a customary response to these morning attacks. At noon, the local officials in every Spanish city stand outside the doors of their buildings, in heat, cold or rain, for a minute or two of silence. They`re joined by anyone who wants to join them, whoever happens to be nearby. It makes a strong impression, this silence of mourning and condemnation, a collective hush maintained by people who interrupt their tasks or their errands to stand wordlessly in the middle of the street. Any curse or outcry against the murderers is usually quieted, because at those moments true condemnation consists of saying nothing. And no matter how many times the tradition has been repeated over the course of far too many years, it loses none of its force.

Unlike the terrorists, I get up late. From my balcony I can see the Ayuntamiento, or city hall, which stands at the heart of the capital. If I`m absorbed in writing, a sudden silence lets me know an attack has happened. Who could it have been? I wonder. Who was it this time? Some poor town councilman who was also a carpenter or the owner of a candy store? A journalist? A soldier? A policeman? A judge? A mother and her children who just happened to be going by when the bomb went off? Perhaps this time it was some firefighters who were helping the first round of victims when a second, delayed bomb mowed them down during their rescue work.

Yesterday, from inside my house, I noticed that strange silence. I went to the balcony and saw the mayor and the entire city council, those from the mayor`s party and the opposition, standing in front of the Ayuntamiento in silence. There were many more ordinary people than usual, just standing there. The flags were at half-staff.

"It`s happened again," I thought, and wondered who it could have been this time. But yesterday that question had no answer, because for the moment there were only anonymous corpses, more than 190 of them as I write these lines. There were at least 10 bombs altogether, at three Madrid train stations, just when the commuter trains were full of people on their way to work, students on their way to class, sleepy people who had just gotten out of bed.

It is the bloodiest terrorist attack in Spain`s history, and it took place only a couple of days before the general elections, the elections we never fail to vote in — at least those of us who lived under Gen. Francisco Franco and yearned to be able to vote at least once in our lives — however little we like the political parties currently on offer.

Eventually we will find out which group was behind this atrocity. But even if the ETA isn`t responsible for yesterday`s bombings, the attack serves as a reminder that Spain has switched from one dictatorship to another. Indeed, it`s quite evident that the ETA misses the Franco era. Back then, it could at least appear to be a "resistance" group. These days, set as it is in a democracy, it cannot.

After all, there`s been no oppression in the Basque region for more than 25 years (beyond, of course, what the ETA itself exercises). There is an autonomous government and a parliament with a broad jurisdiction, and even a Basque police force, which, from time to time, the ETA attacks. The group is no different than the Mafia. Its members and sympathizers know that if they stop killing, they`ll be nobodies in their towns and cities, they`ll no longer be "respectable" — that is, fearsome and opportunistic.

Under Franco, Madrid suffered the same level of oppression as the Basque country or any other region of Spain, if not more, given that the central government was always here, controlling what was close at hand. Today, once again, Madrid suffers the maximum oppression. The attack could have happened anywhere, it`s just that there are more people here, and more victims to fall.

A few years ago we learned, by their own confession, that the members of an ETA commando unit who shot a Seville city councilman and his wife in the back (she just happened to be strolling along the street with him) celebrated their tremendous feat with a big dinner that night, a feast with champagne and laughter. There`s no reason to think that the perpetrators of this massacre and those who gave them their orders won`t celebrate in similar fashion.

What a laugh: see the people weeping, see them ripped apart, see their bodies exploding or being crushed under a mass of twisted metal, see them thrown out of the train, flying, see them engulfed in flames, see how they go on dying in the hospitals, one by one. They were on their way to school, to the office, to the factory. And look at them now: what a laugh.

With time, all causes cease, and all terrorist groups disband or wither away. One day, perhaps years from now, that will happen with the ETA — and there`s very likely to be an amnesty that will release its members now in prison. This is what happened at the beginning of our democracy, when all political prisoners were given their freedom, even those who had committed murder. I`m sure that the citizens of Spain will consent to such an amnesty and view it as a good thing, albeit with some distaste. But not in our innermost selves, not in our memories or our consciences. In that space that is neither civic nor political, in that personal, intimate space, we will never forgive them.


Javier Marías is the author of the novels "A Heart So White" and "The Man of Feeling." This was translated by Esther Allen from the Spanish.



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March 12, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Our Wounded Warriors
By BOB HERBERT

Hector Delgado joined the Marines in the spring of 1999. He was at loose ends in his hometown of Selden, N.Y., and hoped the Marines would give his life some "structure and discipline."

"Did it work?" I asked.

Corporal Delgado shifted his upper body in his wheelchair and laughed. "Oh, absolutely," he said. "One hundred percent."

His enlistment was supposed to have been up last March, and his plans were to pursue a career in law enforcement. He`d taken and passed the test for the New York City Police Department and was due to enter the police academy last summer.

But the U.S. went to war with Iraq, and Corporal Delgado`s enlistment was extended. "They were pretty much preventing people from getting out," he said. "I was disappointed at first. But I had to sit down and really think about who I was, which was a marine, you know? This was my job."

Corporal Delgado was in the first wave of troops sent to Iraq and was severely injured in April 2003. He was with a convoy of vehicles, including fuel tankers, that had stopped outside Nasiriya. "All the fuel tankers were staged next to each other," he said. "Everyone was trying to sit in between them to get out of the sun because it was like 105 degrees that day.

"There was a lot of heavy equipment around, shaking the ground. And a tanker trailer really isn`t all that sturdy in the sand. I had my friend Corporal Gonzalez sitting to my left, and all of a sudden I just started hearing metal crinkling and everybody yelling: `Get up! Get up!` "

Somehow the supports holding up the tanker that had been shielding Corporal Delgado and others from the fierce desert sun gave way.

"It landed on top of me," Corporal Delgado said. "On top of my waist."

He was pinned to the ground, facedown, for 25 minutes, remaining conscious the entire time. His pelvis was crushed. His right hip was broken and dislocated. Bones in his left leg and left foot were shattered. His abdominal muscles were crushed, and he suffered nerve damage in both legs.

In one of the great understatements of the 21st century, Corporal Delgado, who is 24, said, "It was very painful."

The rescue effort was excruciating. "They came with a forklift to try to lift it up," he said. "But the forklift couldn`t do it. So they came over with a crane, and they hooked it up and the crane wasn`t working. So they had to take the crane back and get another crane. As soon as they got it up, they pulled me out, and I was in so much pain they just threw me on the stretcher and put me in the medical Hummer and brought me to the medical tent.

"I looked up and saw both my feet were flopped over to the left, and I didn`t want to look up again."

Corporal Delgado would learn later that his close friend, Cpl. Armando Gonzalez, who was right beside him when the tanker fell, was killed instantly. (Corporal Gonzalez, of Hialeah, Fla., was 25. He had married just six months prior to the accident, and last September his wife gave birth to a son.)

The troops who are selflessly sacrificing their bodies and their dreams in Iraq (as troops always do in war), are not getting a lot of attention here at home. Most of us are busy with other things — presidential politics, Martha Stewart`s rise and fall, the use of steroids in baseball.

I was put in touch with Corporal Delgado (and several other marines who were badly wounded in Iraq) by John Melia, founder of the Wounded Warrior Project (a division of the United Spinal Association), which tries to assist the young men and women who are hurt in the wars they fight for us.

"They come back," he said, "and in many cases they`re not the same kids that they were when they left us."

Thousands of U.S. troops have been wounded and injured in Iraq. They have been paralyzed, lost limbs, suffered blindness, been horribly burned and so on. They are heroes, without question, but their stories have largely gone untold.

If Corporal Delgado is harboring any bitterness, I couldn`t detect it. There were times, he said, when he wished he had died beneath the trailer. But he fought his way through the mental distress, just as he is fighting through the physical pain, and his goal is to one day walk again. He`ll be discharged from the Marines soon and hopes to find work helping other disabled veterans.

"That`s one way I could repay all the people who are helping me now," he said.


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March 12, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
No More Excuses on Jobs
By PAUL KRUGMAN

As job growth continues to elude the U.S. economy, we`re hearing two main excuses from the Bush administration and its supporters: that the real situation is much better than you`re hearing, and that to the extent employment is lagging, it`s the result of factors outside the administration`s control. But after three years of extravagant promises and dismal results, the time for excuses has passed.

Let`s start with the real job situation. A number of readers have asked me about what Marc Racicot, who heads the Bush re-election effort, told Don Imus the other day. He claimed that those miserable job numbers are misleading, and that another survey presents both a more accurate and a much happier story. You can find the same claim all over the right-wing media. But it just isn`t so.

It`s true that there are two employment surveys, which have been diverging lately. The establishment survey, which asks businesses how many workers they employ, says that 2.4 million jobs have vanished in the last three years. The household survey, which asks individuals whether they have jobs, says that employment has actually risen by 450,000. The administration`s supporters, understandably, prefer the second number.

But the experts disagree. According to Alan Greenspan: "I wish I could say the household survey were the more accurate. Everything we`ve looked at suggests that it`s the payroll data which are the series which you have to follow." You may have heard that the establishment survey doesn`t count jobs created by new businesses; not so. The bureau knows what it`s doing — conservative commentators are raising objections only because they don`t like the facts.

And even the less reliable household survey paints a bleak picture of an economy in which jobs have lagged far behind population growth. The fraction of adults who say they are employed fell steeply between early 2001 and the summer of 2003, and has stagnated since then.

But wait — hasn`t the unemployment rate fallen since last summer? Yes, but that`s entirely the result of people dropping out of the labor force. Even if you`re out of work, you`re not counted as unemployed unless you`re actively looking for a job.

We don`t know why so many people have stopped looking for jobs, but it probably has something to do with the fact that jobs are so hard to find: 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work more than 15 weeks, a 20-year record. In any case, the administration should feel grateful that so many people have dropped out. As the Economic Policy Institute points out, if they hadn`t dropped out, the official unemployment rate would be an eye-popping 7.4 percent, not a politically spinnable 5.6 percent.

In short, things aren`t as bad as they seem; they`re worse. But should we blame the Bush administration? Yes — because it refuses to learn from experience.

Franklin Roosevelt, in his efforts to combat economic woes, was famously willing to try anything until he found something that worked. George Bush, by contrast, seems determined to try the same thing, over and over again.

In 2001 the administration rammed through long-term tax cuts, heavily tilted toward the affluent. But employment didn`t turn around, and by late 2002 many economists — including supporters of the original tax cut — were urging it to try something different. My own piece, "My Economic Plan," was fairly typical: I called for extended unemployment benefits, temporary aid to state and local governments, and rebates for low- and middle-income workers.

Maybe this more or less textbook response to a depressed economy wouldn`t have worked. But we`ll never know, because the administration rejected all such proposals. Instead, it went for a clone of the 2001 tax cut — another big break mainly for those at the top. And once again this failed to deliver the promised jobs.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bush has mortgaged the nation`s future. If all of his tax cuts are made permanent, they`ll reduce revenue by at least three times the amount that would be needed to secure Social Security benefits at current levels for the next 75 years.

No sensible person blames Mr. Bush for the onset of the recession in 2001. But he does deserve blame for the fact that all he has to show for three years of supposed job-creation policies is a mountain of debt.


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Sanctions Against Syria Nearly Ready
Officials Say U.S. Aims to Preserve Cooperation on Intelligence, Business Deals

By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A16


The Bush administration is in the final stages of deciding on new punitive measures to take against Syria, but is trying to limit any damage to intelligence cooperation from Damascus or to U.S. business deals on oil and communications, officials said yesterday.

The administration has settled on the broad outlines of its sanctions under the new Syrian Accountability Act but has struggled over the final details, according to U.S. officials. The result is now expected to be a balance of new restrictions on the government of President Bashar Assad that would include key exemptions to export restrictions, such as allowing the purchase of U.S. computers, cell phones and communications equipment, as well as aviation spare parts.

The exemptions covering communications products will be justified as allowing the "continued ability of people to gain information from the outside world and promote people-to-people exchanges," said a U.S. official involved in the interagency discussions. But pragmatic considerations shape both choices. Motorola Inc., a U.S. company, distributes cell phones in Syria. And aviation spare parts will be exempted because the United States does not want to be responsible for deaths or injuries in the event of aircraft problems, U.S. officials said.

The most interesting decision may be what the White House is choosing not to do. The administration is expected to opt against two provisions that would limit Syrian diplomatic activity and movement, officials said.

Washington does not want to face reciprocal restrictions in Syria, which could curtail U.S. intelligence activities in and with Syria at a key time in Iraq and the war on terrorism, the officials said. U.S. officials admit Syria`s cooperation has been important, if uneven.

The new law has two key parts. First, it requires the administration to ban the export of any dual-use goods that could be channeled into the production of weapons of mass destruction. Some exemptions will be made for products that might be included, such as communications gear, congressional sources said.

Second, the act requires the administration to pick two of six punitive measures. The White House has indicated to congressional officials that it is leaning toward picking more than two. The main new sanctions will be economic, such as banning U.S. exports to Syria except for humanitarian goods such as food and medicine, congressional and administration officials said. Washington may also block financial transactions by Damascus.

In addition, the administration is expected to prohibit aircraft owned or operated by Syria from flying to the United States or using American airspace, a token measure since no Syrian planes fly anywhere near the United States, U.S. officials said.

The most problematic and debated step proposed by the act calls for banning U.S. businesses from investing or operating in Syria, congressional and administration officials said. U.S. oil companies, including ConocoPhillips Co. and Devon Energy Corp., have business interests in Syria.

The White House has notified Congress that it will make a decision no later than next week, according to congressional officials. "You`ll see the implementation very shortly, and I think it will be a very firm implementation of the Syrian Accountability Act and the intent behind it," Assistant Secretary of State William Burns said in congressional testimony Wednesday.

The measures are important signals to Syria. "It is important to the United States that Syria look at the situation, that Syria understand that there is a changed circumstance in the world and the region, Syria stop its support for terrorism, Syria stop its allowing groups to operate there, that Syria take a serious attitude about borders and assets and issues like that that we`ve raised with them where we have, indeed, seen a little bit of progress here and there," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters yesterday.

"If Syria chooses to ignore all those facts and ignore the positions that we and others have taken, then there`s not much prospect for our relationship," he added.



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`Selfless` Spirit Killed In an Ambush in Iraq


By Sewell Chan and Caryle Murphy
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A01


BAGHDAD, March 11 -- Fern L. Holland was tough, passionate and anything but predictable -- leaving a secure job at a Washington law firm to work in Africa, then going to Iraq to help local women assert their rights in the postwar political process, her friends and colleagues recalled Thursday.

On Tuesday night, Holland and Robert J. Zangas of Trafford, Pa., became the first American civilian employees of the Coalition Provisional Authority to be killed in Iraq. Gunmen wearing Iraqi police uniforms stopped their vehicle at a makeshift checkpoint near Hilla, 60 miles south of the Iraqi capital, and shot the two Americans and an Iraqi translator to death, according to U.S. and allied military spokesmen.

Holland, 33, was based in Hilla and spent much of her time with the occupation authority promoting women`s political empowerment. She helped draft sections of the Iraqi interim constitution intended to ensure a role for women in the country`s evolving system of governance, relatives and colleagues said.

"She was fearless and selfless," Molly A. Elkin, a partner at Woodley & McGillivary, a labor law firm in downtown Washington that employed Holland in 2002 and 2003, said in a telephone interview.

Michael Dannenberg, an aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) who was Holland`s roommate for 18 months on Capitol Hill, called her "one of the bravest people I`ve ever known."

"She walked away from the trappings" of a Washington law firm, Dannenberg said, "to work to extend human dignity to women and men in different parts of the world."

Five Iraqis were arrested in connection with the killings after Polish troops, who are responsible for security in the sector around Hilla, caught them in Holland`s car with the bodies of the three victims still inside.

A spokesman for the Polish military initially called the slayings "practically an execution" carried out by insurgents masquerading as policemen.

But U.S. military and occupation officials said Thursday that they had not ruled out the possibility that the attackers were Iraqi police, not impostors.

"We`re very concerned about it," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq.

Just as the attack near Hilla underscored the dangers faced by the roughly 3,000 Americans working for the occupation authority, a similar slaying demonstrated that Iraqis who assist the occupation are a target of insurgents.

Officials said Thursday that two Iraqi women employed as laundry workers under a contract with Kellogg Brown & Root -- a unit of Halliburton Co., which is repairing oilfields and providing support to U.S. troops in Iraq -- were shot dead Wednesday near the southern city of Basra.

Also Thursday, two U.S. soldiers were killed and one wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb, a military spokesman said.

The soldiers, part of the 82nd Airborne Division, 1st Brigade Combat Team, were escorting a convoy northeast of the town of Habbaniya, about 50 miles west of Baghdad.

Born in Miami, Okla., Holland received a psychology degree from Oklahoma University in 1992, according to her brother, James Holland, 37, of Kansas City, Mo.

She worked for a year at children`s hospitals in Siberia and Africa and aspired to be a physician, he said, but "decided she could do more good by getting a law degree." She graduated near the top of her class at the University of Tulsa law school in 1996 and took a job with a Tulsa law firm.

"She had a very lucrative career . . . but she wanted to make a difference," Holland said. So she joined the Peace Corps in 1999 and traveled to the southern African country of Namibia, where she spent 16 months helping to build schools.

Holland returned to the United States in late 2001 and spent nearly a year on the staff at Woodley & McGillivary before returning last year to Africa -- this time to run a legal assistance clinic for victims of sexual abuse in Guinea. She then went to Iraq as a human rights consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development, subsequently taking a full-time job with USAID specializing in women`s rights for the occupation authority.

James Holland said his sister found her work in Iraq extremely rewarding and made many friends. "She loved the people there," Holland said.

But, he added, "I guess at the end of the day, Fern knew what the risks were and she was prepared to take them. . . . She paid the ultimate sacrifice for something she dearly believed in."

She said as much in an e-mail sent on Jan. 21 to Stephen Godolf, a partner at the Tulsa firm where Holland worked as a law clerk and junior lawyer from 1993 to 1999. "If I die," she wrote, "know that I`m doing precisely what I want to be doing."

Zangas, a computer software salesman in Pittsburgh and a Marine reservist who was in Iraq as a civilian, acted as the liaison for the multinational division.

His wife, Brenda Zangas, said in a telephone interview that Zangas, 44, prepared his family for the worst and that they talked about the way they would respond if something happened to him.

The Zangas family lived for 13 years in Gaithersburg while Zangas, a helicopter pilot and lieutenant colonel, was on active duty in the Marine Corps. They moved back to Brenda Zangas`s home town in 2001 with their children, a daughter who is now 10 and two sons, 3 and 5.

Murphy reported from Washington. Staff writer Petula Dvorak contributed to this report.



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3/11




Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A22


THE BUSH administration`s clumsy diplomacy and its critics` hyperbolic charges of "unilateralism" sometimes obscure the fact that the United States has had true and valuable allies in the war on terrorism. Yesterday one of the best of those, Spain, suffered a blow as shocking and as terrible as any the enemy has landed since Sept. 11, 2001. Authorities said that more than 190 people were killed and more than 1,200 injured when 10 backpacks crammed with compressed dynamite exploded on four trains in Madrid at the height of the morning rush hour. It remained unclear last night who was responsible; police initially blamed the Basque ETA organization but later discovered evidence pointing to al Qaeda. Either way, as Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar put it, "March 11, 2004, has taken its place in the history of infamy."

Mr. Aznar, who is to leave office after an election scheduled for Sunday, has done as much as any foreign leader to support President Bush`s consecutive campaigns against al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein during the past two years. Toughened by Spain`s long fight against ETA, the Spanish leader understood better than most European leaders the threat posed by terrorists to modern democracies. Spain was instrumental in locating and capturing al Qaeda operatives, including several on its territory. And Spanish troops joined U.S. forces in Iraq last year as Mr. Aznar grittily joined with Britain`s Tony Blair in standing by Mr. Bush, despite the opposition of most of the Spanish public. His strong leadership paid off: Though Spanish troops have suffered painful casualties, Mr. Aznar`s party was favored to win the upcoming elections over an opposition that favored withdrawing from Iraq.

The terrorists who struck yesterday, whether from ETA or al Qaeda, no doubt hoped to punish Mr. Aznar for his firmness and persuade Spaniards to abandon his policies. "This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America`s ally in its war against Islam," said a purported al Qaeda statement received by an Arabic newspaper. But the early signs were that the crime would rally support across Europe for Spain, and for resoluteness in an ongoing war. "Democracies must be -- and will be -- united in combating this without weakness," said French President Jacques Chirac. The horror of Madrid only confirms that a broad and determined alliance is the only answer to terrorism. It reminds us that the United States neither fights, nor suffers, alone.



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Real Arab Reform


By David Ignatius

Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A23


BEIRUT -- The Bush administration`s new initiative to encourage democracy and reform in the Arab world has all the solidity of a hot-air balloon. It`s floating grandly toward Planet Arabia, while down below the people who would be affected by it are variously taking potshots, running for cover or scratching their heads in confusion.

Are we really going to make this mistake again? To state what should be obvious after the reversals of the past year in Iraq: The idea of Arab democracy is meaningless unless it begins at home, driven by an Arab agenda for change, rather than by outsiders. If it`s seen as another attempt to impose the West`s agenda, then the planned U.S.-European Greater Middle East Initiative will fail -- and deservedly so.

Rather than preaching from their dirigibles overhead, Americans and Europeans should try listening more carefully to what the Arabs themselves have to say -- not to the leaders, whose main agenda is holding on to power, but to the millions of people who are desperate for reform.

A starting point for me is listening to the leading Shiite cleric in Lebanon, Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. He can hardly be accused of pro-American sympathies; he was the spiritual leader of the Hezbollah fighters whose suicide bombs drove U.S. troops from Lebanon in 1984. But he`s become a surprisingly progressive thinker and was one of the first Muslim clerics to condemn unambiguously the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

I`ve visited Fadlallah several times over the past two years at his well-guarded office within the maze of Beirut`s southern suburbs, accompanied by my friend Jamil Mroue, publisher of Beirut`s Daily Star. Each time, Fadlallah has surprised me. This time, it was in the ferocity of his call for reform in the Arab world. You cannot put the case for change more bluntly or emphatically than he did.

"We have always emphasized that governments in this part of the world are obsessed with power, and thus have kept their citizens under strict control," Fadlallah said, speaking through an interpreter. He cited two kinds of bad governance in the Arab world: the "tribal or dynastic families, who behave as if they have some divine right to conduct business," and "governments that have a fig leaf of legitimacy, in the form of ballots that produce 99.9 percent results."

Fadlallah noted that these undemocratic governments have stayed in power partly because "they are part of a web of international interests" -- meaning that they serve the interests of the United States and its allies. But he cautioned: "It is not fair or accurate to lay all the blame for this deformed political process on the shoulders of the West. There are really serious internal reasons as well for this underdevelopment."

The failed Arab regimes survive, Fadlallah said, thanks partly to the "excuse" of the Arab-Israeli conflict. "We have emergency laws; we have control by the security agencies; we have stagnation of opposition parties; we have the appropriation of political rights -- all this in the name of the Arab-Israeli conflict." He argued that resolving the Arab-Israeli problem was a necessary component of any serious Middle East initiative -- not just because it was right but because it would take away the props that support bad governance.

What`s important about Fadlallah`s remarks is that you`d hear pretty much the same opinion everywhere in the Arab world. People are sick of political and economic underdevelopment, and they want change. But they want to make it for themselves.

The problem with the U.S.-European initiative is "too much interference, too little reform," argues Ghassan Salameh, a former Lebanese cabinet minister, now a U.N. special adviser on Iraq and one of the brightest new lights in Arab politics. He argues that Arabs themselves set more ambitious targets for reform -- especially in establishing the rule of law. "If we create a strong, independent, professional judiciary, we will have done a revolution," he says.

The Bush administration hopes to present its plans at the G-8 summit in June, so there`s still time to get it right. Above all, the United States and its European allies should avoid the mistake of assuming that just because people hate the regime they`re living under, they will embrace an American-led effort to transform it. They won`t, as the Iraqi experience sadly shows.

The Arabs want to make their own history. The time for change has come, as they know better than anyone. If you doubt that, just listen to the words of the white-bearded, black-turbaned cleric, Sheik Fadlallah.

The Arab future truly is now. If America can help the people of the Middle East take ownership of their own process of change -- now, that would be revolutionary.

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 12. März 2004, 11:47
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,290235,00.html
Britischer Ex-Häftling

Ratten, Folter und Todesangst in Guantanamo

Einer der fünf freigelassenen britischen Guantanamo-Häftlinge hat schwere Vorwürfe gegen die USA erhoben: Die Gefangenen in dem Lager auf Kuba würden gefoltert. "Wir haben nicht mehr um Menschenrechte gebeten - wir wollten nur noch die gleichen Rechte wie die Tiere."

London - "Sie haben alles versucht, um mich zu brechen", sagte der 37-jährige Jamal al-Harith alias Jamal Udeen der Zeitung "Daily Mirror". Nach zwei Jahren in Guantanamo war der zum Islam übergetretene Web-Designer aus Manchester am Dienstag zusammen mit vier anderen Briten von den USA freigelassen worden.

Spezielle Wächter in Kampfanzügen hätten Häftlinge schon bei den geringsten Verstößen zusammengeschlagen, sagte al-Harith. Ihn hätten sie mit Fäusten und Schlagstöcken blau geschlagen, als er eine Impfung verweigert habe. Um die streng religiösen muslimischen Gefangenen zu demütigen, hätten die Wächter Prostituierte ins Lager gebracht.

"In Guantanamo geht es darum, dich psychologisch klein zu kriegen", sagte er. "Die Schläge waren bei weitem nicht so schlimm wie die psychologische Folter." Er sei 40 Mal jeweils bis zu zwölf Stunden lang von amerikanischen und britischen Agenten verhört worden. Dabei hätten sie gedroht, ihn und seine Familie zu töten. Um ihn einzuschüchtern, hätten sie so getan, als würde im Nebenraum jemand zusammengeschlagen.

Die Häftlinge hausen nach seiner Darstellung in Käfigen und sind dort Wind und Wetter ebenso ausgesetzt wie Ratten, Schlangen und Skorpionen. Vor den Augen der Wächter und der anderen Gefangenen müssten sie einen Eimer als Toilette benutzen: "Daran habe ich mich nie gewöhnt." Das Wasser sei schmutzig, "das Essen schrecklich und teilweise seit zehn Jahren abgelaufen". Bis zu 15 Stunden lang hätten Häftlinge Hand- und Fußschellen anbehalten müssen.

"Nach einer Weile haben wir nicht mehr um Menschenrechte gebeten - wir wollten nur noch Tierrechte", erzählte er. "Im Camp X-Ray war mein Käfig direkt neben einem Zwinger mit einem Schäferhund. Der hatte eine Holzhütte mit Klimaanlage und Gras. `Ich will die gleichen Rechte wie er`, habe ich zu den Wächtern gesagt. Darauf haben die gesagt: `Dieser Hund ist ein Mitglied der US-Streitkräfte.`"

Al-Harith war nach eigenen Angaben 2001 nach Pakistan gereist, um dort eine islamische Kultur kennen zu lernen. Ohne es zu wollen, sei er nach Afghanistan geraten und dort von den Taliban als Spion inhaftiert worden, möglicherweise wegen seines britischen Passes. Die vorrückenden amerikanischen Soldaten hätten ihn dann festgenommen und nach Guantanamo auf Kuba gebracht.


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THE WORLD
Halliburton Contracts Focus of Hearing
House Democrats criticize the company`s performance in Iraq. Republicans concede shortcomings but warn of a rush to judgment.
By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer

March 12, 2004

WASHINGTON — Engaging on a partisan battleground during a presidential election year, congressional Democrats and Republicans on Thursday displayed markedly different attitudes on U.S. efforts to rebuild Iraq with private contractors.

Though billed as a review of Iraqi contracts, a House Government Reform Committee hearing Thursday not coincidentally focused on the company that is the single largest contractor in the war-torn country: Halliburton Inc., run by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000.

Democrats led by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the ranking minority member, repeatedly criticized Halliburton`s performance, from providing overpriced fuel to overcharging for meals served to U.S. troops to violating federal contracting law.

Republicans, by contrast, portrayed the Houston-based company as doing a tough job in a difficult environment and stressed the need for a more thorough investigation before rushing to judgment.

"This is a monumental task, and there is no room for error," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis, the Virginia Republican who chairs the committee. "Nor is there room for partisan sniping aimed merely at undermining the overall reconstruction efforts."

The examination of the contracting process came on a day when the Pentagon awarded $1.1 billion in construction contracts. Greenville, S.C.-based Ameco, a subsidiary of Fluor Corp., won a $500-million contract to rehabilitate the country`s power grid, and a joint venture of Washington International Inc. and Black & Veatch of Boise, Idaho, won a $600-million contract to restore Iraq`s water supply.

But Halliburton, an oil services, construction and logistics support company, was the focus. House Democratic staff confirmed reports that the Justice Department had begun an investigation of charges that the company had overbilled the U.S. in fuel costs by $61 million.

The company is under investigation on several fronts. Besides the fuel overcharging, Halliburton has admitted that one or two of its employees took kickbacks in a scheme to help a subcontractor overcharge the government $6.3 million. The company has repaid the money.

In addition, Halliburton has suspended billing for $177 million on a food services contract after an audit revealed that the company had billed for meals never served.

Halliburton`s connection to Cheney was a constant theme. Democrats have seized on the issue of whether Cheney — who receives deferred compensation from the company — was linked to a decision to award to Halliburton no-bid Iraq contracts, which have a potential payout of $18 billion.

Cheney has repeatedly denied having anything to do with the decision to award the contracts, pointing out that Halliburton is one of few companies that could handle the complex logistics work required in Iraq.

Davis began his questioning by quizzing each of the witnesses — high-ranking officials in the Army, U.S. Agency for International Development and U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in charge of Iraq — on whether they had ever been contacted by the vice president.

Each responded with a solemn "No."

Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon`s comptroller, noted that, as previously reported, audits by the Defense Contract Audit Agency had turned up "significant deficiencies" in Halliburton`s accounting practices.

Zakheim, a Bush appointee, clashed with Waxman in the most intense moments of the four-hour hearing after Waxman wondered aloud why Halliburton continued to receive U.S. taxpayer dollars despite the numerous charges against it.

"I don`t think it should be the job of the administration to give Halliburton the benefit of the doubt in every case," Waxman said.

Zakheim shot back, "It seems to me, in the larger context, with a massive task that is tasking one of the largest companies in the country, they`re not doing a great job and they`re not doing a terrible job."

Republicans joined Democrats in voicing concern over Halliburton`s overcharging for fuel it delivered to Iraq and over the kickbacks.

Several committee members were angry that the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversaw the fuel contract, wouldn`t name the Halliburton employees accused of taking the money, or their positions in the company. "I`m concerned right now," said Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat. "There`s got to be more serious consequences."

Zakheim told lawmakers that the Pentagon was looking for alternative sources of funds to equip Iraqi security forces, now that a $327-million contract to do so was canceled because of "irregularities."

The contract, awarded to a small Virginia firm called Nour USA, is being rebid in a process that could take 60 to 90 days.

Several top-ranking military commanders have complained that the lack of equipment for the U.S.-trained Iraqi troops is hampering their ability to secure the country and lessen the risk to U.S. soldiers.

"We need to get these people supplied," said Rep. John R. Carter, a Texas Republican.

Zakheim said the Pentagon was examining whether Iraqi oil revenue could be put to use quickly to buy the equipment.


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COMMENTARY
Iraq`s New Constitution Goes a Long Way but Still Falls Short
By Bathsheba Crocker

March 12, 2004

The soap opera of getting the Iraqi transitional constitution signed made for great theater and ended, fortunately, with all 25 members of Iraq`s Governing Council signing the document into law. But no one should mistake this success as anything more than a small step on the very long road to a worthy future for Iraq.

Three elements are missing from the document — clarity, legitimacy and security.

The transitional constitution is fairly impressive. It contains a bill of rights that compares well with our own: It makes all Iraqis equal under the law and guarantees freedom of speech, press, assembly, movement, religion, privacy, security, education, healthcare and social security.

The law envisions that an elected national assembly will take office in January. The assembly will be Iraq`s transitional legislature, responsible for drafting a permanent constitution. There will be a power-sharing government, with a three-member presidency council, a prime minister and a council of ministers. The law delineates a separation of powers and a decentralized government. Minority rights will be protected by the power to veto the draft permanent constitution.

For all these noble goals, the document falls short in key areas.

First, it says nothing about the process for establishing the interim government that will assume sovereignty June 30. The U.S. plans for how the turnover will take place remain vague, and the United Nations is resisting calls that it should figure out what the Americans can`t.

Second, the Iraqi people have had no input in drafting this constitution. It is critical to achieve broad Iraqi buy-in to a law that sets out citizens` rights and the national form of government for the next 18 months, and all the more so because Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country`s most influential cleric, has already questioned the law`s legitimacy.

Third, the document does little to address security issues. It does not include an agreement for the stationing of U.S. forces in Iraq after June 30. And its attempt to finesse the thorny question of militias by branding them illegal — except as provided by federal law — leaves open the likelihood that various factions will continue to maintain well-armed paramilitary groups.

What should be done to give this document a chance?

The U.S. and the Governing Council must clarify what is going to happen on June 30. Iraqis need to be genuinely involved in selecting an interim government; this cannot be seen as a means to keep the Governing Council in power after transfer of sovereignty.

Here at home, the White House must stop the endless battling between the State and Defense departments. The latest news is that the Pentagon will manage the bulk of U.S. reconstruction contracts even after the State Department takes over U.S. oversight from the Coalition Provisional Authority in July. It is hard to see how the State Department will have the lead role, with 105,000 U.S. troops still on the ground and Defense in effective control of the $18.6 billion in reconstruction funds. Clarity is also needed about the rules of engagement for U.S. and other foreign forces. In the event of a rise in sectarian violence or civil war, U.S. and Iraqi citizens deserve to know what the coalition`s response will be.

Iraqis urgently need to establish the legitimacy of the interim constitution. This means an aggressive national campaign to explain its provisions to Iraqis. It is crucial not only that Shiites buy into the law`s tenets but also that Sunnis and former Baath Party members view opting into the political system rather than continued violence as their most viable means of survival. Acceptance by the U.N. Security Council could help ensure the document`s viability.

The United States must also address the pervasive lack of security in Iraq. Coalition troops need to have a significant presence in Iraqi communities. Iraq`s security forces are not up to the task of providing security. They need better training and equipment and will continue to need oversight for several years.

Finally, unless the United States shows that it will play the enforcer role in Iraq for years to come, no matter which administration takes office in November, those who want to cause trouble will simply wait us out. Without this commitment, Iraq`s interim constitution and transition toward democracy won`t amount to more than nice aspirations.

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Bathsheba Crocker, a former State Department official, co- directs the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Peter Lee: `Carpe diem`
Posted on Friday, March 12 @ 10:00:30 EST
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By Peter Lee

No question that the floundering Bush campaign will seize on the horrific Madrid bombings like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver.

After weeks of missteps and sagging polls, at last! the opportunity to turn back the clock to those cathartic days of 2001 when "we were all Americans" following George W. Bush with a queasy mixture of hope and fear into the brave new world of the war on terror.

Bush hopes that voters will concentrate their attention on the risk of being blown into bits by a terrorist, and turn their backs on tone-deaf Democrats who want to niggle over details like a runaway budget deficit, a cratering economy, a failed war, a polarized society, and a terminally politicized and ineffective government.

This could be the defining moment for the Kerry campaign. If he can seize this moment, it`s a disaster for Bush.



Bush`s last shaky prop--as the 9/11 caretaker of our national trauma ward--could be kicked out from under him. Then he wouldn`t have a leg to stand--or run--on.

If Kerry blows it, the independents will tune him out as another Democrat who doesn`t get "it"--the gnawing sense of fear and insecurity that pervades their lives and crystallizes into overbearing anxiety when a terrorist attack occurs.

Can Kerry prove himself worthy of the Master of Disaster mantle, look into the camera, and convince a spooked American people that he will do whatever it takes--right, wrong, stupid, or otherwise--to make them feel safe again?

Here`s my first take on an address by Kerry to a suitably weighty and responsible white-guy forum:

"Once again, terrorists have struck, and the world is united in horror and sympathy--and in the resolve that terrorism must be uprooted from our world.

Once again, an American ally has been exposed to terrible dangers and suffered awful losses that we cannot, even as we remain safe for the time being, ignore.

We must regard the attacks on Spain as an attack on all of us--on all the people of the world, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or nationality, who want to live their lives at peace and without fear.

In such a time, the world looks to America. It looks to us not only for strength. It looks to us to us for leadership. It looks to us for wisdom.

The wisdom to use our power wisely, effectively, and overwhelmingly against the proper targets.

When employed honestly, applied with resolve and wisdom, and backed with unity, American power is irresistible.

When it is not, and American power is squandered on incorrect and unnecessary objectives, America and the world reap a fatal harvest of discord, terror, and death.

We must not repeat the mistakes of the past. And we must lead the effort to bring the murderers who committed the atrocities in Madrid to justice.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Spain. As is our promise that the American people will stand beside them in their hour of tragedy."

The press, scenting the usual Democratic fluff-brained mis-step on national security--soon to be followed by humiliating backtrack--will shift into gotcha! mode: "Are you blaming President Bush for the Madrid bombing?"

Don`t look back, John. Time to put the pedal to the metal and drive to the White House.

Answer: "Absolutely not. And the criminals responsible for this heinous act have yet to be identified. But the position we find ourselves in today, with continuing terrorist threats, half of our troop strength bogged down in Iraq, and our leadership position in the world undermined by doubt about our motives, intentions, and capabilities, is unacceptable. Our ability to respond to and eliminate threats such as these is seriously compromised. But this is a crisis that the White House, by its stonewalling of the 9/11 commission, its mishandling of Iraq intelligence, and its poor planning of the Iraq occupation and exit strategy, has shown itself unwilling to confront or resolve."

Then, I would say, our work is done. National security is in play now, while Kerry is still riding high and Bush on the defensive.

Let Bush scream that Kerry is viciously playing politics with the war on terror.

Once it`s clear that the specter of 9/11 Bush doesn`t inspire awed deference, we remember that Bush is just a failed president desperately clinging to his last piece of political leverage.

And once the Republicans realize that the Democrats are prepared to challenge Bush not only on Iraq but on security and the war on terror--eight months before the election!--instead of standing by passively as Rove orchestrates the timing and the imagery of Bush`s election-year 9/11 kabuki theater, I predict their response will be dismay.

The issue cuts against Bush both ways: either we`re too safe, and not scared enough to respond to the al Qaeda bogeyman; or we`re too afraid, and Kerry is giving voice to nagging doubts about a president who lost two years of time, treasure, and credibility invading the wrong country for the wrong reasons.

It also cuts to the heart of Bush`s problem: that he exploited the tragedy of 9/11 to drag not only America but the world into a failed neocon conspiracy to remake the Middle East in a fantasy image of US imperial dominance.

One of the more morally repugnant and logically flawed post-facto Bush arguments to excuse the Iraq war was the "flypaper scenario": even if the WMD/al Qaeda links weren`t there, Iraq was a conveniently distant, brown killing floor where our troops could have at it with "bring `em on" jihadis. The slogan was, we kill them in Baghdad so we they won`t get us in Boise.

Apparently, Bali, Riyadh, and Istanbul were still distant enough and brown enough for their tragedies to be considered acceptable collateral damage.

But maybe Madrid isn`t.

I still find it amazing that the "coalition of the willing" press didn`t call Bush on his "let the world go to hell as long as the US is OK" stance during his trip to England.

I wonder if today, with Bush`s failings so obvious--and with a viable alternative at hand--the world--and the American people--will still be so forgiving.

Carpe diem, John. And maybe the presidency.

Copyright 2004 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at [e-mail].

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MARCH 12, 2004

AFFAIRS OF STATE
By Stan Crock


"Analyzating" Bush`s Grey Matter
The President`s tendency to mangle words and syntax may be due to an undiagnosed language and hearing disability, say some experts
Ever wonder why President Bush says "nuculer" when he means "nuclear" or "subliminate" when he means "subliminal?" Or why he mixes up perseverance and preservation? Why does he mangle the English language often enough for Slate Editor Jacob Weisberg to produce three books of Bushisms such as "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."

Are you still puzzled that Bush:
• Was a "C" student and class clown, yet became President?
• Doles out odd nicknames with abandon?
• Has held only 12 Presidential news conferences, the lowest frequency for a President since Richard Nixon`s scandal-plagued second term?
• Chose to go one-on-one with Meet the Press`s Tim Russert, one of the roughest interviewers in the business during one of the toughest times in his Presidency?
• Stunned former Treasury Secretary Paul O`Neill by barely responding in their first hour-long briefing at the White House?
• Doesn`t "do nuance," as the President himself puts it?

"SUBTLE DISORDER." To some learning-disability experts, the signs are clear: Bush might want to pay them a visit. These experts haven`t tested the President, so they caution that they can`t be certain of the diagnosis. Yet, ample signs indicate that something unusual is going on in the left side of his brain, where language and hearing are processed.

The possibility is high that there`s some dysfunction in the way he hears words, the way he processes what he hears, or the way he retrieves words when he tries to speak. When someone uses the wrong word or malapropisms and has difficulty with grammatical sentences, experts on learning disabilities "typically suspect at least a subtle language disorder," says William Stixrud, a clinical neuropsychologist in Silver Spring, Md.

Some voters infer from Bush`s syntax and behavior that he isn`t the sharpest saw in the tool box. Yet, learning and processing disorders aren`t indicators of native intelligence. If anything, a learning disability would better explain how Bush has accomplished so much, with his critics underestimating him every step of the way.

ALL IN THE FAMILY? Those with learning disabilities can become stellar achievers precisely because they develop compensating mechanisms to overcome their syndromes -- often using their own intuition and smarts. The SchwabLearning.org Web site, which bills itself as a guide for parents of learning-impaired kids, lists more than 50 luminaries with disabilities, including athletes Bruce Jenner and Magic Johnson, actors Henry Winkler and Whoopi Goldberg, and business executives Richard Branson and Charles Schwab.

Such disorders often are genetic, and the Bush family has a history of them -- Bush`s brother, Neil, has been diagnosed with dyslexia. Bush`s other brother, Marvin, has a son in a Washington school for children with learning disabilities. Perhaps as a result, the President`s mother and First Lady Laura Bush have both been big advocates of improving reading skills.

Journalists have tried in the past to explain Bush`s peculiar speech and processing patterns. In May, 2000, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post suggested that Bush`s speech patterns reflect the patois in Midland, Tex., which Eastern elites disdain. Maybe it was something he learned or inherited from his dad, for whom uttering a complete, syntactically correct sentence often was a challenge.

Another possibility Milbank cited, which was suggested by a Bush aide: The President`s agile brain works faster than his mouth. Milbank also quoted an expert who opined that the symptoms resemble apraxia, an inability to position the lips, jaw, and tongue properly when speaking. In a Bush profile in the October, 2000, Vanity Fair, Gail Sheehy postulated that Bush, like his brother, has dyslexia, which is commonly seen as a reading disability.

DIGGING DEEPER. Weisberg says in the introduction to his first volume of Bushisms that he doesn`t buy these theories. He notes, as Milbank did, that apraxia usually produces shortened words, while Bush sometimes elongates them, as when he says "analyzation" instead of analysis. And if Bush had dyslexia, he wouldn`t be able to read a TelePrompTer so well, Weisberg postulates. But with sufficient practice, someone with the disorder could read a speech adequately, says Kathy Hosty, a Washington, D.C., speech-language pathologist.

Bush has denied in the past that he has dyslexia. Asked for this column if the President has a language disorder, White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan dismissed the idea, without flatly denying it. She told BusinessWeek Online Bush`s medical records have been scrutinized for 15 years. "The American people know more about the President`s health than just about anyone`s," she added.

I started to look for a more satisfactory explanation for Bush`s demeanor for several reasons. Frankly, I`ve long been mystified by the way Bush expresses himself off-the-cuff. Secondly, the President`s way of expressing himself clearly throws foreigners, especially diplomats, for a loop. They`re appalled, since they view his mastery of language as critical to persuading others of the correctness of America`s course in world affairs. A third reason is that a friend of mine has a son who doctors suspect has something called central auditory processing disorder (CAPD). My friend says whenever she sees the President, she sees her son`s traits.

"OTHER KINDS OF INTELLIGENCE." That led me to do some Web research and talk to some experts on the subject to see what they think. I`m no doctor. I`m a journalist. But it turns out there`s an intriguing consensus afoot, and I`m here to report it.

According to an article on the Internet by Judith W. Paton, a San Mateo (Calif.) audiologist, CAPD is a physical hearing impairment that doesn`t show up as hearing loss but rather affects hearing beyond the ear. In effect, the auditory nerves don`t handle the raw data from the ear properly. It`s usually found with a cluster of other symptoms. Among the tell-tale signs she cites: Confusion of similar sounding words, terse communications, better hearing when watching the speaker, and trouble hearing when it`s noisy.

This syndrome, like dyslexia, probably wouldn`t have been diagnosed when Bush was growing up. It could explain why, undiagnosed, he was a lackluster student, Paton said in an interview. "A lot of his IQ points were in political intelligence and other kinds of intelligence," she notes.

A CLOWN`S MASK. CAPD isn`t recognized as a formal diagnosis yet, partly because not enough research has been done on it. "It`s a pattern of deficits that has been described by a large body of clinicians, but it hasn`t undergone the rigors of scientific verification," says Fresno (Calif.) neuropsychologist Howard Glidden. Some experts also consider it a vague, umbrella term for a lot of traits.

What all the experts seem to agree on is that Bush exhibits "phonological" problems, that is, he has trouble breaking apart and putting together the discrete sounds that make up words. That could explain why the President tortures the language so often. And his clowning around could have been a way to compensate.

Such a syndrome also could explain other characteristics. The nicknames -- he dubbed ex-Treasury Secretary O`Neill "Pablo", for example -- could be a device to help with name retrieval. The infrequency of news conferences could reflect the difficulty someone with CAPD would have in a press-conference setting. While it would be possible to bone up for a quieter one-on-one grilling by Tim Russert, the noise and distractions of a news conference would make the kind of focus Bush may need very difficult. "A news conference would be his worst nightmare," says Hosty. "You can`t control the barrage of different communications styles."

ONE OF THE GUYS. Bush`s penchant for talking about good and evil and for saying countries are either with us or against us in the war on terrorism may also reflect a learning disorder. His professed distaste for nuance could stem from an inability to process the complex sides of an issue. "To analyze that, you have to analyze the language," says Bonnie Rattner, a speech and language pathologist in San Mateo, Calif.

One solution: Hire good people to fill the gaps. A business executive with great vision and creativity may not be organized, so the exec would have to employ someone with good executive functions, notes Robert L. Mapou, a Silver Spring (Md.) Ph.D. in clinical psychology who specializes in the neuropsychology of adult learning disabilities.

Yes, all of these examples of Bush`s behavior have alternate explanations. A lack of focus during a privileged upbringing could explain the President`s grades in college. The nicknames could be an attempt to control relationships or be one of the guys. The infrequent press conferences could result from the Administration`s penchant for secretiveness and general disdain for the media.

COHERENT APPROACH. Likewise, Bush`s black-and-white approach can be seen as moral clarity stemming from his religious beliefs or the candor supporters argue is needed relief from diplomatic niceties in perilous times.

All these separate explanations are plausible -- but taken together, they present quite a coincidence. The language-disorder explanation would cover them all. And if it`s right, it should give pause to late-night comedians Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Jon Stewart. The President`s twisting of the English language may be a phenomenon that`s far more complicated than comic.


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Crock covers national security and foreign affairs for BusinessWeek from Washington. Follow his views in Affairs of State twice a month, only on BusinessWeek Online
Edited by Douglas Harbrecht



Copyright 2000-2004, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.

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Spain`s 3-11: Basques, bin Laden, or both?

By Pepe Escobar

03/12/04 "Asia Times" - Spain`s 3-11 - 10 coordinated bomb explosions in 4 suburban trains arriving in Madrid at the morning rush hour, leading to almost 200 dead and more than 1,400 injured - was also Europe`s 3-11: exactly two and a half years after America`s 9-11, this is the largest terrorist attack perpetrated on European soil in modern times.

Initially, among circles close to the international jihad, the authorship of the attacks was claimed by the Lions of al-Mufridoon - a hitherto unknown jihadi group from the Maghreb region of North Africa (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), with loose connections to al-Qaeda. But in the first few hours, no group expressly addressed the global media to claim official responsibility. The modus operandi though - coordinated bombing for maximized damage - is a trademark of al-Qaeda and/or subcontracted affiliates.

Then an email sent to the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper seemed to confirm it all: the Abu Hafs al-Masri brigades - which had already claimed responsibility for attacking Italians in Iraq and British interests in Istanbul last year - had struck "one of the pillars of the Crusade alliance" on behalf of al-Qaeda. Al-Quds al-Arabi believes the email is authentic. But this does not mean the brigades - an al-Qaeda affiliate - did it.

A senior intelligence official working for a special European Union anti-terrorist cell in Brussels tells Asia Times Online the hypothesis of Islamist involvement is being considered very seriously: "Indeed this may be punishment for the government of (Spanish Prime Minister) Jose Maria Aznar`s full support for George W Bush`s war on Iraq. There are 1,400 Spanish troops in southern Iraq, and hundreds of others in Afghanistan. But we are also considering the possibility that Islamist factions with dormant cells in Europe may be linking with ETA (Basque) separatists in Spain, perhaps not directly, but targeting a splinter group."

The official also says Brussels is seriously evaluating recent messages by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda`s No 2, Ayman "The Surgeon" al-Zawahiri, denouncing Spain`s alignment with the "crusaders" Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Al-Zawahiri specifically warned that in Europe, Spain was in the line of fire, along with Britain and Italy. In Brussels`s Top 10 of likely targets for a terrorist attack, Spain since late 2003 is positioned as No 4, behind the US, the UK and Israel.

Aznar`s conservative government took no time to unanimously blame the bombings on ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuma - Basque Homeland and Freedom), the pro-independence movement involved in a fierce battle with the central government in Madrid since the late 1950s. The Basque country encompasses northern Spain and southwest France.

The prime minister defined the bombings as "mass assassination" by a "criminal gang". The head of the opposition, socialist Jose Luis Zapatero, condemned "ETA`s scoundrels". The head of the regional Basque government, the moderate nationalist Juan Jose Ibarretxe, said that ETA wanted to "explode democracy". But most crucially Arnaldo Otegui, a kind of Spanish Gerry Adams who is the head of Batasuna - the banned Basque party which is basically ETA`s political wing - "refused to believe" ETA was involved. According to Otegui, the "Arab resistance" is responsible: "We cannot totally exclude the hypothesis of Islamist attacks … due to the threats against the countries participating in the coalition in Iraq." Otegui actually comdemned the bombings on the record in the name of Batasuna.

Spain`s Interior Minister Angel Acebes initially qualified Islamist involvement as "intoxication". But hours later he was admitting "we don`t exclude any leads", after a tape in Arabic, along with seven detonators, was discovered inside a stolen van in the small town near Madrid where three of the four bombed trains came from.

Jurgen Storbeck, the director of Europol, the European police body, admits the modus operandi in the attacks "does not conform to what ETA had adopted so far". ETA used to employ car bombings to disrupt the Spanish tourism industry, and target assassinations against politicians, judges and the police. Crucially, in four decades of attacks, as every Spaniard knows so well, ETA always alerted the police in case innocent civilians would be in danger.

On the latest Europol report on terrorism in the European Union, prepared with information provided by the EU member-states and approved by the EU`s Council of Ministers last December, the agency warned of a possible ETA switch from its usual tactics to "large scale operations" based in Madrid. The report also said that ETA was recruiting increasingly younger new members and expanding its network to Portugal, Italy, Holland, Belgium and Germany, as well as to Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Belize.

As far as the jihadi menace was concerned, Europol formally recognized in its report that the Aznar government`s support for Bush`s war on terror is "a factor of increasing risk for Spain, although not necessarily the most dangerous or decisive". This is a very different approach from the more fatalistic anti-terrorist experts in Brussels.

ETA down but not out
No instant destruction on this scale had happened in Spain since the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War. Even Spaniards used to bloody ETA actions since the 1970s were shocked. The dead and injured are overwhelmingly working-class people and students. Dozens of immigrants are among the injured, the majority of them Moroccans and Equadorians - the largest Latin American colony in Madrid.

The Aznar government has extensively infiltrated ETA; it has arrested more than 600 people in the last four years; and it has even outlawed the Batasuna party. In 2003, only three people were killed as a result of ETA attacks. ETA`s military chief was captured. But contrary to official propaganda, ETA seems not to have been subdued because, similar to other resistance movements, it works as a web of independent mini-commandos. The new, younger leadership may be fiercer and bolder.

Spanish political scientists insist that ETA has no more than 10 percent popularity in the Basque country. But the movement still enjoys solid support from youth associations (like Jarrai and Haika), newspapers (like Egin and Gara), unions (like LAB) and a political party until recently represented in the Basque parliament, Batasuna. But in the event the group were deemed responsible for the Madrid bombings, their leadership knows very well they would lose any remaining public support.

Spanish insiders tell Asia Times Online they are not convinced of ETA`s culpability - especially because the government has immediately blamed the group even without an investigation. Says a Spanish industrialist: "We may not approve their methods, but ETA`s leadership has always been very sophisticated politically. They would never give Aznar and his people at the Popular Party such a gift before a general election [this Sunday]. The Popular Party will now pose as a war government, just like George W Bush in the US."

Ninety four percent of the Spanish population was against the war on Iraq - and against the Aznar government`s unflinching support for Washington. At least 10 percent of the Spanish population demonstrated against the war on February 15, 2003, in the streets of major Spanish cities. The bulk of the dead and injured in the Madrid bombings are working-class people - not exactly supporters of Aznar`s policies.

Progressive minds in the European Union already worry whether this tragic 3-11 might turn Spain - not yet a police state - into an Iberian mirror of a neo-conservative-driven America shorter on civil liberties and longer on social paranoia. This was never an effect ETA intended. But it may well suit the international jihad.

Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd

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Bush`s Iraqi Terrorism Laboratory; Was it Worth it?
By Rob Kall

Ask the Spaniards, Phillipinos, Moroccans, Saudis, Turks and the rest of the nations that have been victims of explosion in terrorism since the Iraq Invasion if the world is a safer place thanks to George Bush. .

OpEdNews.Com



This morning the main news story is the bombing of a train in Spain, with over 130 dead and hundreds more injured. Blame it on the George Bush`s terrorism laboratory in Iraq.

A laboratory is where experiments are carried out. New approaches and combinations are tried and the results observed. Different ingredients, different energy factors, chemistries, components are combined and tested.

In Iraq the ingredients are weapons and costumes, vehicles and buried bombs, kilos of explosives and choices of targets.

George Bush and his idiot crew of advisors decided that the best way to protect America and the rest of the world from terrorism was to attack Iraq. Now that the lie about WMDs has been exposed, the alternate justification is that it was worth committing hundreds of thousands of US troops, hundreds of billions of dollars (I predicted last year that ultimate costs will exceed a trillion dollars and it looks like it will happen sooner than I expected) and the loss of hundreds of American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.

Well, let`s factor in the explosion in terrorist activity that has occurred since the invasion. A clear side-effect of the Bush-led invasion of Iraq has been a massive influx of terrorists into Iraq, an explosion of terrorist activity within Iraq, the creation of the best recruiting tool terrorists have ever had and perhaps most frightening, these all add up to the creation of a terrorism laboratory that is rapidly spawning copycats all over the planet. So far, the superpowers have been lucky at escaping these assaults. But it is only time until another tragedy hits the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany or any of the other US "allies" with forces in Iraq.

Rupert Sheldrake, inventor of morphogenetic field theory, proposed that the existence of a form or action makes the repetition or replication of that form or action more likely. Jung described the concept of archetype, which wikkipedia describes "an original model on which something is patterned or based."

Call it morphogenetic field or archetype, inspiration, example, suggestion... Bush`s Iraqi terrorism laboratory is setting examples of inspiration, motivating and activating, energizing, mobilizing and dis-inhibiting terrorists and budding terrorists around the world. Each new terrorist act in Iraq plants the idea of killing, of terrorism, of attacking government, authority, the USA... and also how to do it.

Iraq has become a laboratory, a recruiting range, a practice field where terrorists can try out basic skills and new approaches and technologies, train beginners to become pros, and rehearse missions they then execute in other countries.

This did not happen after the Bay of Bigs, Viet Nam, Nicaragua or Kosovo. These were also controversial conflicts. But the level of idiocy, of incompetent lack of planning was far lower. The eruption of massive terrorist activity WAS foreseen in Iraq. Bush and his advisors knew what they were creating.

But that`s not all. You don`t pour gasoline into a fire or salt into a wound. That`s exactly what Bush has done to terrorism with his macho cowboy in-your face, "bring it on" attitude. It takes smart diplomacy, grounded in good intelligence and science to deal with the modern world and all its complicated situations. Bush and his advisors have painted themselves into a fundamentalist corner of black and white issues that preclude their being able to apply the art of recognizing nuance (definition from dictionary.com: "A subtle or slight degree of difference, as in meaning, feeling, or tone; a gradation."

Bush`s kick-their-ass approach allows for no subtlety, no modulation. It may make his hypertestosteroned less than high school graduated southern male constituency feel more vicariously manly, but it`s bad for America and bad for the rest of the world.

Ask the 500+ victims and their families of the Spanish train disaster if Bush has made the world a safer place. Unfortunately, with the abysmal state of the world`s media, only a few will probably realize that Bush`s small, puppet controlled brain had something to do with their suffering. It will take a leader who thinks and leads based on principles, not campaign contributions to show the world a set of examples, to restore the American archetypes of democracy instead of the archetype of violence that Bush has set in motion.

Rob Kall [e-mail] is editor/founder of OpEdNews.com. This article is copyright Rob Kall and originally published by opednews.com but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog or web media so long as this credit paragraph is attached. Over 85 other articles by Rob Kall

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Purported al-Qaida statement
by
Friday 12 March 2004 9:03 AM GMT




The following is the translation of the purported al-Qaida linked group which is claiming responsibility for yesterday`s Madrid bombings. The statement was published in Arabic in the London based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi.


In the Name of God
In its last statement (al-Qaida statement in relation to Baghdad and Karbala bombings) dated 11 Muharam, 1425 Hijri calendar corresponds to 2 March, 2004, Abu Hafs al-Masri brigade promised that it was preparing more attacks.


Here the brigade is keeping its word. The death squad (of the Abu Hafs Al-Masri Brigades) succeeded in penetrating the crusader European depths and striking one of the pillars of the crusader alliance - Spain - with a painful blow. These bomb attacks were part of settling old scores with the crusader Spain for its war against Islam.


Where is America to protect you today, Aznar. Who is going to protect you, Britain, Italy, Japan and other hirelings from us?


When we hit Italian troops in Nasirya (Iraq) and sent you and other hirelings a warning to withdraw from the alliance against Islam, you did not comprehend our warning – now we have made it clear - we hope that it will be understood this time.


We in Abu Hafs al-Masri did not feel sad for the death of the so-called civilians. Is it lawful for them to kill our children, women, elderly and men in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Kashmir, and is unlawful for us to kill them back.
(The statement then refers to Quranic verses saying that Muslim should hit back if attacked).


Stop targeting us, release our prisoners, and leave our land, we will stop attacking you. The people of US allied countries have to put pressure on their governments to immediately end their alliance with the US in the war against terror (Islam). If you persist we will also continue… We want to tell you that the Death Smoke squad will reach you soon, and then you will see your dead in their thousands – God willing… This is a warning…


In a separate attack the Jund al-Quds (Soldiers of Jerusalem) targeted a Jewish Masonic lodge in Istanbul. Three top Masons were killed in the operation, and if it was not for the technical failure all the masons would have been killed, but for some Devine wisdom only three were killed. Thanks God anyway.


We would like to tell Bilal bin Rabah Squad that the leadership agreed on the proposal, and when the representative arrives, work will start.


We also would like to tell Abu Ali al-Harithi Squad that the leadership decided that Yemen would be the third quagmire for the idol of the time, America, and to teach the government which comes in the second place after Musharaf, in treason and infidelity, a lesson.


Therefore, all cells are to be on alert. Action will start at (time and code given) – Do not forget to debilitate, do not forget Abu Ali al-Harithi, and do not forget the Muslim scholar who was extradited to Egypt by Yemen Sheik Abd al-Qadir Abd al-Aziz (Sayyed Imam Sharif). He was imprisoned three months after the September 11 attacks.


We want to inform those who kill Muslim Sunni scholars (Ulamaa`) in Iraq to come to a halt otherwise …


We would like to announce to all Muslims in the world that 90% of the preparations of operation "wind of black death" designed to be performed in America has finished, and will be performed soon God willing (at the Mujahideen`s convenience). Believers will celebrate the victory of God.


Warning to the nation:- Avoid being close to the civil and military installations of America and its allies.
God is great, God is great – Islam is drawing closer by the might of mighty and by humbling the mean.
Signed by "Abu Hafs al-Masri/al-Qaida" and dated 11 March, 2004.


Al-Quds al-Arabi - Aljazeera translation by Ahmed Janabi
By

You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2CDD53D6-7AF7-40C7-AF…
Profile: Abu Hafs al-Masri
by Ahmed Janabi
Friday 12 March 2004 1:53 PM GMT



The group known as the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades` has been surfacing more and more in recent months.



They have claimed responsibility for several deadly attacks in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad last April. The brigades were named after the training commander of al-Qaida network and were founded after his death in 2001.

Personal background

Abu Hafs was an Egyptian national, who was nicknamed al-Masri because it means `the Egyptian` in Arabic.

He was a core member of Islamic Jihad group, which successfully carried out the assassination of the Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat on October 6, 1981. He affiliated with Osama bin Ladin in the early 1980s, when the two were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

He participated in the establishment of al-Qaida (the base) organisation. As a former Egyptian police officer, Abu Hafs al-Masri took charge of the organisation`s security.

He assumed control of the training camps, after the former commander Abu Ubaida al-Banshiri was drowned in Victoria lake, Uganda in 1996.

Ties with bin Ladin became stronger when one of his daughters was married to one of bin Ladin`s sons.

Active role

His name was connected to many deadly attacks in several parts of the world.

While al-Qaida was based in Sudan in 1992-1993, Abu Hafs al-Masri allegedly took part in attacks on US forces operating under the international military force in Somalia (Operation Restore Hope).

In 1997 it is said that he and another top bin Ladin aide Dr Ayman al-Dhawahiri orchestrated the killing of 58 tourists in Luxor, Egypt.

In 1999, the FBI announced evidence of Abu Hafs al-Masri` links to the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which 250 people were killed. He was charged with killing US citizens.

Following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the US authorities put Abu Hafs al-Masri`s name on top of the list of wanted people.

He became one of the most wanted people in the US. Accordingly, his arrest or death became a target for US forces.

Wanted

Abu Hafs was wanted by several international security and intelligence systems. An Egyptian court sentenced him to seven years in prison in absentia. The FBI put a five million dollars reward for information leading to his arrest.

Succession

Ten months before Abu Hafs al-Masri`s death, Osama bin Ladin nominated him as his successor in the event of his death or arrest.

The nomination surprised many of bin Laden`s aides and inner circle. It was expected that bin Ladin`s eldest son, Mohammad would succeed his father, in leading the controversial organization.

Abd Allah Azzam, the godfather of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, was quoted by Arab fighters in Afghanistan as having expressed his annoyance at, "bin Ladin`s favouritism towards Egyptian Muslim fundamentalists."

Death

On 16 November, 2001 a US air raid destroyed a house said to shelter Mohammad Atif (Abu Hafs al-Masri), near Kabul.

News of his death was widely disputed inside and outside Afghanistan, but three days later, the death confirmation came from Pakistan where Taliban`s Ambassador Abd al-Salam Dhaief said "Abu Hafs al-Masri`s died from injuries he suffered after US warplanes bombed his house near Kabul."


Aljazeera
By Ahmed Janabi

You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D2D48F79-B330-40E3-A1…

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry says he does not intend
to apologize for describing his critics in the Republican Party as ``the most crooked ... lying group I`ve ever seen.`` ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3851976,…

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w w w . h a a r e t z d a i l y . c o m
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=403881…

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Last update - 02:28 12/03/2004
Analysis / Al-Qaida`s Spanish vendetta
By Zvi Bar`el

"The war against Iraq will not eradicate the threat of terror but, perversely, it may bolster it."

That was the comment, on the eve of the United States-led invasion of Iraq, of Spanish left-winger Balthazar Garzon, one of the most tireless campaigners against Al-Qaida.

The crusading judge, who currently serves as Spain`s prosecutor general, is now running an investigation into some 40 activists suspected of contacts with Al-Qaida. The last of them was extradited Thursday from Jordan to Spain.

Garzon, unlike Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, objected to Spain`s participation in the war on Iraq, and publicly declared that he had found no evidence that Saddam Hussein was in contact with Al-Qaida.

Garzon`s prophesy about heightened terror may have come true Thursday, if it indeed turns out that Al-Qaida was behind the series of attacks on Madrid trains.

Al-Qaida has three scores to settle with Spain: Aznar allowed Spain to become the European headquarters that enabled President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to present the war on Iraq as a coalition effort, and not a U.S.-U.K. duet; Spain has 1,300 soldiers stationed in Iraq at present; and Spain is in the process of putting a large group of suspected Al-Qaida activists on trial.

For the terror organization, this is enough justification to launch an attack against Spain.

In order to settle its scores, Al-Qaida would need both the opportunity and the ability to carry out an attack. It seems that the organization has already found Spain a relatively convenient place from which to base operations. At least two meetings in the run-up to September 11 were held in Spain, attended by the man who is believed to have masterminded the coordinated attacks on Washington and New York. Al-Qaida cells in Spain were built up around activists who had been sent to the country back in the 1990s, some of whom had married local women, obtained Spanish citizenship and even opened businesses. One owned a photographic supply shop, another was a real estate agent, and the activist responsible for laundering money and sending it back to the organization bosses was a used-car salesman.

Despite the spate of arrests carried out by Spanish authorities, there is no certainty that the terror cells were eradicated. The fear is that extreme Islamic activists are active among the Muslim community that has come to Spain from Algeria, including some known members of radical organizations.

Spain has already been mentioned by Al-Qaida activists as a possible target, along with Britain, Canada, Israel and the U.S. Recent intelligence warnings have led to the cancellation of flights from Europe to the U.S. and Canada, but there has been no specific warning regarding Spain.

If Thursday`s attack was carried out by Al-Qaida, it seems that Spain was chosen because it is a relatively "soft target." It is relatively easy to enter the country.

Despite tight controls, it seems that several dozen blank passports were stolen from the Portuguese embassy in Luxembourg. One of them was later found in the possession of a Tunisian Al-Qaida activist who was arrested by German authorities. Some of these passports were passed on to other members of the organization, who used them to gain easy access to Spain.

[Joerver]

Thousands gathered at Cibeles Square in Madrid.

[Joerver]

Der Krieg gegen den Terrorismus ist gescheitert

Florian Rötzer 12.03.2004
Die Anschläge in Spanien demonstrieren erneut, dass der sich über die Medien ausbreitende Virus des Terrorismus sich nicht mit militärischen und repressiven Mitteln alleine bekämpfen lässt, sondern diese ihn nur verstärken

Wer auch immer den Anschlag in Madrid ausgeführt haben mag, so hat er gezeigt, dass seit der Ausrufung des "Kriegs gegen den internationalen Terrorismus" die Welt keineswegs sicherer geworden ist. Die spanische Regierung hatte sofort versucht, kurz vor den Wahlen die Anschläge für sich auszubeuten und die ETA als verantwortlich zu bezeichnen, da ein Anschlag von Islamisten ihre Antiterrorpolitik und ihren Schulterschluss mit der Bush-Regierung noch stärker desavouieren würde ( Blutiger Wahlkampf in Spanien). Dann aber musste zumindest eingeräumt werden, dass auch Islamisten die Täter sein könnten. Zwar ist in den USA kein neuer Anschlag mehr geschehen, doch an vielen Orten der Welt haben sich Konflikte des seit dem 11.9. aufgeheizten asymmetrischen Kriegs abgespielt. Man könnte sie als Neuauflage der Stellvertreterkriege bezeichnen, nur dass die kriegführenden Staaten es nun mit einer Hydra zu tun haben: Wenn ihr ein paar Köpfe abgeschlagen werden, wachsen an anderer Stelle neue nach.




Terrorismus ist eine Strategie, die von "schwachen" Akteuren gegen einen übermächtigen Feind eingesetzt wird. Inhaltlich oder politisch gibt es keine notwendige Verbindung mit dieser Form der Provokation, die mit der Instrumentalisierung der Medien und mit dem Setzen auf die meist automatisch folgende Reaktion der "shock and awe"-Taktik spielt. Und Terroranschläge sind auch gelegentlich Mittel gewesen, den ausgelösten Reflex des schnellen und oft blinden Zurückschlagens durch Täuschung gezielt gegen einen gewünschten Gegner zu richten.

Der von Bush ausgerufene "Krieg gegen den Terrorismus" richtete sich natürlich zunächst gegen den islamistischen Terrorismus, aber spätestens mit dem auch in diesem Kontext geführten Krieg gegen den Irak wurde mit den von Anfang an durchsichtigen Übertreibungen und Falschinformationen bei den Kriegsgründen der Gegner diffus und beliebig. Allerdings hatte die Bush-Regierung gleich nach den Anschlägen vom 11.9. diese als Kriegserklärung betrachtet und damit auch den Krieg als einzige Alternative der Bekämpfung der Gegner zu zementieren gesucht.

Zwar hatte auch die Clinton-Regierung sowohl zu militärischen Mitteln gegriffen, um bin Ladin nach den Anschlägen auf die afrikanischen Botschaften anzugreifen, aber dieser Hightech-Krieg aus der Ferne hatte keinen Erfolg. Abgesehen von anderen Interessen war dieses Scheitern sicherlich auch ein Grund, um nach dem 11.9. - zuvor verstärkten sich erst einmal die Spannungen mit China und setzte Bush bereits massiv auf das Raketenabwehrschild - zum Mittel des Kriegs zu greifen und die Strategie des Präventivschlags als Druckmittel zu demonstrieren. Die Begrifflichkeit der asymmetrischen Bedrohung konnte jedoch nur schlecht verhehlen, dass Terroranschläge kein Krieg sind und Terroristen nicht primär mit militärischen Mitteln, also mit Brachialgewalt, wirksam bekämpft werden können.

Krieg ist allerdings genau die Antwort, die für Terroristen am besten ist. Krieg ist gewissermaßen der organisierte Terroranschlag, der trotz aller Präzision immer auch "Kollateralschäden" verursacht, d.h. gegen jene Zivilisten ausgetragen wird, die auch Ziel der Anschläge sind. Und eine harte, vor allem militärische und auch im rechtsfreien Raum agierende Bekämpfung der Terroristen wird stets Unbeteiligte zum Opfer machen, was den Terroristen neue Legitimität verleiht.

Dass das Versprechen, durch präventiven Krieg - und innenpolitisch durch verstärkte Überwachung und Abbau der Bürgerrechte - die Welt sicherer zu machen, bislang gescheitert ist, scheint bislang wohl deutlich geworden sein (ob der dominotheoretisch intendierte Regimewechsel zur Demokratisierung des Nahen Ostens führen wird, muss noch abgewartet werden). Gescheitert ist vor allem auch die Vorstellung, dass "der Terrorismus" eine bestimmte Gruppe an Menschen ist, die von einer Art Zentralkommando geführt wird. Terrorismus steckt an. Zwar steht im Hintergrund vor allem eine diffuse Sehnsucht nach Befreiung, die als legitimatorische Klammer dient. Recht viel mehr als einen vagen Feind, der hinter allem stecken soll, benötigt die terroristische Initialzündung nicht.

Ein wesentlicher Motor ist aber sicherlich der Erfolg von Terroranschlägen, der nicht nur durch Medienaufmerksamkeit, sondern auch durch die politische Reaktion verursacht wird. Diejenigen, die gelungene spektakuläre Anschläge planen und ausführen, werden mit ihren Explosionen auch in die Prominenz katapultiert, selbst wenn dies das eigene Leben kostet. Plötzlich scheinen kleine, an sich unbedeutende Gruppen das Schicksal der Welt in der Hand zu haben und zu Gegenspielern der Supermacht zu werden, die dem mächtigsten Mann auf der Erde in Augenhöhe gegenübertreten.

Diese memetische Ansteckungskraft des Terrorismus darf man wahrscheinlich nicht unterschätzen, zumal nicht in einer Gesellschaft, in der Prominenz und Aufmerksamkeit dominieren - selbst die islamistischen Märtyrer folgen dieser medialen Karriere. Der Virus des Aufmerksamkeitsterrorismus verbreitet sich über ideologische und politische Grenzen hinweg, lässt sich aber wohl auch von globalen Drahtziehern, die irgendwo zwischen einer diffusen Befreiungsvision und mit Beziehungen zum organisierten Verbrechen agieren, immer einfacher instrumentalisieren.

Fast schon mit Garantie sind spektakuläre Anschläge globale Topnews, zumal sie auch noch "beeindruckende" Bilder generieren, die in allen Medien kursieren und von diesen in Erwartung der Quote ausgeschlachtet werden. Gnadenlos wurden in den Medien die Anschläge in Madrid nun auch wieder etwa durch Fotostrecken ausgebeutet. El Mundo offerierte "Las imágenes más impactantes: Atentados | Heridos | Caos | Manifestaciones | Portadas | Reacciones | Pesar en el deporte". Im Spiegel beispielsweise wurde angeboten:


Züge von Bomben zerfetzt - 192 Tote, mehr als 1400 Verletzte
Fotostrecke: Horror in der Rushhour
Video News: Blutiger Terror in Madrid
Augenzeugenbericht: "Auf den Gleisen liegen Leichenteile"

Das mag "Informationspflicht" für die neugierigen Leser/Zuschauer sein, die noch einmal davon gekommen sind und voyeuristisch den Horror oder aber den Abscheu genießen, aber das bedient eben auch direkt die Interessen der Täter, die ja gezielt Aufmerksamkeitsanschläge durchführen. Ein Bilder- und Nachrichtenverbot ist natürlich weder wirklich vertretbar noch überhaupt realisierbar, gleichwohl handeln manche Medien hier direkt in Allianz mit den Terroristen. Auch das gehört zur Ökonomie des Terrors. Rekrutiert und geworben wird weltweit gewissermaßen auch mit den Bildern und dem Aufsehen, das die Täter über die Medien bewirken. Zahlen müssen die Opfer.

Und Terror ist noch viel einfacher und direkter ein Weg zum Erfolg, als sich beispielsweise durch Casting- oder Reality-Shows Prominenz zu erwerben. In urbanisierten Gesellschaften gibt es unendlich viele, niemals wirklich zu schützende Ziele, die sich mit einfachen Mitteln angreifen lassen, deren Erwerb und Anwendung relativ geringes Wissen und Kapital voraussetzen . Allerdings wird der logistische Aufwand höher, da Anschläge immer spektakulärer werden müssen, um durch die Zahl der Opfer oder Verwüstungen Aufsehen zu erregen und die Weltöffentlichkeit zu erreichen. Im Fall der in Taschen versteckten Sprengsätze in Madrid scheint die Polizei davon auszugehen [1], dass die Täter nicht nur zur selben Zeit 13 Explosionen bewirken wollten. Die in vier Zügen mit Zeitzündern angebrachten Sprengsätze sollten womöglich auch am selben Ort, nämlich im Bahnhof Atocha in die Luft gehen. Damit hätte dieser zerstört werden können, was eine noch größere Zahl an Toten zur Folge gehabt hätte.


Links

[1] http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2004/03/12/espana/1079063793.h…

Telepolis Artikel-URL: http://www.telepolis.de/deutsch/special/auf/16946/1.html



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March 10, 2004
Q&A: Trying the Guantanamo Detainees

From the Council on Foreign Relations, March 10, 2003

When will the military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay detainees begin?

It`s unclear. The United States on February 24 charged two suspects, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan and Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen, with conspiracy to commit terrorism and war crimes against civilians. These are the first charges brought against any of the roughly 650 foreign detainees held at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No dates have been set for the proceedings, which will take place in special military tribunals operated by the Department of Defense.

How long have detainees been held at Guantanamo?

After 9/11, U.S. officials decided to use the Guantanamo facility to hold individuals captured in the war on terror. The first detainees arrived soon after the U.S. attack on al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan began in October 2001. Human rights groups and legal advocates have criticized the conditions under which detainees are held and the time it has taken to press charges against them.

Why weren`t charges brought earlier?

U.S. officials have been interrogating the captives and preparing the legal framework for the tribunal process. President Bush issued an executive order on November 13, 2001, authorizing the tribunals for foreigners accused of terrorism, but criticism of the process spurred the Defense Department to modify the plan in March 2002. On July 3, 2003, Bush designated six of the detainees as candidates for military tribunals. Qosi and Bahlul will be the first of the six to face a tribunal.

How does the government defend the detentions?

In a speech in Miami on February 13, 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called the long detention of detainees a "security necessity." He said that if the detainees were released, "they would return to the fight and continue to kill innocent men, women, and children." Rumsfeld also said detainees under interrogation have provided important intelligence about Qaeda activities to authorities.

What are the charges against Qosi and Bahlul?

The February 24 indictment accuses Qosi of being Osama bin Laden`s accountant, exchanging money for him on the black market, acting as a courier for Qaeda funds, and working as a treasurer for a business that financed Qaeda activities, the Associated Press reported. The indictment accuses Bahlul of being a bin Laden bodyguard and a Qaeda media propagandist who made a video glorifying the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, an attack that killed 17 sailors.

Do the accused have access to lawyers?

Yes. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Susan Shaffer will defend Qosi, and Navy Lieutenant Commander Philip Sundel and Army Major Mark Bridges will act as counsel for Bahlul.

Who is in charge of the tribunal process?

John D. Altenburg Jr., an army major general who retired in 2002. His title is Appointing Authority for Military Commissions. He will not serve on the tribunals, but will supervise the procedures under which the cases are conducted. Altenburg will decide which cases go before tribunals and whether they will be heard in open court or, because of security concerns, in closed or partially closed proceedings. An army lawyer for 28 years, he previously served as assistant judge advocate general for the Department of the Army. Air Force Brigadier General Thomas L. Hemingway, a former Air Force staff judge advocate and director of the Air Force Judiciary, will supervise the legal staff and act as Altenburg`s legal adviser.

How will the military tribunals work?

Cases will be heard by a panel of three to seven military officers. Altenburg will appoint one member, who must be a military lawyer, as each panel`s presiding officer. A two-thirds majority of the panel must agree to convict or impose a sentence. The panel may impose the death penalty, but that sentence requires a unanimous decision. The tribunals will admit some evidence--hearsay, for example--that is not admissible in U.S. civilian courts. Detainees can hire civilian lawyers at their own expense to work alongside the military attorneys assigned to them.

Can tribunal decisions be appealed?

Yes. On December 30, 2003, the Pentagon named four members of a review panel to hear appeals:

Griffin B. Bell, former U.S. attorney general and former judge for the United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
Edward G. Biester, judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Seventh Judicial District. He is a former attorney general of Pennsylvania.
William T. Coleman, Jr., senior partner and senior counselor in the law firm O`Melveny and Meyers. He is a former U.S. secretary of transportation.
Frank Williams, chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

More members may be added later, experts say. Appeals will be heard by three members of the review panel; the makeup of each appeals court will be decided by review panel members. Panel decisions can be appealed to the secretary of defense and the president, but not to civilian courts.

Will international observers be allowed to watch the proceedings?

Yes. Members of Congress, reporters, and representatives of the International Red Cross will be allowed in, The New York Times reported February 23. But the government says there is not enough space or capacity at the Guantanamo Bay facility to accommodate others. Advocacy groups, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Human Rights First have objected.

Is the United States under pressure to release more detainees or charge them?

Yes. Marine Corps Major Michael Mori, defense lawyer for Australian detainee David Hicks, told the Associated Press on January 21, 2004, that his client`s mental state has "degenerated" after two years of confinement, echoing criticisms from international rights groups. Rumsfeld stressed on February 13 that the United States "has no desire to hold enemy combatants any longer than is absolutely necessary" and announced that an additional review panel will examine detainees` cases on a yearly basis to decide who will be tried before military tribunals, who will be repatriated to home countries, and who will be released. A detainee`s foreign government will be allowed to submit information to the review panel on the detainee`s behalf, said Paul Butler, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee operations, in a February 13 briefing. The Pentagon has expedited the review process and has released more than 90 detainees to their home countries, experts say.

Are the detainees considered prisoners of war (POWs)?

No. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, in a briefing February 7, 2002, said the Guantanamo detainees are not entitled to POW privileges under Article 4 of the Geneva Conventions. Fleisher said Al Qaeda and Taliban are "unprivileged" or "unlawful" combatants because they don`t pass the four traditional tests for so-called state parties to war, as defined in the conventions. By this definition, soldiers must:

wear uniforms or distinctive insignia;
have a recognizable chain of command;
carry arms openly; and
conduct military operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

What do critics say about the tribunal process?

Military lawyers assigned to defend detainees have criticized it. Sundel told The New York Times February 24 that he and his co-counsel might challenge the tribunal process, saying, "We have concerns about virtually every aspect of the military commission process as it relates to our client getting a fair trial." Bridges told Reuters February 25 that the checks and balances enshrined in the modern legal system "don`t exist in the military commission system." Mori criticized the tribunals as "created and controlled by those with a vested interest only in convictions," the Associated Press reported January 21. Many legal experts and others have called the military tribunal process unfair to suspects because they can be held as long as the U.S. government considers them a threat--even after they have been convicted and served a sentence. Before being charged, the detainees at Guantanamo have no access to lawyers, their families, or international aid groups. The military tribunal process is also not subject to review by independent courts.

Do the tribunals face legal challenges?

Yes. Families of detainees from Britain, Australia, and Kuwait have brought a case before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the military tribunal process. They argue that Guantanamo detainees are entitled to lawyers while in detention and eventual access to civilian courts. A decision is expected by mid-summer, experts say. Military lawyers assigned to represent the detainees filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief with the Supreme Court in January that said, "the Constitution cannot countenance an open-ended presidential power, with no civilian review whatsoever, to try anyone the president deems subject to a military tribunal, whose rules and judges have been selected by the prosecuting authority itself," The Washington Post reported January 13.

How have tribunal advocates responded?

A group of distinguished legal experts filed an amicus brief March 3 supporting the military tribunal process. The brief states that critics of the process are ignoring "the settled rules of the law of armed conflict ... which permits nations to defend their citizens through the use of military force, including the capture and detention of enemy combatants throughout the conflict ... so long as an armed conflict is still in progress." Ruth Wedgwood, a professor of international law at the Johns Hopkins University and one of the filers, says the brief argues that al Qaeda, a terrorist group, "cannot be considered a state party to the Geneva Convention;" therefore, the Qaeda fighters being held at Guantanamo are not entitled to POW status or habeas corpus rights.

-- by Esther Pan, staff writer, cfr.org



Copyright 2004

[Joerver]

March 11, 2004
Q&A: Graham Fuller on Iraq

From the Council on Foreign Relations, March 11, 2004

Graham E. Fuller, a former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA and an expert on the Arab world, says there is a possibility that democracy might succeed in Iraq. If it does, he says, "the implications are great" throughout the region.

He says despite the "immense distrust of the United States and its lack of credibility" in the Middle East, the Bush administration`s efforts to promote democratic reform have "probably unleashed a process of change across the region with potentially sweeping consequences."

Fuller, the author of "The Future of Political Islam," was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on March 10, 2004.

There has been considerable political agitation in Iraq lately over approval of the interim constitution, Shiite requests for modifications to it, and the pending return of sovereignty on June 30. How do you see the situation unfolding?

First of all, everyone knows that the Shiites, the majority population in modern times, have been excluded from what they see as their rightful place in the political order. All the calculations of the Shiites come down to whether the United States will leave a system in place that will enable them to enjoy the fruits of being the majority population.

In other words, if the United States leaves some rinky-dink, non-legitimized, uncertain, still-contested constitution and political order in place, the Shiites will find that absolutely unacceptable, because they will know they are going to have to struggle on very different turf in order to assert their power.

When I say power, I don`t mean absolute domination, but simply the fact that the Shiites are the biggest and most important group in the country and will naturally dominate it. I see everything [the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-] Sistani says and does as based on that. If it looks as if the United States is not going to be able to deliver a system that is both democratic and generally accepted as legitimate by the public, then [the Shiites] are going to need to switch tactics, because some element of armed struggle, or other less-constitutional means, will decide how the Iraqi political order will come out after the U.S. departure.

The interim constitution is a confederal one that was the product of several compromises. Will it work?

There is still a good deal of vagueness about the constitution, but certainly there is recognition of the different regions. I don`t think anyone, including the Sunnis or the Kurds, feel they are going to be left out in the cold. The Sunni calculation is rather more complicated. There are varying elements within it. I think there is a struggle among the Sunnis over how much to cooperate with the new order and how to extract different kinds of benefits for themselves out of all this. I think that over time, unless there is a resolution by armed conflict, the Sunnis will battle on constitutional grounds. There are clearly radicals, however, who are determined to upset that process.

Why didn`t the Sunnis, who are the Iraqis with the most experience operating a government, offer their services to the Americans?

That`s a very good question. I think some would like to have done so, but let`s remember that the Baathist elite, which ran the government, was largely marginalized and didn`t see any clear future for themselves. They were very uncertain about what the U.S. game was. There is a profound suspicion across the whole country, but especially among Sunnis inside and outside Iraq, that the U.S. game plan is to weaken Iraq irrevocably, to no longer permit it to be a great Arab state, if you will, a state that would be able, in the name of Arab nationalism and Arab power, to resist the power of the West and the power of Israel in the region.

The talk about democracy, the talk of federalism, is seen by many as really a ruse to emasculate the country generally, and that further prejudices Sunnis against the United States. There has been a lot of neo-conservative rhetoric that precisely confirms [the Sunnis`] worst fears about this.

What do you think of President Bush`s democracy-promotion proposal? He hopes to win approval for it at the June G-8 meeting. But it`s come under criticism in Egypt and other countries in the region.

I applaud the administration for addressing more forthrightly than any other administration has to date the need for democratization and liberalization and reform across the region. I think the difficulty here comes back to the raw reality of an immense distrust of the United States and its lack of credibility in the area.

There are many suspicions about the United States` broader motivations and goals. One element of distrust is the administration`s apparent inability or unwillingness to bring some resolution to the Palestinian problem. There is an inherent contradiction between the war against terrorism on the one hand, and support for reform and liberalization on the other. Those very governments we look to for total support in the war against terrorism are threatened by the liberalization program and, indeed, their own domestic opposition may represent part of the terrorist problem of the region.

You`re talking about Saudi Arabia, in particular?

Saudi Arabia, yes, but also Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria. This makes it very difficult for both programs to be carried out simultaneously. In the end, security and stability are going to win out, as they have with every single U.S. presidency.

You are saying it is virtually impossible to have democracy and a victory against terrorism at the same time?

I don`t think it is impossible, but it is hard by any standard. And this administration, not only in the content but also in the style of its policy implementation, has alienated lots of people and created suspicions, not only in the Arab world, of course, but elsewhere in the world, including Western Europe.

Have you ever seen a time when the United States has been less admired by other countries?

I have to say that, in all my long years working on foreign policy affairs, I have never seen the United States stuck at such a low level of regard.

Who are our friends in the Arab world right now?

I don`t think we have any friends right now. I hate to say that, and I know it is a sweeping generalization. Our "friends" tend to be rulers in power who cling to us to prop up their own regimes and are willing to do our bidding. But it is precisely for that reason that they are viewed with absolute contempt by the populations at large, who strongly believe in the democratization agenda but don`t think for one second that the United States is really going to bring change if it means that leaders who are less pro-American or even hostile to the United States might come to power.

It`s interesting that the Arabs were very impressed by Turkey`s ability to say "no" to the United States` request that it allow American troops to invade Iraq from Turkey. That decision was taken by a democratically elected, popularly supported government. In the Arab world, which was even more upset about the implications of the war against Iraq, not one of the rulers dared reflect public opinion and [public] opposition to the war. So there are a lot of messages here about the power and importance of democracy and the ability to do things.

I`ve always thought that if there were a "democracy" in Saudi Arabia or other Arab states, the United States would have real problems.

I think we would. I think we would have real problems across the whole region. There is a great deal of pent-up hostility [directed at] the United States. I liken the people there to a Brahmin bull that has been in its cage and prodded and poked for hours, and then suddenly you open the gate and the people--in the form of free expression and democracy--come charging out and it is one hell of a ride. Whether it is going to be for 15 seconds or 15 months or 15 years, nobody knows. It will depend on the state.

What will happen in Iraq?

I envision at least two widely differing scenarios. One is that in the end most Iraqis will grasp that this is a major chance for them to change the state. They will accept the necessary compromises, and the United States will be able to put these things in place, even if it won`t be able to fully legitimize everything it does.

On these grounds, I would foresee an Iraq that slowly, painfully works its way forward with a very new system. I would not be surprised if there were some corrective coups along the way here and there such as Turkey has had. You can`t do this overnight. Under any circumstances, Iraq will be a very powerful player in the region, even if the United States might prefer to have a "weak" Iraq. I think the force of its semi-democracy, the fact that it will truly reflect public opinion, including elements of anti-Americanism, will give it great legitimacy in the area, especially when contrasted against other states.

What`s the other scenario?

The other alternative would be if the United States were unable to put into place a constitution or political order that is accepted by all the players as legitimate, and they then seek to adjudicate power via force. I don`t want to say outright civil war, but there could be considerable strife.

I would have to say, by the way, that any leader who is going to emerge in Iraq in the future is going to be cool toward the United States at the very least. I would go further--any leader in Iraq who is not cool toward the United States will not enjoy serious legitimacy or support.

Iraqis will reflect some of the feelings present in the rest of the Arab world. I am not saying that the legitimacy of a future Iraqi leader depends on a fierce anti-Americanism. I wouldn`t see anti-Americanism as being the centerpiece of this cool approach to the United States, but there would have to be a heavy emphasis on sovereignty--"Thank you, U.S., you`ve done your job, now leave, we`ll call you if we need you. We don`t want your armies here, we don`t want the biggest embassy in the whole world. We are going to develop our own policies on oil. We will normalize with Israel when the rest of the Arab world does, or at least when the Palestinians do, and there is a solution there."

I don`t see why we can`t live with that, especially if the war on terror starts to ease off.

What will the implications be for other Arab countries if the new Iraq seems to be roughly democratic?

I think the implications are great. I believe the Bush administration actually has unleashed a process of change across the region with potentially sweeping consequences, much of which were unintended, much of which will be unwished-for, much of which will be unstoppable, and much of which will be complicating and even perhaps dangerous on occasion. But it is a necessary process of evolution. I just don`t think the transition from where we are now to more open governments can be easy or simple or smooth. I think by nature it is a rough journey.



Copyright 2004

[Joerver]

March 13, 2004
Creating the Next Crime Wave

President Bush surprised some people when he spoke sympathetically about ex-convicts during his State of the Union address and announced a proposal to furnish mentoring, job placement and transitional housing for ex-offenders. The $300 million budget is far too small, but it was heartening to hear Mr. Bush acknowledge that there was more to crime prevention than just locking up people — and that pushing ex-cons into a hostile world without help is a recipe for civic disaster.

The United States has the largest, most expensive and fastest-growing prison system in the world, and it may be unsustainable over the long run. Faced with a national price tag for corrections that exceeds $50 billion per year, states are being forced to re-evaluate the stiff sentencing policies that drove up the prison population to more than 2 million, from 200,000 three decades ago. In recent years, 25 states have eased sentencing policies and reinstated early release and treatment programs for drug offenders, now about a quarter of the nation`s prisoners.

These sentencing changes would have been politically impossible 20 years ago, when the country was racked by a crack-inspired crime wave. The states responded with stiff sentences for certain crimes. Then, over the last decade, national crime rates fell sharply. Prosecutors and the police rushed to take credit, arguing that crime had gone down because criminals had been locked up.

The problem with this explanation is that crime went down just as much in states that did not adopt tough new policing and sentencing strategies as in states that embraced them. The emerging consensus is that mass incarceration accounts for only a fraction of the drop in violent crime. The strong economy of the 1990`s clearly played a role, as did demographic factors — and the ending of the crack epidemic, aided by teenagers who shunned the drug after seeing parents and older siblings destroyed.

If society hopes to maintain that welcome drop in crime, whatever its causes, it must now confront the fact that mass imprisonment creates a huge population of ex-convicts. About 600,000 hit the streets each year with no skills, no place to live and few family connections. These former offenders are almost always ruled out of consideration for decent jobs and are further marginalized by laws that bar them from getting student loans or driver`s licenses, from voting and from becoming tenants in public housing developments. Many revert to lawlessness and end up back in prison within a few brief years.

Mr. Bush was on point when he said that "America is the land of [the] second chance, and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life." But more money is needed to make his initiative more than a gesture. In addition, the country will need to change its attitude before it can reincorporate the millions of ex-offenders who stand at the margins of society with no clear way into the mainstream.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

___________

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Es kann nur einen geben, der die Rätsel lösen kann!

March 13, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Pundit on the Desktop
By MIKE MORTON and SABRA MORTON

rs Magna, the software program that always answers in anagrams, has been giving some thought to the presidential election. When we say senator, for instance, it replies treason; and if we ask it about tax policies, it comes back with axe politics. Recently, we settled in for an interview about the 2004 presidential race:

So, Ars, the next big political event will be the Democratic convention. What do you think the party really wants?
To intervene; chad not comic.

How will the convention respond to the Massachusetts senator?
Chorus: Statesman! Asset!

Do you personally have an opinion about Senator John Kerry?
John? Ornery streak.

The Republicans are attacking Senator Kerry now for changing his mind about important issues. He criticizes the administration`s Iraq policy, yet just a year ago he voted to go to war in the Gulf again.
Gather in awful gain.

As you may know, Senator Kerry has been called a Boston brahmin.
O, man! Birth snob!

What can his so-called Band of Brothers — Vietnam veterans — offer him?
Net verve, stamina.

Let`s turn to the Republican National Convention. What might be its message to the country?
Continual privation can ennoble.

And what will President George W. Bush say to his party?
Whee! Progress in budget!

Do you agree?
Progress? Huge new debit!

The president once billed himself as a compassionate conservative. How do you interpret that now?
Conspire to save a vast income.

Mr. Bush assures us the economy will turn around soon, and Fed Chairman Greenspan —
Spending framer an ache!

It seems you don`t like the chairman`s proposal for Social Security and Medicare cuts.
Edit care? Scum!

Later in the year, we`ll have the Bush-Kerry debates. What should we expect?
Test, hey? Bash, drub. Reek.

Do you think Ralph Nader should be allowed to take part in the presidential debates?
Despise alternate bid!

It appears the Republicans` big issue will be national security. What do you think of the Patriot Act?
A pathetic tort.

As for the Democrats, they`ll keep raising the Florida debacle of 2000. We`ve read that some states will use the touchscreen voting machine. Do you worry that it might skew the outcome?
Oh, much concern! Investigate!


Mike Morton is a software engineer. Sabra Morton is a writer.



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March 13, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Tune In to Democracy
By DAVID HOFFMAN

ARCATA, Calif.— After several embarrassing attempts to corral the news media in Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority is about to get it right. L. Paul Bremer, the authority`s administrator, has signaled his approval of coming Iraqi Governing Council legislation that will establish an independent interim media commission. The commission will have the power to issue broadcast licenses, provide a system of self-regulation for the fragmented press and bring order to the way news and information flows in Iraq.

The council is also expected to issue a second law that will transform the coalition`s faltering propaganda outlet, the Iraqi Media Network, into a PBS-style public interest broadcasting corporation. Together these changes will give Iraq the most advanced and detailed media laws of any developing country in the world. For Iraqis, who spent decades living under a repressive regime, the changes are essential to establishing an open, democratic and pluralistic society.

In the first months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis were deluged with newspaper, radio and television reports from new Iraqi news sources (as well as some from neighboring Iran). The coalition, hoping to get across its own message and curb anti-American rhetoric, responded clumsily. Arrests of journalists, including some from Arab satellite channels; a threatened military takeover of an independent TV station in Mosul; and blatant propaganda on state television all undermined the United States effort.

The new laws, which have backing across the Iraqi political spectrum, represent a radical shift toward an Iraqi-run democratic society. They also reflect a deeply held desire among Iraqis for freedom. (A recent Gallup poll found that residents of Baghdad regarded freedom of expression as the most important right to be guaranteed in Iraq`s new Constitution.)

The framework establishes an Iraq Communications and Media Commission, an independent body that will license and regulate telecommunications and broadcasting in the country — essentially an Iraqi F.C.C. The commission will manage, for example, the allocation of radio and television frequencies, a critical resource for Iraq. It will oversee the use of broadcasting facilities. And it will be responsible for developing a national telecommunications policy that will help expand telephone service and Internet access, as well as promote a reliable regulatory environment that will attract investment in world-class technologies and services.

Most important, the commission would be made up of Iraqis and its hearings would be open to the public. The framework also encourages the development of a code of ethics for the press — one that emphasizes the need for journalistic standards and the importance of self-regulation.

It`s an ambitious agenda, and of course, the devil is always in the details. The commissioners will need to be independent and resistant to political pressures — something that is hard enough to guarantee in a well-established democracy, much less a fledgling one like Iraq. What`s more, in the absence of a genuinely sovereign Iraqi government, the laws — though bold — are necessarily limited. Eventually, Iraq will need broader legislative review and reform to address issues like defamation and libel.

The commission will also need adequate financing to realize its potential. Some of the money will come from license fees collected from telecommunications operators and broadcasters who use Iraq`s airwaves. Other resources will need to come from grants and donations, including funds already appropriated by the United States for the reconstruction of Iraq.

Western governments should support the new media commission, but they should not seek to control it. If the West is serious about promoting democracy in Iraq, its most powerful weapon will be its support for the expansion of pluralistic, independent commercial media outlets. Freedom has many voices. These new laws will help guarantee they`ll always be heard.


David Hoffman is the president of Internews Network, a nonprofit organization that supports independent news media.



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March 13, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
117 Deaths Each Day
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Here`s a pop quiz. Rank the following in order of the number of American lives they claim in a typical year: food, guns, terrorists, flu and cars.

Ready? The most deadly are automobiles, which kill 117 Americans a day, or nearly 43,000 a year. Then comes flu, which (along with pneumonia, its associated disease) kills 36,000 people. Third is guns: 26,000 deaths. Fourth, food-borne illness: 5,000. And finally, terrorism, which in a typical year claims virtually no U.S. lives — with horrific exceptions like 2001. But antiterrorism efforts get most of the attention and the resources.

To a point, that`s sensible. The train bombings in Madrid are a reminder of our vulnerability. President Bush is right to emphasize the risk from W.M.D., because a single nuclear bomb could claim 500,000 lives.

Still, we need a balance in confronting threats, and I don`t think we`ve found it. Watch President Bush`s campaign ads, and it`s clear that he`s overwhelmingly focused on the war on terrorism — in 2001, he called it "my primary focus." As he put it this year, "I`m a war president."

Mr. Bush`s intensity and unwavering purpose comforted the nation in the aftermath of 9/11. But America is too complex to have national policy reduced to the single overarching priority of counterterrorism.

"It`s an important threat, but it cannot be the organizing principle of our foreign policy," argues Ivo Daalder, a former national security official who is co-author of "America Unbound," an excellent (and respectful) book about Mr. Bush`s administration. "There are worse threats out there. Climate change. H.I.V./AIDS."

Or, I would say, nuclear proliferation. Or cars.

Vehicle fatalities don`t get attention because they occur in ones and twos. If people died at the same rate but in one horrifying crash a month that killed 3,500 people, then Mr. Bush and Congress would speedily make auto safety a priority and save thousands of lives a year. As Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has said: "If we had 115 people die a day in aviation crashes, we wouldn`t have a plane in the sky."

"Driving a car is one of the most dangerous things we do," note Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres, two Yale professors, in their book about innovative thinking, "Why Not?" They note that a major effort by Sweden has reduced traffic deaths by encouraging seat belt use, converting intersections to traffic circles (they "soothe" traffic), replacing rigid guardrails with new rails or cables that absorb or "catch" cars, and exhorting cyclists to wear helmets. The upshot is that Sweden `s accident rate is one of the lowest in the world.

"If the United States could achieve Sweden`s current standard, this would save 12,500 lives per year," the authors say.

Granted, it seems less presidential to call for more guardrails than to invade Middle Eastern countries. And, in fairness, President Bush`s head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Dr. Jeffrey Runge, is pushing hard to save lives in unheralded ways, from improving S.U.V. design to getting drivers to check their tire pressure.

A month before Dr. Runge took up his post, several teenagers were rushed to the hospital where he worked as an emergency room physician. The driver in their car, a 17-year-old redhead named Sarah Longstreet, was known in her high school for her friendliness and her Bible Club activities. She wore a seat belt and her air bag inflated, but she died when a Ford Explorer veered across the center line and plowed right over the hood of her Mazda. That incompatibility in the two cars` designs made her one more unnecessary auto fatality — and she became "sort of an angel to me," Dr. Runge said.

So when I asked him about priorities, he answered this way:

"First off, we have to do everything we`re doing for counterterrorism," he said. "There`s nothing that we`re doing that we shouldn`t be doing, and you can make the case that we should be doing more. . . . However, we`re still losing 115 people a day on the highways, and basically the perpetrators of those deaths also fit within a profile" — such as alcohol abusers.

Governing the U.S. is like playing 200 simultaneous chess matches (while whiny columnists second-guess every move on every board). The terrorism chessboard is among the most important, but if we could just devote a bit more energy to the others, we could save thousands of lives — including the life of the next Sarah Longstreet.



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Employees work at Behlen Manufacturing`s Beijing plant. CEO Anthony F. Raimondo withdrew from the running for an administration post after the plant became an issue.
washingtonpost.com
Missteps on Economy Worry Bush Supporters


By Jonathan Weisman and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A01


A string of glaring missteps by President Bush`s economic team has raised alarm among the president`s supporters that his economic policymakers may have lost the most basic ability to formulate a persuasive message or anticipate the political consequences of their actions.

In recent weeks, the White House has had to endure its chief economist`s positive comments about job "outsourcing," or sending work overseas; controversial passages in the annual Economic Report of the President; questions over the legitimacy of Bush`s 2005 budget; a California swing in which Bush bragged about the possible addition of two or three jobs to a 14-person business in Bakersfield and a flap over a job-creation forecast that not even the president could stand by.

On March 1, a host of U.S. industries began paying trade sanctions to Europe because Congress and the White House have not replaced illegal export subsidies with new aid for ailing manufacturers.

But the non-naming of Anthony F. Raimondo on Thursday as assistant commerce secretary for manufacturing and services has brought the concerns to a boil.

The long-anticipated announcement of a manufacturing czar was supposed to be a good-news day for a White House struggling with its economic message. Instead the planned, smiling photo op fizzled when it came to light that a year ago Bush`s choice had opened a major plant in Beijing.

"Clearly, the machinery`s not working very well," said Bruce Bartlett, an economist with the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis, who noted that this White House has been known for its discipline on message.

Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the lobbying world of K Street say that the incidents may be minor, but they are many, each amplified by the last. And they are supplying a steady, nourishing diet for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who has made jobs and Bush`s economic policies a centerpiece of his campaign to capture the White House.

Several former administration officials said the debacle over Raimondo illustrated broader weaknesses in Bush`s White House as he gears up his reelection campaign. Some Republicans said the situation crystallized their concerns about his weakened political position. These Republicans refused to speak on the record because they said that if they did, they could not be candid about the problems without infuriating Bush and his most powerful aides.

These Republicans noted that several key officials who were steeped in Bush`s first campaign have moved out of the West Wing or out of the government, and their replacements -- especially in the economic arena -- have weaker political antennae.

"People are doing their jobs, but most of them don`t have the authority to do something once they find a mistake," said a former official who stays in frequent touch with the West Wing. "Somebody over there has to take complete and utter responsibility for everything that is publicly released from that White House. And no one is doing that."

They also noted that Democrats are drawing scrutiny to errors and inconsistencies that might have passed unnoticed a few months ago. "This is a hyper-charged political environment, and they have not adapted," the former official said.

And Karl Rove, who is on the government payroll as the White House senior adviser, is stretched thin between trying to watch what the administration is doing and overseeing the ramping up of a campaign that has accelerated its plans in response to Kerry`s early lock on the Democratic nomination.

"There`s a trade-off," said a Republican who advises both the administration and the campaign. "It means you end up talking through get-out-the-vote activities instead of looking at every single element of the economic report before it is released."

A former White House official pointed to other personnel issues. Bush loaded his first economic team with brash, outspoken officials full of ideas, such as Treasury Secretary Paul H. O`Neill, National Economic Council Director Lawrence B. Lindsey and economic adviser R. Glenn Hubbard, he said.

But those ideas often clashed, and the officials proved too outspoken. So Bush swung the team in the opposite direction, filling it with replacements who would stick to the White House message and keep out of the news. But those officials have not generated fresh policies.

"They`ve populated the place with an absence of ideas guys, which is fine if you think you can put it on autopilot and win," he said. "But it doesn`t look like it`s working."

Others say the economic team was kept straight in the first two years by Joshua B. Bolten, the deputy chief of staff for policy. When Bolten left last year to head the White House budget office, the wheels started coming off the operation, one Senate Republican aide said.

Administration officials contend that as the economic recovery takes hold and jobs begin proliferating, GOP concerns will disappear. Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols said that, already, the unemployment rate has fallen, disposable income has risen, single-family home ownership is at record levels and worker productivity is high.

But outside the White House, allies are worried. The recent losing streak has the administration "on its heels," said Daniel J. Mitchell, an economist at the Heritage Foundation.

This week, Reps. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) and Donald Manzullo (R-Ill.), who represent hard-hit manufacturing districts, requested a meeting with Bush to get him to refocus his economic message. "Let me try to be diplomatic about this," Manzullo said. "The president needs to bring together in a single, simple focus the things he really believes in. He`s got the right stuff. He just needs to sharpen the focus."

The flap over Raimondo may be the most glaring breakdown, critics say. He is a well-respected chairman and chief executive of a prefabricated-building manufacturer. But his company -- Behlen Manufacturing Co. of Columbus, Neb. -- laid off 1,180 workers from its five U.S. plants in the past three years while opening a plant in Beijing.

That was only the most recent problem. The release last month of the Economic Report of the President by the White House Council of Economic Advisers has proven to be rich fodder for Democrats, who promise it will appear in ads. First came the flap over a passage that appeared to praise the recent movement of U.S. service jobs to such low-wage countries as India: "When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than make or provide it domestically."

Then, critics turned their attention to the report`s anticipation that 2004 employment would on average be 2.6 million jobs higher than last year. The secretaries of commerce and the Treasury, and then the president, quickly backed off that projection.

Finally, Democrats latched on to an obtuse question in the report, "When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger . . . is it providing a `service` or is it combining inputs to `manufacture` a product?" The point, administration economists said, was to question the practicality of congressional proposals to offer tax breaks to manufacturers. But Democrats accused the White House of wanting to reclassify burger flippers as Joe Lunchpails.

The reactions were unfair, said two former White House officials, but in an election year, they should have been anticipated. They said the extensive vetting process that governed previous report releases must have broken down. "Clearly, people didn`t read it," one of the former officials said. "This stuff was not hard to find."

As the White House was putting out those brush fires, officials had to deal with the comments of N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Mankiw managed to anger manufacturers, software writers and even radiologists in his extended take on the "outsourcing" of jobs overseas.

"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," he told reporters. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past, and that`s a good thing."

But administration officials concede that, so far, it has been a good thing mainly for Democrats.



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washingtonpost.com
Iraqi Police Suspected In Slaying of Americans


By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A10


BAGHDAD, March 12 -- Four men suspected in the slaying of two Americans working for the occupation authority in Iraq appear to be active Iraqi police officers, U.S. officials said Friday.

The Americans, Fern L. Holland, 33, and Robert J. Zangas, 44, and Holland`s Iraqi translator, Salwa Ourmashi, were shot dead around 6 p.m. Tuesday near Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Shortly afterward, Polish troops apprehended six Iraqi men riding in the victims` car and discovered that four carried cards that identified them as police, officials said.

"Four of them had current and, we believe, valid Iraqi Police Service identifications," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a military spokesman, told reporters Friday. Kimmitt cautioned that it was too early to say definitively that the suspects were involved in the attack or that the attackers knew that their victims worked for the occupation authority.

The new evidence raised questions about the screening of Iraqi security forces, a key component of the U.S. strategy to give control of Iraq back to Iraqis. To speed the return home of U.S. troops in Iraq, military and security officials are attempting to establish five Iraqi security forces, including a national police force of 85,000 officers.

As of Friday, 2,827 had graduated from an eight-week training course for recruits without police experience; 12,422 who had been police officers under the government of Saddam Hussein had finished a three-week course.

But the demands associated with hiring, screening, training and outfitting those forces have posed frequent problems. Because Iraq does not have accurate census records and many criminal records are spotty or inaccurate, applicants are often hired on the basis of little more than a quick oral interview. In Baghdad, the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, found last winter that more than 200 officers in the new force already had been dismissed or had their pay cut for crimes that included theft, extortion and even kidnapping.

On Thursday, the top commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, said he was "very concerned" about the possible penetration of guerrillas and insurgents into the new security forces. On Friday, however, other U.S. officials repeatedly defended the selection of police officers as "robust" and said that mistakes in the recruitment process were rare.

"While it is a robust vetting process, it is not perfect, as is to be expected not just only in the Iraqi security forces but in security forces around the world," said Daniel Senor, a spokesman for the occupation authority.

Noting that more than 150,000 Iraqis have joined the new services, Senor said that the vast majority were honest, law-abiding and committed to creating a democratic and peaceful country. Occurrences of crime and corruption have been "isolated incidents," he said: "They are exceptions. They are not the rule."

The FBI and Iraqi police are investigating the killings of the three occupation authority employees. The six people in detention are being interrogated, but there are no independent witnesses to the killings, officials said.

Investigators are trying to reconstruct the crime scene and are examining tire marks found there. Although initial reports stated that the victims were shot after they stopped at a makeshift checkpoint, Kimmitt said Friday that "they may have been chased or run off the road."

The three victims were driving without a military escort and in a vehicle not protected by armor. More than a dozen bullets hit the driver`s side of the dark four-door sedan in which the victims were riding, a U.S. official said Friday.

The victims worked in the occupation authority`s south-central regional office. Holland helped set up women`s rights centers, and Zangas worked with Iraqi journalists.

[The Associated Press reported that a roadside bomb early Saturday in Hussein`s home town of Tikrit killed two members of the Army`s 1st Infantry Division and wounded four others.]



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washingtonpost.com
Defining Spying Down




Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A18


WHEN CAPT. James Yee, an Army chaplain, was arrested in September, the government let it be known that it suspected him of the most ominous-sounding offenses: mutiny and sedition, aiding the enemy and espionage were among those listed on his confinement order. What`s more, Defense Department officials lost no time insinuating to the press that Mr. Yee -- a Chinese American convert to Islam who was assigned to minister to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- was part of a spy ring there. Mr. Yee, anonymous officials said, had been caught with classified documents about the detainees and their interrogators and with sketches of facilities at the base; there was no innocent reason a chaplain would have such material; he had studied in Syria.

Compare all that with the actual charges against Mr. Yee. The government alleges that he mishandled classified information by "taking [it] to a housing unit." He transported it "without the proper locking containers or covers" and made a false statement about whether certain material was cleared for release to a detainee. But about espionage -- let alone mutiny -- not a word was said. Instead, the military alleges that Mr. Yee used "a government computer to view and store pornographic images" and he "wrongfully [had] sexual intercourse with Lieutenant Karyn Wallace, USN, a woman not his wife."

The public will, we are sure, be gratified that the Pentagon is so diligently protecting the Guantanamo detainees from allegedly adulterous religious counselors. And perhaps Mr. Yee`s handling of classified material was so egregious as to warrant criminal prosecution -- though his lawyer denies the charges. But one has to wonder how a spy case dwindled to this.

The military had been scheduled this week to renew its preliminary investigation -- akin to a grand jury inquiry in the civilian justice system -- into whether these charges warranted a trial. But the government obtained another in a series of delays and is now reportedly considering dropping charges and allowing Mr. Yee to be honorably discharged. Unless there is some still-secret information that somehow justifies the government`s conduct in this case, the answer is easy. Any sanctions should be administrative, not criminal. If the government cannot even allege that Mr. Yee acted with malign intent or compromised sensitive material, it owes him an apology for the time he spent in solitary confinement having his name smeared as a possible enemy spy. It should not hide behind a series of picayune charges to avoid admitting error.

The government responds to questions about detainees such as Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, American citizens held indefinitely without charge as enemy combatants, by asking for trust from the courts and the public. Trusting unchecked executive authority is never wise. A case in which mutiny, sedition and espionage gets watered down to improper Web-surfing helps show why. When the Supreme Court considers the fate of Messrs. Padilla and Hamdi this spring, the justices would do well to remember Chaplain Yee.



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Published on Friday, March 12, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
“Creating a Genuine `Opportunity Society`"
by Senator Edward M. Kennedy

A Speech Delivered at the City University of New York Graduate Center Center for the Humanities’ “Re-imagining the Welfare State” Conference on March 1, 2004

For much of the past century, American policy has been driven by a broad-based national commitment to expanding economic opportunity and enlarging the circle of those who share in the country’s prosperity. There was a widely held understanding that government had an indispensable role in preventing abuses of private economic power and opening the door to economic progress for more Americans.

It began in the Progressive Era, when the federal government first challenged the robber barons, setting limits on the concentration of economic power, and establishing minimum standards to protect industrial workers and consumers.



Progressives cannot continue to play defense in the battle of ideas. The stakes are too high. Nor can we allow ourselves to be cast as mere defenders of the status quo. We must make the debate between our vision of the future versus theirs.


It came of age in the New Deal, fashioning a new social contract setting forth government’s responsibility for the economic well-being of its citizens – helping to create an economic climate in which they could prosper, and providing a safety net in times of adversity.

It flourished in the post-war era exemplified by the GI Bill. Government programs made it possible for millions of veterans to enter the middle class – helping them obtain an education and purchase a home.

It took on new dimensions in the New Frontier and Great Society, seeking to lift up those trapped in a harsh underclass by prejudice and intractable poverty. Civil rights laws removed legal obstacles, and the war on poverty sought to break down economic barriers.

This national commitment to expanding opportunity produced extraordinary results. It transformed America – moving generations of low-wage workers, immigrants, and subsistence farmers into the middle-class, where stable jobs enabled parents to build a better life for their children.

To acknowledge this enormous achievement is not to say that the process worked for everyone. Some groups, especially people of color, faced additional obstacles because prejudice and isolation slowed their progress. It is essential that they too receive the extra support they need to fully overcome these historic hardships. Perhaps the most fundamental of all the lessons we learned along the way on this great journey is that economic expansion and economic justice are not mutually exclusive. And prosperity does not depend on trickle-down economics or survival of the fittest social policy. The pace of economic growth was not slowed by governmental standards requiring that workers be fairly compensated and have a safe work environment – that consumers be protected from dangerous products – and that the affluent contribute, through progressive tax laws, to the creation of a strong safety net.

In fact, the breadth of the prosperity which these standards produced actually stimulated even greater growth. Just as investment in plants and equipment was a sensible economic strategy, so was investment in our people. In the three decades following World War Two, the American economy expanded at an unprecedented rate, and the wealth of workers rose at the same pace as the wealth of corporate presidents and CEOs.

By any objective measure, these policies were an extraordinary success for America. The nation’s great wealth was enjoyed more broadly among its people than ever before.

Unfortunately, for reasons we know all too well, the national consensus on policies to expand economic opportunity began to come apart in the 1980s. Divisive social issues contributed to the fragmentation of the progressive coalition that had dominated American politics for most of the century. So large a majority of Americans had moved into the middle class that more and more of them began to feel that government no longer needed to provide a safety net or facilitate upward mobility. They had already arrived at their economic destination.

As a result, Republicans came to a new dominance for much of the last quarter century -- controlling the White House in the 1980s, and both houses of Congress for most of the 1990s, and both branches in recent years. They have tried hard as well to dominate the federal courts. Today’s Republicans are very different from those who led their party in earlier years. The Republican Party is now controlled by ideological extremists who reject any meaningful role for government in expanding economic opportunity or preventing the abuses of private economic power. Some of them even openly proclaim that their goal is to “starve the beast” – cut taxes so low that government will not have the resources to play a meaningful role in the economy. These latter day Social Darwinians clearly believe that those who assemble great concentrations of wealth should be unfettered and permitted to dominate the nation’s economic life, much as they did in the late 19th century.

Given such developments, it is not surprising that progressives today are being forced to re-fight battles which our predecessors won decades ago. Today’s Republicans want to make the tax code the exclusive domain of large corporations and the wealthy, not a means of expanding opportunity for all Americans. They want to repeal the estate tax and end the progressivity of the income tax which have stood as pillars of our tax code for nearly a century.

Now, with control of both Congress and the White House for the first time nearly half a century, Republicans want to tilt the scales against workers and in favor of employers by denying overtime pay, abolishing the 40-hour work week, allowing the minimum wage to whither on the vine, ignoring workplace health and safety rules, and repealing any environmental rules that become inconvenient to the corporate world.

Because of Social Security, generations of working men and women have been able to count on having a financial foundation in retirement and benefits at any age if they became disabled. But today’s ideologically extreme Republicans do not believe in the concept of social insurance. So they have made the campaign to privatize Social Security one of their most passionate causes.

They have made the Medicare program a source of even greater profits for pharmaceutical companies and the insurance industry, instead of meeting America’s commitment to give a reliable, and affordable prescription drug benefit to senior citizens.

One by one, issue by issue, program by program, the Republican Right has methodically turned away from policies which brought about a century of progress for working Americans. They want to build the 21st century economy on 19th century economic values, as if the last 100 years had not occurred. For them, the law of the jungle is the best economic policy for America – not equal opportunity, not fairness, not the American dream. Their policies will inevitably result in a lesser America, and have already meant a growing gulf between rich and poor.

Between World War II and 1980, the incomes of high, middle and low-income families rose in unison. With the government policies then in place, a rising tide did lift all boats, as President Kennedy once said. But beginning in the 1980’s, with Republicans in control of the White House and the Senate, the positive economic climate began to change, and income inequality began to grow. In the last twenty years, the rising tide has sunk many smaller boats. For decades, the philosophy behind the minimum wage and many other progressive economic polices was that no one who works for a living should have to live in poverty. It is shameful that for so many of those in control today, the philosophy is, “Pull up the ladder, now that I’m aboard.”

And today, the gulf between rich and poor is the widest it has been in nearly 70 years. The percentage of national income going to the middle class has also shrunk. Since 1980, the average after-tax income of the wealthiest 1% rose by more than 200%, increasing by $567,000 in real dollars. In stark contrast, the average after tax income of middle-income households rose by only 15% during the same period, increasing by just $5,500. And the average after-tax income of the working poor rose by an even smaller percentage, just 9%, growing by a mere $1,100.

In fact, in recent years, 90% of all gains in personal income have gone to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. The number of Americans living in poverty is growing. These disturbing statistics vividly demonstrate that the widespread prosperity which progressive policies helped to create over the past century can easily erode if those policies are abandoned.

By the mid-20th century, the federal government had ensured basic worker rights, and there was a relatively strong correlation between the prosperity of the corporation and the welfare of its workers.

If a company product was in demand, the size of the workforce would grow and workers’ wage and benefit demands would more likely be met. But, that correlation no longer exists throughout much of today’s economy.

Technology allows companies to increase productivity while reducing their workforce, and outsourcing enables profits to grow by sending American jobs abroad. As we know from current headlines, the Bush Administration is cheering the practice on, although they are not supposed to say so in public.

We have lost more manufacturing jobs in the last three years than in the previous 20 years. Outsourcing has already devastated manufacturing and is now costing jobs in the service sector as well.

The trends that are evident in today’s economy demonstrate that a larger role for government is needed if we are to insure that our children enjoy the same widespread economic opportunity which my generation did. When the incomes of the wealthy, the middle class, and the poor are rising together, then the decisions of those who control capital are more likely to benefit the entire workforce. In other words, their self-interest and the public interest are more likely to coincide. As a result, less government involvement is needed to insure that prosperity is broadly shared. However, in a time when most of the income gains are going to the richest 1% of the population, it is clear that the gains of the wealthy few are coming at the expense of everyone else. In such an environment, it becomes particularly important for government to provide a counter-balance to private economic power, and to insure that all segments of society benefit from the prosperity.

Only an active government genuinely committed to the welfare of American workers can ameliorate these highly negative trends. The growth in income inequality we have seen in the last 20 years will be dwarfed by the income gulf we will see in the next 20 years, unless we take necessary actions now. Future generations will be left to ask what became of the once great American middle class.

Progressives cannot continue to play defense in the battle of ideas. The stakes are too high. Nor can we allow ourselves to be cast as mere defenders of the status quo. We must make the debate between our vision of the future versus theirs. In reality, it is the Republican Right which is wedded to the ideas of the distant past, 19th century ideas which America rejected in the early years of the last century. We should portray them for what they are, Neanderthal merchants of outmoded ideas recycled from long ago.

Our vision for the future will certainly include a continuing commitment to the enduring principles that vastly expanded economic opportunity and social justice throughout the 20th century. But, we must go beyond them. Some of the most serious threats to the well-being of families today did not exist in years past, and some of the old problems still go unsolved as well. We need an agenda that has the capability to meet and master the challenges of 21st century life, that reignites the American dream for all people, and not just some, and that convinces people we know the way ahead.

Now is a time to come together and develop a blueprint to make 21st century America a genuine “opportunity society,” – one that provides all our families with economic mobility and security.

First, we must create new and meaningful jobs for all Americans. And we must do this by recognizing once again that government – an enlightened government – has an extraordinary responsibility to assist in this task. History has shown that direct public investment in our human capital and our infrastructure can have a substantial role both in generating economic growth and in broadening economic opportunity.

We must find a way to guarantee health care for every American. The current system ignores the medical needs of 44 million of our fellow citizens, and is a major drag on our economy. Every other industrialized nation guarantees it, and so must we.

The greatest squandering of human capital in our nation is in the students who leave school – graduates as well as dropouts – without the education they need to lead productive lives in society. In the long-term, it costs far more to neglect them than it would cost to help these students develop to their full potential.

Publicly funded research and development is essential to both the economy and our quality of life. The revolution in information technology at the end of the last century was spawned by government- sponsored projects. It is clear already that this new century will be the Century of the Life Sciences, with a legion of breakthroughs made possible by research funded by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies. Research in areas such as the human genome has not only opened new health care horizons, it is creating substantial new employment opportunities across the country. We must continue to invest in the future.

America is facing an infrastructure crisis. By funding more of those building projects now, we get a double benefit – more efficient facilities and well-paying jobs. For example, every billion dollars invested in highway construction produces 47,500 jobs. That can have a big impact on the economy in a hurry.

It is imperative to provide a stable financial foundation for the federal government if we are to effectively address the pressing economic, educational, and health needs of the people. None of these important government initiatives can be accomplished with inadequate resources. They surely cannot be undertaken on the incredibly shrinking tax base that is the legacy of the Bush Administration. Federal revenues are now at the lowest percentage of gross domestic product since 1950. The tax rates on the top income brackets must be returned to pre-2001 levels, and a new higher bracket – about 45% -- should be created for incomes over one million dollars. In addition, we know that major revenue losses result each year from the exploitation of corporate tax loopholes. Those loopholes must be closed. The changes I am proposing will affect only a small percentage of the wealthiest taxpayers. By restoring greater progressivity to the tax code, we will actually be able to reduce the tax burden on millions of hard-working families with modest incomes, as well as fund the public investments the nation so desperately needs.

Our Republican colleagues will no doubt claim that higher taxes on the wealthy will stifle economic growth. I remember Senator Phil Gramm saying in 1993 that the Clinton tax bill would cause the greatest recession since the Great Depression. His crystal ball was certainly fogged. Under President Clinton, we created 22 million new jobs, and notwithstanding the higher taxes, the rich actually grew richer in the 1990s. The marginal tax rates on high incomes that I would favor would still be far lower than the marginal rates in effect during the most economically productive decades of the last century. Republicans love to quote President Kennedy on cutting taxes, but as I remind them, the top tax bracket on his Inaugural Day was 91 percent.

We should also be prepared to look beyond the taxpayers for new sources of investment in infrastructure. And in this, too, government has an important and productive role.

At least a small portion of the trillions of dollars in pension funds could be invested in public projects. If just five percent of the nation’s pension funds were invested, at competitive rates, directly in job-creating and economy-building activities, more than $300 billion in assets could be made available, in a manner consistent with both the security and growth of the pension funds.

Second, we must also assure greater job security for working men and women and their families in this age of rapid global economic change.

Workers today have less job security than most workers had in years past. In this economy with its churning labor market, security comes not through the guarantee of the same job throughout your career, but through the ability to find a new job with at least comparable salary and benefits if you lose your old job.

One of the most disturbing facts about the current jobless recovery is that today’s new jobs pay $8,000 less on average than the jobs being lost. Today’s workers are working harder for less. We have a serious problem not only with the quantity of available jobs, but with the quality as well.

In the manufacturing sector, as I noted earlier, technology and outsourcing are eliminating an increasing number of well- paid, high-skill jobs. Recently, outsourcing has begun to take away quality jobs in the service sector as well. From computer engineers to financial analysts to radiologists, highly trained workers are seeing more and more of their jobs moving abroad.

When the only jobs disappearing were relatively low-skilled and low-paid, education and job training seemed to offer the solution. Give laid off workers a new skill and they will find better jobs than the ones they lost. Now however, when large numbers of high-skill jobs are disappearing, retraining alone is no longer a sufficient answer. Education is still the single most important element in obtaining a job with a future, and America needs to put substantially more resources into preparing workers for new careers.

But, we must also address the direct causes of the large scale job loss in recent years. Currently, the corporate income tax subsidizes the installation of new technology to replace workers, but it does far less to encourage companies to upgrade the skills of their existing workforce or to create new jobs. Some loss of jobs due to technology is inevitable. Often however, whether to purchase new equipment or to create new jobs and upgrade existing jobs is a relatively close choice financially. In those cases, we should not make it more attractive to buy new equipment than to create new jobs. We need a new job creation tax credit that provides several years of tax benefits for a company that invests in an expanded workforce. The analogy is to the tax benefit currently available for depreciating new equipment.

Tax incentives for outsourcing in current law are especially disturbing. Companies can fully deduct many costs in moving jobs overseas as business expenses, from the cost of establishing new facilities in a foreign country to the cost of paying the foreign workers. There is no reason to have U.S. taxpayers subsidize business decisions that harm American workers. In many respects, the tax code of today gives an unacceptable preference to corporate dollars earned from foreign operations over dollars earned from domestic operations. The reverse should be true. Corporate tax laws should be modified to increase the cost of exporting jobs and decrease the cost of maintaining jobs in America.

In addition, the impact of a corporation’s decision to move domestic jobs overseas should be publicly evaluated. Companies should not be permitted to shift the costs of that decision onto others. Just as we require an environmental impact statement before specific actions are taken by a company, the tax law should require an employment impact statement before a company outsources a substantial number of jobs. The statement should go beyond current proposals requiring prior notice of outsourcing decisions. It should also require a detailed evaluation of the impact on the effected workers and the community. What new employment opportunities are available for these workers? What training will be necessary to make the transition and how long will it take? Would the new jobs that are available provide comparable pay and benefits? What other options are available to the company? How substantial was the financial benefit of outsourcing to the company? Was outsourcing necessary to compete with imported products? Could the work be performed profitably within the United States? Was outsourcing the only way to keep the company in business or was the decision made merely to raise the profit margin? Will the outsourcing enable the company to maintain a greater number of other jobs in the country? How could the community help to preserve the jobs? What is the cost to the community of losing them?

Such an employment impact statement would clearly identify the true costs of the decision to outsource, and compel companies to face up to these concerns. In some cases it could lead companies to reevaluate their decisions and to consider other alternatives. Outsourcing decisions have far too large a public impact to be made in private without public scrutiny and without adequate time for the community to react.

Third, we must do more to prevent irresponsible corporate behavior and make companies more accountable to both their communities and their workers. In recent years, we have seen a disturbing increase in corporate conduct that focuses exclusively on increasing short-term profits, and ignores the long-term impact on workers, on environment, and on national values. Many thoughtful proposals have been offered to deter corporate misbehavior.

The nation’s pension funds can help achieve such a goal. The single largest source of savings in the nation is the $6 trillion held by pension funds that are the deferred wages of working Americans. Half of that amount is controlled by the private sector corporations for which those employees work. In recent years, we have seen too many examples where pension fund managers hired by major corporations operated those trust funds for the benefit of the company to the detriment of the workers. The laws governing supervision of corporate pension funds need to be reformed. It is, after all, the employees’ money. Workers deserve a much stronger say, through fund managers of their choice, in how their money is used.

Pension funds -- public and private – now own half of all the publicly-traded corporate shares in America. Traditionally, these fund managers have been passive investors, playing little role in corporate policy-making. In most instances, this passivity has made them silent allies of corporate management.

There is an emerging view, which I share, that pension funds should become much more active investors, providing an independent outside voice in corporate governance. Such a voice in the boardroom could be a major deterrent to corporate misbehavior which is harmful to the overall economy. That role would not be inconsistent with fiduciary duty; it would be protecting the real interest of the people whose funds the fiduciary is managing.

Finally, new and innovative governmental action is also needed to break the cycle of poverty that has trapped so many low-income families for so long. In recent years, poverty has actually been rising again. Three million more people are living in poverty today than in the year 2000. In most of those families, people are working hard for low wages and often in several jobs, but are unable to get ahead. They live from paycheck to paycheck, stretching every dollar. These are the families at the heart of the minimum wage debate. Working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, a mother with two young children earns only $10,700 a year, not enough to rise above the poverty line. It is important for the American people to know these families are there.

They certainly deserve a raise. But they deserve something more – the same economic opportunity that countless other families enjoy – the chance to build a nest-egg – to save some money to help their children get an education, to buy a home of their own, to live a little better in retirement. Studies clearly show that the inability to develop assets is a major factor preventing low-income families from moving up the economic ladder.

Nor is the problem of accumulating savings limited to the poor. Many middle-income families also feel a financial squeeze which leaves them little or nothing for the future. As skewed as income distribution is in this country, it is nothing compared to how unfairly wealth is distributed. The wealthiest 10% of the nation’s households own over two-thirds of the nation’s wealth. At the other end of the spectrum, fully half the population holds only 3% of the wealth. Unless low and moderate-income families can accumulate at least some wealth, they will never have the same life options that more affluent people have.

It is particularly important to help young people begin to build a nest-egg early in life, so that its value can grow as they mature. This will enable them to take advantage of many of the opportunities that are currently limited to only those from more wealthy families. The fundamental question is how can we afford such an initiative? It’s really all a matter of national priorities. Republicans want to permanently eliminate the inheritance tax on multi-millionaires estates. That will deprive the public treasury of $50 billion a year.

Is it more important to allow a few thousand heirs of the wealthiest families in America to inherit their millions tax free or to use a portion of the revenue from that tax to enable millions of Americans to build a better life? I believe the answer is obvious. Whether this country should be doing more to give all children a better start in life and all families a greater hope of living the American dream needs no debate.

One of the best forms of asset development is home ownership. It is already more widespread in America, thanks in large part to government programs and policies, than in most other nations. It is a text book example of how progressive government policies can help create widespread economic opportunity. Nevertheless, about a third of all families – and half of minority families – still cannot afford to own their own home. One reason is that the current tax subsidies for home mortgages and property taxes are structured in ways that benefit the more affluent, but does not enable many families with modest incomes to buy a home. Tax deductions offer a far greater subsidy to those in the upper brackets than those in the 10% and 15% brackets, and they offer no benefit at all to those who pay substantial payroll taxes on their wages, but owe no income tax.

We should allow first-time home owners the option of a refundable tax credit for a percentage of their mortgage interest and property taxes as an alternative to the current deduction. To do so will give working families with modest incomes a roughly equivalent tax benefit in a form that is far more usable for them. For families on the financial edge, it could make the difference between home ownership and endless rent, and enable them to build up a lifetime of equity.

The debate is only just beginning, but what happens in the coming months will have a profound impact. People in all 50 states know that too much has gone wrong for too long, and that 2004 is the year to renew and revitalize our commitment to a genuine “opportunity society.” Thank you all very much.

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Published on Friday, March 12, 2004 by the Guardian/UK
Distant Voices
A World Consensus is Emerging on the Destructive Effects of Globalization - but the Bush Administration is Out of Line

by Joseph Stiglitz

The war on terrorism and in Iraq has distracted much of the world`s attention from the pressing issue of how globalization should be managed so that it benefits everyone. A new report, issued by the International Labor Organization`s commission on the social dimensions of globalization, reminds us how far the Bush administration is out of line with the global consensus. The ILO is a tripartite Organization`s with representatives of Labor, government and business. The commission, chaired by the presidents of Finland and Tanzania, has 24 members (of whom I was one) drawn from different nationalities, interest groups and intellectual persuasions, including members as diverse as the head of Toshiba and the leader of the American Federation of Labor Congress of Industrial Organizations. Yet this very heterogeneous group was able to crystallize the emerging consensus, that globalization - despite its positive potential - has not only failed to live up to that potential, but has actually contributed to social distress.

The fault lies with how globalization has been managed - partly by countries but, most importantly, by the international community, including institutions such as the World Bank, the World Trade Organization`s and the IMF, which are responsible for establishing the "rules of the game". The commission even reached consensus on a number of concrete measures to help put a "human face" on globalization, or at least mitigate some of its worst effects.

The gap between the emerging consensus on globalization, which this report reflects, and the Bush administration`s international economic policies, helps explain the widespread hostility towards America`s government.

Consider two issues that have been part of recent bilateral trade agreements pushed aggressively by the Bush administration. The crises in east Asia and the recent recessions in Latin America show that premature capital market liberalization can result in economic volatility, increasing poverty, and destruction of the middle class. Even the IMF now recognizes that capital market liberalization has delivered neither growth nor stability to many developing countries. Yet, whether driven by narrow ideology or responding to the demands of special interests, the Bush administration is still demanding an extreme form of such liberalization in its bilateral trade agreements.

The second issue concerns the unbalanced intellectual property provisions (Trips) of the Uruguay round of trade talks, dictated by America`s pharmaceutical and entertainment industries. These provisions restricted countries from making generic imitations of drugs, making many critically important medicines unaffordable in developing countries.

Spearheaded by worries about Aids, activists demanded that something be done. Just before last year`s trade talks in Mexico, the US made some concessions so that it was no longer the only hold-out. In its bilateral trade agreements, however, it is demanding what is becoming known as "Trips-plus", which would strengthen intellectual property rights further, to ensure that countries only have the right to produce inexpensive generic drugs during epidemics and other emergencies.

The global consensus, reflected in the commission report, calls for more exceptions so that, say, drugs can be made available in any case where to do so could save a life. To those confronting the prospect of death, what matters is access to life-saving drugs, not whether what is killing the person is part of an epidemic.

Bilateral agreements form the basis of enhanced ties of friendship between countries. But America`s intransigence in this area is sparking protests in countries, such as Morocco, which face the threat of such an agreement; it is also forming the basis of long-lasting resentment.

The commission highlights other issues that have received insufficient global attention - such as tax competition among developing countries, which shifts more of the tax burden from business to workers. In still other areas, the commission`s report argues for more balanced perspectives. On exchange rates, for example, it is more sympathetic towards mixed systems, in contrast to the traditional belief that countries must choose between the extremes of a flexible system and a fixed exchange rate (of the kind that contributed so importantly to Argentina`s woes).

As this example shows, having different voices at the table in discussions of globalization brings new perspectives. Until now, the main worry for most experts on globalization has been excessive government intervention in the economy. The commission fears just the opposite. It argues that the state has a role to play in cushioning individuals and society from the impact of rapid economic change.

The way that globalization has been managed, however, has eroded the ability of the state to play its proper role. At the root of this problem is the global political system - if such it can be called. Key players such as the IMF and World Bank must become more transparent and their voting structures must be changed to reflect the current distribution of economic power - as opposed to that prevailing in 1945 - let alone the need to reflect basic democratic principles.

Whatever one thinks of the commission`s many concrete suggestions, this much is clear: we need a more inclusive debate about globalization, one in which more voices are heard, and in which there is a greater focus on the social dimensions of globalization This is a message the world would do well to heed, lest discontent with globalization continues to grow.

· Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University, is a Nobel prize winner and author of Globalization and Its Discontents`

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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http://www.atimes.com

Middle East

Iraq: Washington spinning out of control
By Ritt Goldstein

With political and military setbacks steadily sinking public perception of the Bush administration`s Iraq efforts, a marked increase in both slanted and outright erroneous official pronouncements has occurred. Taking advantage of media briefings, congressional testimony, and even the creation of both an Arabic television channel (al-Hurra) and a Pentagon news service (DVIDS), the administration of US President George W Bush has vastly escalated its long-employed efforts to "spin" its way to success. As Iraq civil administrator L Paul Bremer highlighted last week, the message is "triumph over the evildoers".

Yet in a measure of how warmly the administration`s al-Hurra channel is welcomed, Saudi clerics issued a fatwa (religious ruling) this week stating that Muslims are forbidden to watch it. The station was explicitly charged with being "an extension of anti-Islamic propaganda". But while TV stations can be tuned out, political figures are more difficult to avoid.

Ever since Colin Powell`s loosely based United Nations address of February 2003, Palestinian-Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has in effect been broadcast as the administration`s "evildoer" of choice. The recent level of accusations against Zarqawi even threatens Osama bin Laden`s status as villain-in-chief, though questions surrounding Thursday`s Madrid blasts may change that. Nevertheless, Zarqawi is alleged to be firmly established with al-Qaeda and the figure responsible for apparently endless carnage, an administration-led chorus has claimed.

The Iraq war commander, US General John Abizaid, testified on March 2 before the US Congress, telling the House Armed Services Committee that he had "evidence" to support the ongoing Zarqawi and al-Qaeda assertions. When US officials were subsequently pressed by media as to what the general`s "evidence" was, a revealing retreat was then beaten to evidence "being developed".

Highlighting the nature of such evasions, according to transcripts of both Pentagon and Coalition Provisional Authority news conferences, the administration has yet to reveal any firm evidence linking Zarqawi to any Iraq violence, any whatsoever. But as propaganda specialist Dr Nancy Snow revealed to Asia Times Online, "I don`t think the public is too terribly concerned with evidence," highlighting why the Bush administration`s stream of unfounded assertions continues.

On March 3, the Coalition Forces deputy commander, General Mark Kimmitt, said there was "solid evidence" on Zarqawi, though refusing to present it. But providing a remarkable explanation for such evidence deficits, a March 4 Pentagon press conference proved extraordinary in both its revelations and flip-flops.

Brigadier-General David Rodriguez of the Joint Chiefs of Staff revealed that the Pentagon didn`t even have "direct evidence of whether he [Zarqawi] is alive or dead", providing scathing commentary on the nature of so-called evidence linking Zarqawi to attacks and bombings. But that same day it emerged that an Iraqi resistance group claimed that Zarqawi had been killed months ago in the US bombing of northern Iraq, and that a letter he had allegedly written to al-Qaeda seeking aid in promoting an Iraqi civil war was "fabricated".

The resistance group Leadership of the Allahu Akbar Mujahedeen also claimed that al-Qaeda was not involved in Iraq, and that most of the foreign fighters who had come to resist US efforts had left long ago. Notably, this latter information matches reports this journalist had received about a month prior from an Italian correspondent who had been in Iraq and had established links to the resistance there. It also flies in the face of repeated assertions by US and Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) officials that foreign fighters and terrorists are behind the recent violence. But unpleasant facts are what propaganda is used to countering.

In off-the-record revelations, both the US intelligence and military communities have quietly admitted they possess increasingly little knowledge regarding those dominating Iraq`s bloodletting. But a consensus has emerged that reports of of foreign elements having been vastly overblown. And unresolved issues in blaming al-Qaeda for allegedly seeking to instigate civil war are compounded by a previous al-Qaeda message.

Months ago, al-Qaeda was widely acknowledged as having urged Sunnis and Shi`ites to put aside their differences, to unite and jointly resist the United States, not fight each other. And a rare denial of responsibility for the Shi`ite blasts was issued in the group`s name, though the text of the denial did build upon anti-American sentiment, and in so doing contained propaganda of its own. But many Middle East experts agree that while an Iraq civil war may well happen, it will be the US-precipitated power vacuum`s release of latent factional forces, not outside efforts, that will ignite it.

Addressing civil-war "spin", media at the March 4 Pentagon press conference questioned the legitimacy of the much-publicized alleged Zarqawi letter to al-Qaeda. But regardless of its authenticity, the letter provides the centerpiece of the administration`s efforts to deflect blame for the surfacing and mishandling Iraq`s internal civil-war pressures.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita did acknowledge that the letter`s alleged authenticity was not based upon "smoking-gun-type intelligence". He also pointedly noted that he wasn`t "responsible to or for" those who "believe that it`s authentic", revealing how shaky the document`s pedigree actually is.

When the alleged Zarqawi letter was first revealed in February, the Washington Post highlighted that "US officials provided no independent verification of authenticity". But the letter has already proved its worth, broadly shifting responsibility for ongoing Iraq violence from the Bush administration`s lack of foresight and planning. If at some future point the letter`s fabrication is proved, then every accusation against the administration that the letter`s use - until then - deflected or inhibited in effect provides a measure of propaganda victory.

In apparent pursuit of such victories, the March 4 press conference`s presenters attempted to recoup momentum. A sensational and previously unheard allegation was seized upon and raised as their means of doing so.

Pentagon spokesman DiRita suddenly claimed that Zarqawi is "one of the senior al-Qaeda leaders that we have been pursuing since 11th September". Moments later, in response to a reporter`s question, General Rodriguez placed Zarqawi as "one of the top 15 people in the al-Qaeda network".

Think "shock and awe" tactics.

After the Zarqawi/al-Qaeda bombshell, the conference moved on quickly until a journalist noted: "That`s the first time I`ve heard [Zarqawi] characterized as top al-Qaeda leadership. He`s always been characterized to me as a freelancer, as tied to al-Qaeda, as a part of Ansar al Islam, but never directly in the top 10-15 of al-Qaeda." Trapped, Rodriguez replied: "Well, the - that`s - you`re probably right. When I said that I probably didn`t say that exactly correctly, okay?"

The Pentagon has explained the need for a news service of its own as emanating from "increasingly combative" media that fail to "get out the message".

Both the general and DiRita subsequently pursued obscuring the revealed misinformation under a broader, al-Qaeda-related smokescreen.?But the episode does serve extremely well again to illustrate the tactics being employed at the highest US levels. And it also shows why the Pentagon`s DVIDS news service is attempting to distribute news stories directly to the media, bypassing potentially embarrassing journalistic queries.

DVIDS stands for Digital Video and Imagery Distribution System, and it was created to target smaller and mid-size media outlets that can`t afford their own correspondent in Iraq or Afghanistan, the two areas coverage is planned to focus upon. DVIDS was acknowledged as created to place "positive" stories, and minimize the impact of "catastrophic events" - in effect, to propagandize.

While the future of DVIDS isn`t yet completely clear, Mac McKerral, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, has been quoted as observing: "This is the kind of news that people get in countries where the government controls the media."

As evidenced by the recently created Washington inquiries into the Bush administration`s handling of intelligence, a pattern of official but erroneous information - propaganda - has marked every step of the administration`s Iraq effort. While incidents such as the staging of Jessica Lynch`s "rescue", the pulling down of Saddam Hussein`s statue (with bused-in Ahmad Chalabi supporters playing the part of outraged local citizenry), were aimed at public consumption, the Bush administration faces accusations of repeatedly misleading even those within the US government, propagandizing internally.

According to the US Senate`s January 28 Congressional Record, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida charged that prior to the vote authorizing the Iraq war, "I, along with nearly every senator in this chamber, in that secure room of this Capitol complex, was not only told there were weapons of mass destruction - specifically chemical and biological - but I was looked straight in the face and told that Saddam Hussein had the means of delivering those biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction by unmanned drones called UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. I was looked at straight in the face and told that UAVs could be launched from ships off the Atlantic coast to attack eastern seaboard cities of the United States." Nelson added, "I am upset that the degree of specificity I was given a year and a half ago, prior to my vote, was not only inaccurate, it was patently false. I want some further explanations."

A reflection of similar concern was provided to this journalist by the conservative Washington-based Cato Institute`s noted constitutional scholar, Bob Levy. In a December interview, Levy noted that being in office "doesn`t entail the right to lie". Speaking in regards to the myriad questions surrounding the accuracy and use of US intelligence, Levy observed: "It`s possible it`s been wrong, being it was cynically designed to promote an existing proposition ... I do think it`s Congress`s place to find out ... and they have failed to do so, and ought to do so."

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 13. März 2004, 17:24
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,290521,00.html
Spurensuche in Madrid

Wahlkampf mit dem Terror

Die Jagd auf die Terroristen wird immer mehr zum Politikum - beide Seiten nutzen die Attentate zur Stimmungsmache für die morgige Wahl. Ein der Opposition nahe stehender Radio-Sender meldet, dass der Geheimdienst Islamisten für die Täter hält. Zuvor war bekannt geworden, dass Spaniens Botschafter auf Geheiß der Regierung die Eta-These verbreiten sollten.

Madrid - Der spanische Privatsender SER verbreitete am Nachmittag die Nachricht unter Berufung auf Geheimdienstquellen: Danach sei man sich sehr sicher, dass radikale Islamisten die Bomben gezündet hätten, durch die 200 Menschen getötet wurden. Die Ermittler gingen davon aus, dass 10 bis 15 Attentäter die Bomben in den Zügen versteckt hätten und dann geflohen seien. Der Besitzer des Privatsenders SER hat Verbindungen zur oppositionellen Sozialistischen Arbeiterpartei, meldet die Nachrichtenagentur Reuters.

Der Ausgang der Ermittlungen könnte Wahl entscheidend sein. Sollte sich die Eta-Spur erhärten, würde dies der Partei des ohnehin in Führung liegenden Premiers Aznar nutzen: In Zeiten des Terrors neigen die Wähler allerorten dazu, der Regierungspartei zu vertrauen, besonders wenn sie auch noch wie in Spanien konservativ ist.

Islamistische Spur bringt Gefahr für Aznar

Die islamistische Spur hingegen könnte Aznar gefährden. Die Spanier waren in großer Mehrheit gegen eine Teilnahme am Irak-Krieg, Hunderttausende demonstrierten vor einem Jahr gegen die Regierung. Die Enthüllungen über die Manipulationen in Washington und London haben die Gegnerschaft noch erhöht. Sollte sich herausstellen, dass der verhasste Krieg nun auch noch Ursache für den blutigsten Terroranschlag der Nachkriegszeit war, könnte dies den Premier seinen bisher als sicher geltenden Sieg kosten.

Norweger entdeckten Internet-Dokument

Bereits am Mittag hatten norwegische Terrorismusexperten erklärt, es gebe neue Hinweise auf die Täterschaft von islamistischen Fundamentalisten. Die Analysten hatten im Internet ein Dokument entdeckt, das eine Beteiligung des Terrornetzwerks al-Qaida vermuten lässt. In dem Text, der im vergangenen Jahr auf einer arabischen Webseite veröffentlicht wurde, wird Spanien wegen der Parlamentswahl als geeignetes Ziel für Anschläge genannt, um die US-geführte Irakkriegskoalition zu erschüttern. "Wir müssen den größten Nutzen aus der Nähe des Wahltermins in Spanien im kommenden März ziehen", zitierte die norwegische Tageszeitung "VG" heute aus dem Dokument. "Spanien hält maximal zwei oder drei Anschläge aus, bevor es sich aus Irak zurückzieht."

Thomas Hegghammer vom Norwegischen Forschungszentrum für Verteidigung sagte der Zeitung, zunächst hätten die Wissenschaftler vermutet, in dem 42 Seiten langen Text gehe es um geplante Attacken gegen Koalitionsstreitkräfte in Irak. "Aber die Hervorhebung der Wahl in Spanien lässt die Angaben angesichts der Anschläge in Madrid in einem neuen Licht erscheinen." Der anonyme Autor des Dokumentes kenne sich in der spanischen Politik gut aus, sagte der Wissenschaftler Brynjar Lia dem Blatt. "Wir können nicht mit Sicherheit sagen, dass der Text von al-Qaida stammt. Wir haben aber auch keinen Grund, an seiner Echtheit zu zweifeln." In dem Dokument wird davon ausgegangen, dass ein durch Terror erzwungener Rückzug Spaniens aus der Kriegskoalition diese zum Zusammenbruch bringen würde.

"El Pais" belastet Regierung

Erst am Morgen war durch einen Artikel in der spanischen Zeitung "El Pais" bekannt geworden, dass die Regierung ihre Botschafter angewiesen hatte, die Eta-These zu verbreiten. Das staatliche spanische Fernsehen vermied peinlichst, die islamistische Spur als ernsthaft darzustellen. Beobachter rechnen damit, dass erst nach der Wahl am Sonntag genauere Ermittlungsergebnisse öffentlich gemacht werden.

SPIEGEL ONLINE dokumentiert, welche Indizien für die unterschiedlichen Thesen sprechen.

Für die Täterschaft al-Qaidas sprechen:

Der Plastiksprengstoff "Goma 2" wurde von der Eta schon seit Jahren nicht mehr benutzt. Zuletzt füllten die Basken ihre Bomben stets mit einem in Frankreich hergestellten Sprengstoff namens "Titadyne".

Auch die Zünder sind nicht aus dem sonst von der Eta bevorzugten Material. Sie bestanden aus Kupfer, die Eta setzt in der Regel Aluminium-Zünder ein.

In dem gestohlenen Lieferwagen, der Stunden nach den Anschlägen gefunden worden war, stellten die Fahnder ein Tonband mit Koran-Versen sicher. In dem Fahrzeug waren die Bomben transportiert worden. An ein Ablenkungsmanöver der Eta glauben die Ermittler nicht.

Die in dem Lieferwagen entdeckten Fingerabdrücke stammen nach derzeitigem Stand von keinem bekannten Eta-Aktivisten.

Erstmals hat die Eta einschließlich der verbotenen Eta- nahen Partei Batasuna die Anschläge verurteilt.

Antiterror-Experten haben Zweifel an der logistischen Qualität der Eta, Anschläge zu verüben, die einer Koordinierung von bis zu einem Dutzend Terroristen bedürfen.

Spanien ist eines der wichtigsten Rückzugsgebiete islamischer Terroristen in Europa. Die Anschläge des 11. September 2001 in den USA waren teilweise in Spanien vorbereitet worden.

Islamische Extremisten hatten Spanien mit Vergeltung gedroht, weil das Land den Irak-Krieg unterstützt und im Irak 1300 Soldaten stationiert hat.

Was für die Täterschaft der Eta spricht:

Die Eta hat den in Spanien hergestellten Plastiksprengstoff "Goma 2" in der Vergangenheit genutzt

An Heiligabend 2003 plante die Eta, einen Bombenanschlag auf einen Zug auf dem Weg nach Madrid. Die Sprengsätze, die in zwei Reisetaschen versteckt waren, wurden jedoch entdeckt, die Beinahe-Attentäter festgenommen.

Schon früher hat die Eta vor Wahlen - wie an diesem Sonntag - Attentate verübt.

Vor zwei Wochen wurden zwei mutmaßliche Eta-Terroristen gefasst, die einen mit 536 Kilogramm Sprengstoff beladenen Lieferwagen in Madrid explodieren lassen wollten. Sie hatten einen Stadtplan bei sich, auf dem auch die Gegend der Tatorte vom Donnerstag eingekreist war.

Vor den Anschlägen in Madrid waren im Baskenland Flugblätter radikaler Separatisten mit dem Aufruf aufgetaucht, das spanische Bahnnetz zu sabotieren.

In den Aufnahmen der Überwachungskameras der Bahnhöfe ist ein Mann zu sehen, der einem gesuchten Eta-Terroristen gleicht.

Im Gegensatz zu den Methoden islamischer Terroristen waren keine Selbstmordattentäter am Werk.

Es gibt Zweifel am Bekennerschreiben von al-Qaida, das eine in London erscheinende arabische Zeitung veröffentlichte. Noch nie habe sich die Terrorgruppe unmittelbar nach einem Anschlag dazu bekannt, sagen spanische Ermittler.

Dass es keine telefonische Vorwarnung gab, ist bei Eta-Anschlägen schon mehrmals der Fall gewesen.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

[Joerver]

Saturday, March 13, 2004
War News for March 12 and 13, 2004
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
Bring `em on: Two US soldiers killed, four wounded by roadside bomb near Tikrit.

Bring `em on: Two Iraqi women working for Halliburton assassinated near Basra.

Bring `em on: One US soldier killed, two wounded by roadside bomb near Baquba.

Bring `em on: Two US soldiers killed, one wounded by roadside bomb near Habbaniyah.

Bring `em on: Assassination attempt at Baghdad mosque wounds Sunni cleric, kills son.

Bring `em on: One Iraqi killed, one wounded in attempted bomb attack on US convoy near Fallujah.

Bring `em on: Aide to al-Sadr assassinated near Najaf.

Bring `em on: Bomb in Baghdad commercial district wounds several Iraqi civilians, kills one.

Bring `em on: Bomb destroys Baghdad mosque.

Four members of ICDC arrested in assassination of US CPA officials near Hilla.

CPA reports an average of 19 attacks against coalition forces daily for the past week.

Shi`ite clergy attack interim constitution.

Lieutenant AWOL sends secret "senior official" to Baghdad. "The White House official is scheduled to arrive in Iraq this weekend for meetings with the U.S.-handpicked council to jumpstart the process, after L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, and other coalition officials failed to end the squabbling, U.S. officials said. At the administration`s request, The Washington Post is not identifying the official before his arrival in Iraq because of security concerns."

The Faces of Iraq. A series of eight stories from Iraqi citizens.

Bushies continue to stonewall cost estimates of Bush`s War. " The Pentagon`s refusal to estimate costs is the same stance it took before the war. For months leading up to the invasion, officials said they couldn`t estimate because they didn`t know how long it would take to fight the war. Within days after it started, however, the Pentagon sent Congress a request for $63 billion. `So you know they had it in their back pockets,` all along, said Cindy Williams, a former congressional budget officer now with the MIT security studies program. `They were just not wanting to disclose to the American people on the eve of the war how much it was going to cost.`"

Commentary

Opinion: "Nowhere is this ignorance more apparent than in Iraq, where last week’s belated signing of the Temporary Administrative Law or interim constitution has not ended bickering by Shi’ites, who comprise 60 per cent of the population, about Sunnis, who comprise under 20 per cent, as well as the four million Kurds, who also account for nearly 20 per cent. Iraq can expect another explosion as soon as American troops have gone because L. Paul Bremer III, presidential envoy of the United States of America, seems to have learnt nothing from the past."

Editorial: "When President Bush took office, an imminent threat against the United States indeed existed, but it wasn`t from Saddam Hussein…The Bush administration was apprised of that threat by the outgoing Clinton administration and presented with a plan of action for taking the fight aggressively and soon to Bin Laden. The White House all but ignored the warning. Instead, counterterrorism funding was cut and, as former Treasury Secretary Paul O`Neill has disclosed, the president and his national security team focused on removing Saddam Hussein from power."

Casualty Reports

Local story: Kentucky soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Wisconsin soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Pennsylvania civilian killed in Iraq.

Local story: Missouri soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: North Carolina soldier dies in Iraq.

Local story: Oklahoma civilian killed in Iraq.

Awards and Decorations

Local story: Wisconsin Marine decorated for valor.


86-43-04. Pass it on.





# posted by yankeedoodle : 3:34 AM
Comment (0)

[Joerver]

Das ist der Film zur Wahl. Roland Emmerich dreht für 100Mio$ den Klimakatastrophen-Film.
New York säuft ab und das alles zum 28.Mai dieses Jahres, also noch rechtzeitig zur Präsidentenwahl.
Und dann noch von der Murdoch Firma Fox.
Die Bilder sind schon beeindruckend, auch hier auf dem Bildschirm.
Preview hier:
http://www.thedayaftertomorrowmovie.com/index.php


Hollywood disaster film set to turn heat on Bush
Movie depicting horrors of global warming could boost votes for Democrat challenger

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Saturday March 13, 2004
The Guardian

Here`s the pitch: a dullish candidate, outflanked by his opponent`s serious money, attacked for his liberal leanings, is swept to an unlikely victory thanks to a blockbuster movie that focuses on the effects of big business and the agro-industrial complex.

Audiences throw their popcorn aside, pick up their ballot papers and realise that they too can make a difference. The studio behind the movie: 20th Century Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch. The director: Roland Emmerich; no Martin Sheen-style bleeding heart Democrat but the brawn behind Independence Day.

It sounds unlikely, but this summer might just see an alliance of commerce, populist entertainment and feel-good concern combine to weaken President George Bush and hand votes to his expected Democrat rival John Kerry.

On the other hand, the film could tank, like one of its director`s other monster-budget summer openings, Godzilla.

May 28 sees the worldwide release of The Day After Tomorrow, the eco-armageddon story to beat all others.
http://www.thedayaftertomorrowmovie.com/index.php
The first trailers for the film, released on the internet last week, give a taste of the scale of the eco-horrors to come. Filmed in a combination of slick computer generated special effects and faux newscast verité, tidal waves sweep across cities and snow piles halfway up the towers of Manhattan as disjointed voices articulate the chaos around them.

"What you are seeing is happening now," says a breathless newsreader. "Look over behind me," shouts a TV reporter, "that`s a tornado, yes, a twister." The film cuts to a volcano erupting next to the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. A huge flock of birds flies across the sky, a mass of people is seen crossing the Rio Grande between Mexico and the United States.

Filmed with a budget of more than $100m (£55.6m) and special effects said to be the greatest thing since, well, since the last big budget movie, the film has one other difference from other Hollywood blockbusters: it has a conscience.

"At some point during the filming we looked around at all the lights, generators and trucks and we realised the very process of making this picture is contributing to the problem of global warming," the director and producers say in a statement on the film`s official website. "We couldn`t avoid putting CO2 into the atmosphere during the shoot, but we discovered we could do something to make up for it; we could make the film carbonneutral." By planting trees they will take out the CO2 the production put in.

The film`s website includes a lengthy list of internet links to organisations that have researched the effects of global warming. During filming last year, Emmerich described the film as "a popcorn movie that`s actually a little subversive".

Whether this is the typical hype that surrounds a Hollywood blockbuster or the heartfelt statement of a tortured artist does not really matter. What seems certain is that the film will help to propel global warming and the environment high up the political agenda.

President Bush is known to be sceptical about the possibility of global warming, while the environment is a traditional strong card for the Democrats. With issues such as oil drilling rights in Alaska playing strongly among some voters, the president`s opponents have regularly attacked him for the favouritism he is perceived to have shown to the fossil fuel giants that dominate the US economy.

Unrest


The Pentagon even got in on the act, releasing a study last month that suggested that one outcome of global warming could be the rise of mass civil unrest. In one scenario, drought, famine and rioting erupt across the world, spurred on by climate change. As countries face dwindling food supplies and scarce natural resources, conflict becomes the norm.

"Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life," says the Pentagon study. "Once again, warfare would define human life."

"The climate is going to play a significant role in the campaign," said Luke Breit, chairman of the Democrat`s environmental caucus in California, where the environment is traditionally a key political issue. "John Kerry is mentioning clean air and water at every opportunity. It`s going to be on the first tier of issues. Our job is to make clear how anti-environment the government has been."

But while it can be fortuitous for an event such as a mass appeal movie to come along and propel an issue to the forefront of voters` consciousness, there are also pitfalls. "The danger is it could make it look more trivial," said Mr Breit. "My guess is that people in the environmental leadership around the country are holding their breath. I`m hoping that it`s going to be very good and that we have great entertainment value but that at the same time it treats the science seriously."

One US environmental pressure group has already enlisted the help of one of the film`s stars, Jake Gyllenhaal, to help promote its agenda while promoting the film.

The Day After Tomorrow`s advance publicity suggests a typical Hollywood mix of fact, fantasy and hype: fake weather reports and testimonies from fans about where they would like to be the day the world dies are mixed with earnest exhortations to help avert global warming.

And Hollywood has been here before. The Perfect Storm, Armageddon and Twister all combined Hollywood`s love of little people battling insurmountable natural - and unnatural - powers while giving great special effects.

"In Independence Day Roland Emmerich brought you the near destruction of the earth by aliens," says the website. "Now, in The Day After Tomorrow, the enemy is an even more devastating force: nature itself." It`ll have them voting in the aisles.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Greenspan Shows What Will Happen to Social Security Without Budget Cuts

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washingtonpost.com
White House Sends Senior Official to Iraq
Aim Is to Salvage Latest Bid to Form a Government

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A10


The Bush administration has dispatched a senior White House official to Baghdad to rescue its already troubled new attempt to form an interim Iraqi government, the pivotal step in the political transition before the U.S.-led occupation ends on June 30, according to senior U.S. officials.

The mission is, in part, to persuade the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council to quit stalling on inviting the United Nations back, both to mediate a solution to the immediate crisis and to help prepare for elections after the United States leaves. Key Shiite leaders have broken with others on the Governing Council and are frustrating U.S. attempts to get the United Nations to return, U.S. officials and envoys of coalition countries said.

The White House official is scheduled to arrive in Iraq this weekend for meetings with the U.S.-handpicked council to jumpstart the process, after L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, and other coalition officials failed to end the squabbling, U.S. officials said. At the administration`s request, The Washington Post is not identifying the official before his arrival in Iraq because of security concerns.

The ability of the United States to end the occupation now depends on crafting a caretaker government that would be deemed credible by major ethnic and religious groups. Two previous plans had to be discarded after they were rejected by Iraq`s most popular Shiite cleric and other leaders.

Last month, the Bush administration thought it had come up with a viable alternative by proposing to bring the United Nations back in, only to see a minority of council members stall -- partly in a bid to give the United States no choice but to hand over power to the current council, U.S. and coalition diplomats said.

"We definitely think the United Nations has an important role to play," said a senior administration official involved in Iraq policy. "Many Iraqis on the Governing Council agree with that, but some on the council don`t for a variety of reasons."

The power dynamics are rapidly changing as the occupation moves into its final phase. The closer the transition gets to June 30, the more leverage council members feel they would have -- and the weaker they believe the coalition would be in forcing them to comply, U.S. officials say. The problem is already being referred to by administration officials as "June 30-itis."

Ironically, U.S. officials noted, the United States is now more in sync with the United Nations on the steps necessary for the transition than it is with some members of the Governing Council.

With less than four months left in the occupation, the United States wants U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to return to Iraq within two or three weeks to discuss how to form a new government. The approach favored by the United States is to enlarge the Governing Council by adding members to be selected by a "roundtable meeting" or, in Arabic, a shura of Iraqis outside the council who are not viewed as surrogates of the U.S.-led coalition, U.S. officials said.

"Brahimi`s ready to go back as soon as he`s invited," said a senior State Department official familiar with the standoff.

But, now, at least five Shiite members of the Governing Council are reluctant to give the United Nations a management role, U.S. officials said. The main reason is concern that they might either lose their jobs or see their power diluted as new members are added. Some Shiite members also did not like the tone of Brahimi`s report last month that was implicitly critical of the council, U.S. officials said.

"Bremer has been talking to the Iraqis about getting the United Nations back. It would be good if the Iraqis would ask the U.N. to help out. They haven`t done it yet, so we continue to talk to them. Bremer`s got his hands full," the senior State Department official said.

But the United States also wants the Iraqi council to invite the United Nations to take the lead in organizing Iraq`s first national elections, due to be held by year`s end, according to a new interim constitution signed last week. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has stipulated that Iraq must make a formal request and has noted that time is running out.

A preliminary U.N. assessment last month estimated that preparations -- for a census, voter registration, civic education, party formation, candidate selection, campaigning and a vote -- would take at least eight months. To meet its own deadline, the United Nations would have to be ready to operate in Iraq by the end of April, seven weeks away.

The world body currently has no diplomats in Iraq. Two suicide bombings at its Baghdad headquarters, in August and October, killed about two dozen staff members, including top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. Just getting up and running could take several weeks, U.S. officials and envoys from coalition countries say.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Bomb Attacks Kill Four U.S. Soldiers in Baghdad
Sun Mar 14, 2004 04:27 AM ET


By Andrew Marshall
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Bomb attacks in Baghdad killed four U.S. soldiers, the Army said on Sunday, bringing to nine the number of troops killed in Iraq in the last four days by explosives planted by guerrillas to target American patrols.

A military spokesman said a roadside bomb blast in southern Baghdad around 10:45 p.m. (1945 GMT) on Saturday killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded one.

Another bomb attack at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday wounded an American soldier who later died in hospital, the spokesman said.

On Saturday, a bomb was detonated as a U.S. patrol passed in Saddam Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit. Guerrillas then opened fire. Two soldiers were killed and several wounded.

Two bomb attacks on Wednesday and Thursday in the restive "Sunni triangle" around Baghdad killed three soldiers.

Since the start of the war to oust Saddam, 389 U.S. troops have been killed in action in Iraq -- 274 of them since Washington declared major combat over on May 1 last year.

Most of the deaths in recent months have been caused by roadside bombs, which the U.S. Army calls "improvised explosive devices." The low-tech bombs, often made from artillery shells crudely wired to a detonator, have taken a deadly toll.

The U.S. military says most insurgents fighting occupying forces are still Iraqi, but that foreign militants are playing an increasing role in planning and executing major attacks.

Last Tuesday, two U.S. civilians seconded from the Department of Defense and their Iraqi translator were shot dead in an ambush on a road south of Baghdad. They were the first American employees of the U.S.-led civilian administration to be killed in Iraq since the fall of Saddam.

A senior coalition official said the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation had assigned a team to investigate the killings of the two, named as Fern Holland, 33, a lawyer, and Robert Zangas, 44, a press officer.

The U.S. military said six people had been detained in connection with the incident and that four of them were believed to be legitimate members of the Iraqi police force.

U.S. forces have been hiring and training Iraqis for the police for several months in the hope they will eventually be able to take over responsibility for security.

There are now about 70,000 police on duty countrywide, many of them new recruits, but others former members of Saddam`s security forces.

[Joerver]

March 14, 2004
Transcript of Purported Al Qaeda Videotape
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ollowing is a transcript of the videotaped message claiming that Al Qaeda carried out the Madrid bombings. The tape was translated from Arabic into Spanish by the Spanish government.

"We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid exactly 2.5 years after the attacks on New York and Washington. It is a response to your collaboration with the criminals Bush and his allies.

"This is a response to the crimes that you have caused in the world, and specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there will be more, if God wills it.

"You love life and we love death, which gives an example of what the Prophet Muhammad said. If you don`t stop your injustices, more and more blood will flow and these attacks will seem very small compared to what can occur in what you call terrorism.

"This is a statement by the military spokesman for al-Qaida in Europe, Abu Dujan al Afghani."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Jumping between donkey carts at a brick factory in Hilla, Iraq, 10-year-old Muhammad Ruda, left, has joined his country`s vast child labor force.
March 14, 2004
Poverty and Turmoil Cripple Iraq Schools
By NEELA BANERJEE

KHANFARA, Iraq — The brick factory that the British built here 80 years ago runs like a vein of hell upon the smooth earth. Villagers have worked in this furnace for generations, and they begin, like Azhar Nahi, when they are children.

Azhar is a 14-year-old who looks more like he is 11, which, considering his duties, is a good thing. One morning he crawled out from under the outside wall of the factory, after scraping out soot with his hands from a clogged flue. He left school after the fifth grade, and he has forgotten how to read and write. He needed to work, he said, to help support the 11 people in his family.

"I`m not worried about finding better work some day," Azhar said, walking next to the factory, his body caked with mud and earth. "I`ll work here all my life."

He turned to 2-year-old Hussein Ali, who was trotting along next to him. "Even this little one," Azhar said, grabbing Hussein by his shoulders, "will work here someday."

All over Iraq, in the countryside and in cities, the poverty and upheaval sown by Saddam Hussein`s rule pushed large numbers of children out of school and into work. A study conducted by Unicef after major combat ended in last year`s war indicated that even more children have left school to support their families. Many take on back-breaking jobs, at fish markets and factories, mechanics shops and construction sites. Like Azhar, who earns about $1.25 a day, they make very little money.

In major cities through the south like Basra and Karbala, 70 to 80 percent of children interviewed by Unicef after the war were working, and in Najaf, 50 percent of children were not in school. The American-led occupation has started a pilot program in six cities to draw children back to school, but it serves only 650 children among the millions who have dropped out.

Iraq once had a distinguished education system that produced graduates who studied all over the world and returned home to run industry and government. But below this largely urban elite, most of the population was illiterate, and continues to be. In 1979, Iraq had about 15 million people, only 3 million of whom could read and write, said Kamal Jaraah, under secretary of education. Literacy reached its highest levels in the late 1990`s, at a little bit more than 40 percent of the population, Mr. Jaraah said — 55 percent of men but only 23 percent of women.

Wars and sanctions have crippled Iraqi education, Mr. Jaraah said. No new schools have been built since 1991, and there are often 50 students to a teeming classroom. The Education Ministry hopes to get much more financing this year, mainly from donors like the United Nations and the World Bank, to rebuild the system, including constructing 3,000 new schools, and to retrain teachers in modern teaching methods, Mr. Jaraah said.

But the major deterrent to education during the last quarter century of the Hussein era has been the impoverishment of Iraqi families, requiring children to leave school to make money. Many Iraqi families are large. Boys drop out to work, and girls leave to take care of their younger siblings.

In many of these families, the fathers are absent or too ill to work even to look after their children. Some died in war. Sukna Abdul-Zahra`s husband simply left one day. She took her 10-year-old son, Barak, out of school in central Baghdad after second grade so he could help support their family of seven. She and Barak push a cart through central Baghdad, selling whatever they can: cans of kerosene, used clothing, cigarettes, junk.

Ms. Abdul-Zahra herself is illiterate. She still sends two of her children to school. But by the winter this year, 13-year-old Zaineb had to leave school to stay home with two younger children while her mother worked. Asked if she missed school, Zaineb, a quiet girl with a heart-shaped face, turned away to busy herself with her baby sister and cried quietly. "She`s very smart," said Ms. Abdul-Zahra, wiping the tears from her own eyes. "I didn`t want her to leave school."

Barak has no such qualms. He said his uncle would find him a good job as a mechanic when he got older. "School wasn`t doing us any good," he said. Though he has already forgotten how to read and write, he said he knew enough. "I know how to write my name and my father`s name," he said.

Conditions at school have forced many children to leave, according to a survey of 4,500 young dropouts in Baghdad conducted by Creative Associates, the firm that runs the new program in six cities to get children back to school. School costs money, from paying for books and uniforms to the bribes students were often forced to pay teachers under the old system to get a passing grade. Children also told those who conducted the survey that teachers used corporal punishment and that they had left school to escape beatings. Still, 85 percent of boys and 80 percent of girls interviewed in the door-to-door survey in August said they wanted to go back to class.

Here in Khanfara, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, attending school beyond the first few years has long been seen as a luxury, with the more basic demands poverty places on families. Children say carrying the bricks to load into piles or on the patient donkeys is the hardest part, especially in the heat of the kiln in the summer. They see that the work stoops men before old age and fills their lungs with soot.

Families like Seham Mahdi`s send some children to the brick factory so that others may study. Her face covered with a blue scarf against the dust, Ms. Mahdi, 18, said she must work to support the six other girls in her family, two of whom go to elementary school. "I left school," she said, "so I don`t want my sisters to leave school."

As she returned to sorting and carrying bricks, a young man said of Ms. Mahdi: "Don`t believe her. Her family is very poor. In a year or two, her sisters will be here, too."

At the Marifa School in northern Baghdad, nearly all the boys work. The school is part of the Accelerated Learning Program set up by Creative Associates especially for dropouts who want to return to school, through a contract with the United States Agency for International Development. Often regular Iraqi schools refuse to accept the children who want to return because they have been out of school too long. Here, and in schools in five other Iraqi cities, 15-year-old students sit with 8-year-olds, based on their level of literacy, spelling out the alphabet or helping each other with an English assignment.

The Americans and the Education Ministry are talking about expanding the program, which condenses the curriculums for two school years into one.

Muhammad Khadhem Judee, 15, sat in the first- and second-grade class one morning as 8-year-old pupils wrote the Arabic alphabet on the blackboard. He got up at 7 to go to work with his brothers at a construction site and came here at noon. His father is blind and cannot work, so he must, he said.

"After all this, of course I`m tired," Muhammad said. "But I remember I used to turn on the TV and then turn it off out because I was frustrated that I couldn`t read anything. It is better to do all this than to stay a blind man — someone who can`t read or write."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company








Sukna Abdul-Zahra, in head scarf in photo at right, still has two children in school in central Baghdad, but two others, ages 10 and 13, help support the family. Upheaval and poverty have made illiteracy widespread, while education remains largely the province of the urban elite.

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March 14, 2004
Florida as the Next Florida

s Floridians went to the polls last Tuesday, Glenda Hood, Katherine Harris`s successor as secretary of state, assured the nation that Florida`s voting system would not break down this year the way it did in 2000. Florida now has "the very best" technology available, she declared on CNN. "And I do feel that it`s a great disservice to create the feeling that there`s a problem when there is not." Hours later, results in Bay County showed that with more than 60 percent of precincts reporting, Richard Gephardt, who long before had pulled out of the presidential race, was beating John Kerry by two to one. "I`m devastated," the county`s top election official said, promising a recount of his county`s 19,000 votes.

Four years after Florida made a mockery of American elections, there is every reason to believe it could happen again. This time, the problems will most likely be with the electronic voting that has replaced chad-producing punch cards. Some counties, including Bay County, use paper ballots that are fed into an optical scanner, so a recount is possible if there are questions. But 15 Florida counties, including Palm Beach, home of the infamous "butterfly ballot," have adopted touch-screen machines that do not produce a paper record. If anything goes wrong in these counties in November, we will be in bad shape.

Florida`s official line is that its machines are so carefully tested, nothing can go wrong. But things already have gone wrong. In a January election in Palm Beach and Broward Counties, the victory margin was 12 votes, but the machines recorded more than 130 blank ballots. It is simply not believable that 130 people showed up to cast a nonvote, in an election with only one race on the ballot. The runner-up wanted a recount, but since the machines do not produce a paper record, there was nothing to recount.

In 2002, in the primary race for governor between Janet Reno and Bill McBride, electronic voting problems were so widespread they cast doubt on the outcome. Many Miami-Dade County votes were not counted on election night because machines were shut down improperly. One precinct with over 1,000 eligible voters recorded no votes, despite a 33 percent turnout statewide. Election workers spent days hunting for lost votes, while Floridians waited, in an uncomfortable replay of 2000, to see whether Mr. McBride`s victory margin, which had dwindled to less than 10,000, would hold up.

This past Tuesday, even though turnout was minimal, there were problems. Voters were wrongly given computer cards that let them vote only on local issues, not in the presidential primary. Machines did not work. And there were, no doubt, other mishaps that did not come to light because of the stunning lack of transparency around voting in the state. When a Times editorial writer dropped in on one Palm Beach precinct where there were reports of malfunctioning machines, county officials called the police to remove him.

The biggest danger of electronic voting, however, cannot be seen from the outside. Computer scientists warn that votes, and whole elections, can be stolen by rigging the code that runs the machines. The only defense is a paper record of every vote cast, a "voter-verified paper trail," which can be counted if the machines` tallies are suspect. Given its history, Florida should be a leader in requiring paper trails. But election officials, including Theresa LePore, the Palm Beach County elections supervisor who was responsible for the butterfly ballot, have refused to put them in place.

Last week, Representative Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat, filed a federal lawsuit to require paper trails. He relies on the Supreme Court`s holding in Bush v. Gore that equal protection requires states to use comparable recount methods from county to county. Florida law currently requires a hand recount in close races. That is possible in most counties, but the 15 that use electronic voting machines do not produce paper records that can be recounted. Under the logic of Bush v. Gore, Representative Wexler is right.

After the 2000 mess, Americans were assured they would not have to live through such a flawed election again. But Florida has put in place a system, electronic voting without a paper trail, that threatens once more to produce an outcome that cannot be trusted. There is still time before the November vote to put printers in place in the 15 Florida counties that use touch screens. As we learned four years ago, once the election has been held on bad equipment, it is too late to make it right.



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OP-ED COLUMNIST
Origin of Species
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Nandan Nilekani, C.E.O. of the Indian software giant Infosys, gave me a tour the other day of his company`s wood-paneled global conference room in Bangalore. It looks a lot like a beautiful tiered classroom, with a massive wall-size screen at one end and cameras in the ceiling so that Infosys can hold a simultaneous global teleconference with its U.S. innovators, its Indian software designers and its Asian manufacturers. "We can have our whole global supply chain on the screen at the same time," holding a virtual meeting, explained Mr. Nilekani. The room`s eight clocks tell the story: U.S. West, U.S. East, G.M.T., India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia.

As I looked at this, a thought popped into my head: Who else has such a global supply chain today? Of course: Al Qaeda. Indeed, these are the two basic responses to globalization: Infosys and Al Qaeda.

Infosys said all the walls have been blown away in the world, so now we, an Indian software company, can use the Internet, fiber optic telecommunications and e-mail to get superempowered and compete anywhere that our smarts and energy can take us. And we can be part of a global supply chain that produces profit for Indians, Americans and Asians.

Al Qaeda said all the walls have been blown away in the world, thereby threatening our Islamic culture and religious norms and humiliating some of our people, who feel left behind. But we can use the Internet, fiber optic telecommunications and e-mail to develop a global supply chain of angry people that will superempower us and allow us to hit back at the Western civilization that`s now right in our face.

"From the primordial swamps of globalization have emerged two genetic variants," said Mr. Nilekani. "Our focus therefore has to be how we can encourage more of the good mutations and keep out the bad."

Indeed, it is worth asking what are the spawning grounds for each. Infosys was spawned in India, a country with few natural resources and a terrible climate. But India has a free market, a flawed but functioning democracy and a culture that prizes education, science and rationality, where women are empowered. The Indian spawning ground rewards anyone with a good idea, which is why the richest man in India is a Muslim software innovator, Azim Premji, the thoughtful chairman of Wipro.

Al Qaeda was spawned in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, societies where there was no democracy and where fundamentalists have often suffocated women and intellectuals who crave science, free thinking and rationality. Indeed, all three countries produced strains of Al Qaeda, despite Pakistan`s having received billions in U.S. aid and Saudi Arabia`s having earned billions from oil. But without a context encouraging freedom of thought, women`s empowerment and innovation, neither society can tap and nurture its people`s creative potential — so their biggest emotional export today is anger.

India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan each spontaneously generated centers for their young people`s energies. In India they`re called "call centers," where young men and women get their first jobs and technical skills servicing the global economy and calling the world. In Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia they`re called "madrassas," where young men, and only young men, spend their days memorizing the Koran and calling only God. Ironically, U.S. consumers help to finance both. We finance the madrassas by driving big cars and sending the money to Saudi Arabia, which uses it to build the madrassas that are central to Al Qaeda`s global supply chain. And we finance the call centers by consuming modern technologies that need backup support, which is the role Infosys plays in the global supply chain.

Both Infosys and Al Qaeda challenge America: Infosys by competing for U.S. jobs through outsourcing, and Al Qaeda by threatening U.S. lives through terrorism. As Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign policy professor, put it: "Our next election will be about these two challenges — with the Republicans focused on how we respond to Al Qaeda, and the losers from globalization, and the Democrats focused on how we respond to Infosys, and the winners from globalization."

Every once in a while the technology and terrorist supply chains intersect — like last week. Reuters quoted a Spanish official as saying after the Madrid train bombings: "The hardest thing [for the rescue workers] was hearing mobile phones ringing in the pockets of the bodies. They couldn`t get that out of their heads."



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OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Politics of Self-Pity
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Republicans relished their philosophy of personal responsibility last week with John Belushi`s famous mantra: Cheeseburgercheeseburgercheeseburger.

When the House passed the "cheeseburger bill" to bar people from suing fast food joints for making them obese, Republican backers of the legislation scolded Americans, saying the fault lies not in their fries, but in themselves.

"Look in the mirror, because you`re the one to blame," said F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, home of brats and beer bellies.

So it comes as something of a disappointment that the leader of the Republican Party, the man who epitomizes the conservative ideal, is playing the victim. President Bush has made the theme of his re-election campaign a whiny "not my fault."

His ads, pilloried for the crass use of the images of a flag-draped body carried from ground zero and an Arab-looking everyman with the message, "We can fight against terrorists," actually have a more fundamental problem. They try to push off blame for anything that`s gone wrong during Mr. Bush`s tenure on bigger forces, supposedly beyond his control.

One ad cites "an economy in recession. A stock market in decline. A dot-com boom gone bust. Then a day of tragedy. A test for all Americans."

Mr. Bush`s subtext is clear: If it weren`t for all these awful things that happened, most of them hangovers from the Clinton era, I definitely could have fulfilled all my promises. I`m still great, but none of my programs worked because, well, stuff happens."

It`s as if his inner fat boy is complaining that a classic triple cheeseburger from Wendy`s (940 calories and 56 grams of fat, 25 of them saturated, and 2,140 milligrams of sodium) jumped out of its wrapper and forced its way down his unwilling throat, topped off by a pushy Frosty (540 calories and 13 grams of fat, 8 of them saturated).

Mr. Bush has been in office over three years. It`s time to start accepting some responsibility.

Republicans have a bad habit of laying down rules for other people to follow while excluding themselves. Look how they beat up Bill Clinton for messing around with a young woman, while many top Republicans were doing the very same thing.

Mr. Bush`s whingeing was infectious. The very House Republicans who greased the skids for the cheeseburger bill got in a huff over John Kerry`s overheard comment to some supporters in Chicago that his Republican critics were "the most crooked, you know, lying group" he`d ever seen.

These tough-guy Republicans, who rule the House with an iron fist, were suddenly squealing like schoolgirls at being victimized by big, bad John Kerry. J. Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, said Mr. Kerry would have his "upcomeance coming." Tom DeLay sulked that the public was getting "a glimpse of the real John Kerry." The Hammer was talking like a nail.

Marc Racicot, Mr. Bush`s campaign chairman, accused Mr. Kerry of "unbecoming" conduct and called on him to apologize.

Oh, the poor dears. The very Bush crowd that savaged John McCain in South Carolina, that bullied and antagonized the allies we need in the real war on terror, that is spending a hundred million dollars on ads that will turn Mr. Kerry into something akin to the Boston Strangler; these guys are suddenly such delicate flowers, such big bawling babies, that they can`t bear to hear Mr. Kerry speak of them harshly.

Mr. Bush is not believable in the victim`s role. He and Dick Cheney have audaciously imposed their will on Washington and the world.

We are not yet sure who is behind the horrendous bombings in Spain, but they have already underscored how vulnerable our trains and subways are. And they have reminded us that the administration diverted resources from the war on terror and the search for Osama to settle old scores in Iraq, building a case for war with hyped and phony claims on weapons.

In an interview with The Guardian, the weapons sleuth David Kay said it`s time for Mr. Bush to take personal responsibility: "It`s about confronting and coming clean with the American people. . . . He should say: `We were mistaken and I am determined to find out why.` "

In other words, Mr. Bush, look in the mirror.


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Polls Open in Spanish Election Overshadowed by Bombings



Reuters
Sunday, March 14, 2004; 3:29 AM


MADRID, March 14 - Voting began in Spain`s general election on Sunday amid mourning for train bombings which killed 200 people and sparked election-eve protests over the government`s handling of the investigation.

Some 34.6 million Spaniards aged 18 and over are entitled to vote for 350 seats in parliament, choosing a new prime minister to replace the departing Jose Maria Aznar.

Turnout is expected to be high amid an atmosphere of political tension unprecedented since the death of former dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975.

Polls had shown Spain`s ruling Popular Party enjoying an advantage over its Socialist rival until the final days of campaigning, but Spain`s worst ever guerrilla attack has injected uncertainty over the previously predicted results.


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For Bush, New Role and Different Script


By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 14, 2004; Page A01


The opening stages of President Bush`s reelection campaign represent a dramatic departure in tone and style from Bush`s campaigns for governor and president. The man who calls himself a wartime president has become a warrior as a candidate.

Bush`s earlier campaigns were notable for their positive tone, the candidate`s buoyant optimism and an agenda focused on a few specific policy proposals. But the combination of a presidency transformed by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the partisan polarization that exists nationally, have produced a new script in 2004.

In contrast to those previous runs for office, Bush`s reelection campaign has been notable for its quick plunge into attacks on his Democratic rival, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), its defensive tone and the absence of a tight agenda of policy proposals that would animate a second term in office. His first positive ads were modest in describing Bush`s accomplishments, and his first negative ad, which began airing Friday, surfaced far earlier than anyone outside his campaign expected.

The new tone threatens to rob Bush of his assets from successful past campaigns, according to some strategists. Most prominent is the easygoing personality that helped soften his image and attract swing voters who did not always agree with some of his conservative views; but his three years as president have left Americans more polarized in their perceptions of Bush as a leader.

It is not clear that the two Bushes -- the firm and sometimes-grim leader of the war on terrorism and the cheerful, wisecracking candidate the public saw in 2000 -- can coexist successfully in this campaign. By leading the attack on Kerry and doing so eight months before the Nov. 2 election, Bush has stepped from the Oval Office into the trenches, potentially denying himself what has been seen as one of the most potent weapons of any incumbent seeking reelection: retaining the power and aura of the office itself as long as possible.

The president`s advisers defend the tone of the campaign and the attacks on Kerry, delivered in ads and directly by Bush at campaign appearances, by saying they are a response to months of pounding by Kerry and other Democratic presidential candidates and to millions of dollars of ads the Democrats have aimed at Bush. Not to respond, they argue, would be political malpractice.

"He has not laid out his program for the second term, which he will later on in the campaign," said Fred Meyer, a former Texas GOP chairman and a longtime member of Bush`s extended political family. "He has always done it. Unfortunately, he has been beat about the head and shoulders by all the coverage of the Democratic candidates. He`s not in a position to be as positive."

Others attribute the changes in the Bush campaign to the fact that he is in deeper trouble than he expected against an opponent he did not anticipate. After preparing for a race against former Vermont governor Howard Dean, a contest many Republicans around Bush relished, they have had to readjust on the fly to combat Kerry, who has emerged from the Democratic primaries virtually unscathed.

"Those things have thrown them a bit off their feet and put them in a `We`d better go after this guy before we fall too far behind [mode],` "said Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. "They`re off their feet, and that`s led them to a diagnosis that calls for a campaign that departs from their pattern."

Top Bush advisers argue that the 2004 campaign is consistent with prior efforts in most respects. "If a typical George W. Bush campaign is focused on certain key issues voters believe are important, provides bold, serious solutions to those challenges, is well organized and has the resources it needs, then I think those four factors are absolutely present this year," campaign manager Ken Mehlman said.

Bush adviser Karen Hughes said the 2004 campaign resembles his first run for governor in 1994 because then, as now, he defined his opponent -- Kerry now, Gov. Ann W. Richards (D) then -- as outside the political mainstream. Hughes said 2004 resembles his 1998 Texas reelection campaign, because both used the theme "we`re on the right track, but there`s a lot more to do." She added: "Here the stakes are higher because we`re at war."

Bush advisers say that the challenges surrounding candidate Bush in 2000 and an incumbent president today are the main reasons this campaign has begun so differently. In 2000, they say, the challenge before candidate Bush was to prove he was up to the job of being chief executive, and one way to do that was to lay out a detailed governing agenda that stood up to scrutiny and criticism.

"In 2000, the necessity was to demonstrate that he had a clear vision of what he wanted to do, that he had a plan of action that all fit together, that he could talk with assurance," said one of Bush`s most senior advisers, who asked not to be identified. "This had to be a credible governing statement. [Today] we have a credible governing statement; it`s called the budget."

Marc Racicot, Bush`s campaign chairman, also pointed to the budget as the guide to Bush`s second term. "It`s different when you`re running as an incumbent and by force of the process submit proposals to Congress that reveal your agenda," he said. "His budget has all kinds of initiatives in it that address a number of imperatives that he`s been focused on for a long time."

The first time he ran for Texas governor in 1994, Bush had a short set of priorities that included education, welfare and tort reform and toughening the juvenile justice system. Four years ago, as a national candidate, Bush outlined a focused agenda that included big tax cuts, education reform, defense transformation and Social Security reform.

This year, his major initiatives are more general: to win the war on terrorism and return the economy to full health. Asked to name the policy priorities that backed up those objectives, Racicot replied, "I`d have to look down the litany of all the issues he focused upon in his State of the Union, but if you look at his State of the Union, he laid out an agenda that fits in those two categories."

Bush`s State of the Union address in January gave him no political lift, according to polls, and so far some of the big ideas of a second term have either fallen flat -- a proposed return to the moon and from there Mars -- or remain to be outlined later.

Four years ago, the major campaign initiative aimed at his conservative base was a big tax cut; this year, his focus has shifted from economic to social conservatives with the more controversial proposal for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

In past campaigns, Bush reached to the middle with education and compassionate conservatism. Those issues have not entirely receded, but Bush`s clearest bid for the support of swing voters appears to be his leadership in the war on terrorism. "Ultimately, I think elections come down to trust -- who do you trust to best lead the country," Hughes said. "In this case, I think it will come down to who do you trust to defend the country."

"Obviously, he`s going to communicate [about issues]," said another senior official who has played a central role in Bush`s presidential campaigns. "But he`s a much more known quantity, and [people know] where he wants to take the country. There aren`t a tremendous amount of gaps you have to fill in. On both the favorable and unfavorable side, there`s solid support that encompasses a big portion of the electorate."

That has led the campaign into attack mode, with Bush helping to lead the charge. Democrats say Bush has squandered something that will be difficult to recover. "An incumbent president has much more to lose in becoming a brawling street politician than the challenger," said Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, adding, "I think it takes him down to Kerry`s level. He denies himself the credibility that comes with being president."

Bush`s advisers reject that idea. "It`s an election year, and they [voters] know he`s the Republican nominee," said Matthew Dowd, senior strategist for the reelection campaign. "The idea that you would take your best asset, which is obviously the president, and not have him play a major role in the campaign is ludicrous."

As challenging for Bush may be the effort to retain the advantages that go with being a wartime president while trying to project the personality that many Americans found appealing in 2000. Buchanan, the government professor, said Bush is trying to have it both ways. "Those early ads of him sitting with Laura are intended to remind people of what they like about George Bush," he said. "He`d still like to get some credit for being likable. On the other hand, he`s convinced that what`s going to get him reelected is decisive leadership that doesn`t flinch under pressure."

One of Bush`s most trusted advisers said the key is striking the right balance. "I think people want to see resolve and confidence and steel and determination in their wartime commander in chief," he said. "They recognize that the war on terror is a dangerous and unprecedented war, so endlessly cheery optimism is not the right note. . . . You can be a wartime leader who strikes the right balance between confidence and optimism about the goal and with steely determination about what needs to be done."




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In New York City, Fewer Find They Can Make It


By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 14, 2004; Page A01


NEW YORK -- Michael Bloomberg, this city`s billionaire mayor, looks at Manhattan`s glittering economy and all but chortles. "Jobs are coming back to the Big Apple," he said recently. "Our future has never looked brighter."

The Wall Street bull is snorting. Investment bankers arm-wrestle for a $18 million Park Avenue apartment. Slots at prestigious private kindergartens retail for $26,000. Lines trail out of the latest, hot restaurants, and black limos play bumper car in Tribeca.

"New York," a recent newspaper article proclaims, "it`s HOT."

Except that a closer look at this largest of U.S. cities reveals much that`s not so hot. New York`s unemployment rate jumped in January from 8.0 to 8.4 percent, the worst performance among the nation`s top 20 cities. It has lost 230,000 jobs in the past three years. Demand for emergency food has risen 46 percent over the past three years, and 900,000 New Yorkers receive food stamps. Inflation, foreclosures, evictions and personal bankruptcies are rising sharply. Fifty percent of the city`s black males no longer are employed.

President Bush will journey here this August for the Republican convention, and he is expected to celebrate the revival of the nation`s financial capital since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But at this point, that recovery is characterized more by its weakness -- and by the stark disparities between rich and poor.

In the third quarter of 2003, the nation`s gross domestic product grew at a rate of 8.4 percent; the comparable rate in New York grew by 0.3 percent.

"Our economy is polarized; our population is polarized," said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, which represents the city`s 200 top private-sector chief executives. "The bonuses of a relative handful of very wealthy people are driving our economy."

The Invisible Poor


Around the corner from City Hall in downtown Manhattan, Arthur Harvey considers his economic prospects, which happen to stink. He is one of a record number of 40,000 homeless New Yorkers.

"My landlord raised my rent from $125 a week to $200, so I began to sleep in my mom`s back yard in Queens," said Harvey, 40, with a goatee and hollowed-out eyes. "I used to work as a messenger, but the company`s gone out of business.

"I`m in trouble, y`know what I mean?"

Seen from the perspective of Manhattan and the ever-more-swank streets of brownstone Brooklyn, these are curiously invisible hard times. Home prices spiral upward 10 percent or more each year, midtown is crowded and retail sales are strong, and the Wall Street bonus is back, $10 billion worth this year. A half-dozen new restaurants open each week, and a survey found that New Yorkers plan to eat out more than they did last year.

Nor is the current downturn as deep as recessions past. In the early 1990s, New York lost 360,000 jobs and the three horsemen of urban decline -- AIDS, crack and crime -- left its streets mean and forbidding. The plagues have stabilized, and the crime rate has plummeted. Bloomberg preserved many city services during the recession by raising property taxes.

"I live in Greenwich Village, and if you walked around the past few years, you`d never guess that 300,000 New Yorkers don`t have a job," said Patrick Markee, a senior policy analyst with Coalition for the Homeless. "But if you venture out of the `hot` neighborhoods, you find a lot of people doing phenomenally badly."

That other New York can be found in Chinatown and in Upper Manhattan, and across the East and Harlem Rivers in the Bronx and Brooklyn, where the unemployment rates stand at 10.3 and 8.5 percent, respectively. Queens is a proudly middle-class borough with thriving immigrant communities. But last year, 210 homeowners defaulted on their mortgages each month. Forty-five percent of those homes were auctioned off, twice the national foreclosure rate, according to Foreclosures.com, which analyzes national trends.

There are more harbingers of hard times. There has been a 20 percent rise over the past three years in the number of tenants being sued for nonpayment of rent. About 300,000 New Yorkers -- 10 percent of the city`s workforce -- labor for less than $7 an hour.

"A lot of businesses have folded out here," said Al Titone, director of the Small Business Development Center at York College, which sits at the end of the E-subway line in lower middle-class Jamaica, Queens. "A lot of folks are in scary shape."

At the Yorkville Common Pantry, on the southern edge of East Harlem, director Jeffrey Ambers recently converted his food program for the poor into a 24-hour-a-day operation -- and began serving 12,000 more meals. "We are serving more people, and some days we run out," Ambers said. "We`re not seeing signs here of an improving economy."

New York`s labor participation rate -- the percentage of employed adults relative to population -- fell from 65.6 percent in July 2002 to 57 percent now. The city comptroller`s office recently framed that drop this way: "If the labor force participation rate had remained at the level of July 2002, the NYC unemployment rate [now] would . . . rise to 19.9 percent."

Harvey Robins served as a senior official in two mayoral administrations, and has analyzed the city economy for 20 years. "We talk on and on about the price of real estate, but the other city is ignored," Robins said. "The elites focus on the difficulty of getting a restaurant reservation but never hear about the restaurant worker who spends 50 percent of his salary on rent."

Worrisome Job Market


Juan Batista has arrived at his 62nd year without a job or health insurance. For decades, the East Harlem man threaded fabric through textile machines -- until he was laid off in 2002. Now he leafs through the classified ads each morning and walks the streets. He sees rug stores but no longer the factories that make them.

His wife`s salary is his sole support. "I don`t want to retire, but I don`t have the possibilities of youth," Batista said last week. "I`m worried. What can I do but wait for death?"

The talk of late on Wall Street is resurgent profits and young analysts hungry for their first Jaguar. But a survey of the job market finds worry in many corners. Manufacturing still employs 126,000 New Yorkers, but it has bled jobs for decades and lost another 1,100 jobs in January.

The private sector gained 20,600 jobs. But the Fiscal Policy Institute found that the sectors gaining jobs paid $34,000 less, on average, than the sectors that lost jobs. Health and education are the fast-growing sectors in Manhattan; the average salary for both is $42,000. But the cost of the average Manhattan co-op apartment is $983,000.

"It takes two of the jobs we`ve gained to make up for one that we`ve lost," said James Parrott, chief economist for the labor-funded Fiscal Policy Institute. "That does not bode well for the future."

Economic calamity has fallen with particular force on the shoulders of black males. The Community Service Society, a liberal social policy organization, discovered a sharp three-year decline in employment that has left 51.8 percent of black males holding jobs.

The city`s core economic sector -- securities trading and financial services -- displays more strength. The Wall Street spigots are again running and profit margins are staggering. Securities firms recorded profits of $15 billion last year. This has fed a revival in advertising, legal work, catering, and restaurants and hotels.

Still, Wall Street remains a slender version of its Gilded Age self. Many firms retain corporate suites in New York but have placed back offices in Long Island and Jersey City, or farther afield. Last year, the nation gained 120,000 finance jobs; the city lost 1,500.

"We lag behind the rest of the nation in job creation in our key sectors," said Jonathan Bowles of the Center for an Urban Future, a think tank that examines the city economy. "The national economy is outperforming New York."

Hiding Behind Sept. 11


It is a matter of secular faith among many local politicians that New York owes the severity of its hard times not to structural economic problems but to the devastating effects of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Several influential economists, however, offer a dissent. They note that the city pitched into recession in January 2001 and job losses were mounting rapidly before the attacks. They say the popping of the stock bubble and the city`s economic dependence on Wall Street accounted, chiefly, for the severity of the downturn.

"The terror attack created sizeable job and income losses, but the city`s current downturn appears to stem largely from the national economy and the financial markets," Jason Bram, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, wrote last year.

The hangover from those attacks has stifled frank discussion. Analysts of various ideological stripes say the city needs to retool its taxes and fees -- which are among the nation`s highest -- restructure labor contracts, raise the minimum wage and address its extreme reliance on Wall Street. But that conversation is rarely heard.

"September 11th came along, and there was all this talk of how it pulled us closer together," said Richard Murphy of the Community Food Resource Center. "But, economically, we are further apart than ever, and no one talks about it."

Partnership for New York City president Wylde added that nothing about the city`s economic dominance can be taken for granted. "We had done a good job of restoring the middle class, but it`s very transient, very fragile," she said. "We have an economy where a lot of job growth is epitomized by restaurant jobs and nannies."

As if to underline this point, Bloomberg News Service reported that there are 15 applications for every $26,000 seat at the most prestigious private kindergartens. And last month, the Time Warner twin towers opened at Columbus Circle, occasioning fleets of Lincoln Town Cars and apple martinis and gymnastics by Cirque du Soleil. Undercover cops came in tuxes, as did reporters.

"It`s like a mecca for everything," wrote one local newspaper scribe.

That same evening, three miles to the north, Clinton Campbell, 47, walked into a Community Food Resource Center in Harlem to have his tax forms prepared for free. An African American and New York native, he managed a McDonald`s until he was laid off a year ago. Now he collects unemployment more often than he works.

Afterward, he walked down Eighth Avenue to a food pantry for dinner.

"I worked at a grocery store last month, but I was too old to lug boxes upstairs," Campbell said as he stood on line with a tray. "They say if you make it here, you can make it anywhere. But I`m hurting real bad."

With that he excused himself, said a prayer, and lifted his knife and fork.

Special correspondent Michelle Garcia and researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.



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Iraq-Iran Border to Be Tightened in Bid to Stem Attacks


By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 14, 2004; Page A26


BAGHDAD, March 13 -- The occupation authority plans to close all but three official crossing points along Iraq`s border with Iran, double the number of border guards and set up a computerized immigration tracking system in an effort to stem infiltration of foreign fighters, U.S. officials said Saturday.

The officials said the enhanced security measures were prompted by recent terror attacks, including suicide bombings in Baghdad and Karbala earlier this month that killed more than 180 people commemorating a Shiite Muslim holy day. Although U.S. military officials said they have not identified the culprits, many Iraqi political and religious leaders have attributed those attacks to foreigners.

The issue of foreign infiltration has become a rallying point for many Iraqis, particularly Shiite leaders, who regard the lack of aggressive border controls as a chief cause of the violence that has wracked this nation for months. Several senior religious leaders, including the country`s top Shiite cleric, issued edicts this week sharply criticizing the occupation authority for not doing enough to protect Iraq`s borders.

The new policies appeared to be a response to that criticism.

"Foreign terrorists are present in Iraq," L. Paul Bremer, the country`s U.S. administrator, said in a statement. "The numbers are not known with precision, but recent attacks and their continuing presence underscores the importance of improving security at Iraq`s borders."

Starting next Saturday, the occupation authority will close 16 of the 19 points of entry along Iraq`s nearly 900-mile frontier with Iran, said Daniel Senor, a spokesman for Bremer. Visitors at the three open border posts will have to apply for an entry permit and provide personal information that will be logged into a computer tracking system.

Bremer said in his statement that the number of law enforcement personnel patrolling Iraq`s borders would be doubled from the current 8,000.

He called the new policies "the first stage in a multistage effort." Senor said the occupation authority was also considering closing some frontier crossings with Syria, which has been accused by U.S. officials of not doing enough to clamp down on cross-border infiltration.

"It`s important to send a very clear signal to governments of countries that border Iraq that enough is enough, that they need to do more to stem the flow of foreign fighters coming across their borders," Senor said.

It is not clear, however, that closing official entrances will staunch the influx of fighters. Military officials believe many of them cross at remote points along Iraq`s vast, desolate frontier.

Military commanders also question the extent to which foreigners are responsible for the violence in Iraq. The commanders estimate that several hundred foreign fighters have entered Iraq since the fall and may be helping to instigate attacks, but they believe the vast majority of insurgents striking U.S. and Iraqi security forces are Iraqis. Of the more than 10,000 people detained by the military for security violations, fewer than 150 held foreign passports, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Baghdad.

Kimmitt also sought to play down suggestions made by Iraqi leaders that Iranians were responsible for the bombings on the Shiite holy day. "We have no evidence at this point, no intelligence at this point, that links the bombings in Karbala and Baghdad to any Iranians we have in custody," he said.

Elsewhere in Iraq, attacks continued against U.S. forces and Iraqis deemed sympathetic to the occupation. In Tikrit, the home town of former president Saddam Hussein, two American soldiers were killed and three were wounded in a roadside bombing early Saturday. The soldiers were the first casualties suffered by the 1st Infantry Division`s 1st Battalion, which took over control of Tikrit on Saturday.

In Baghdad, a midafternoon explosion killed a relative of a prominent Shiite politician. Haider Qazweni, a middle-aged merchant, was killed by powerful explosives tossed into his clothing shop after he returned from prayers. Qazweni was married to the sister of Ibrahim Jafari, the leader of the Dawa party and a member of the country`s Governing Council.

A witness described the assassin as a short man with thick glasses and a light beard. "He was carrying a handbag, folded into a newspaper. It was thick," recounted Said Hamza, who was in the shop next door. He said the man hurried out of Qazweni`s shop and climbed into a white Volkswagen Passat, in which a driver was waiting.

"The next thing I knew there was a huge explosion," said Hamza, 27. He said both men appeared to be Iraqi, and people milling about at the scene repeated accounts by other area residents who said that the man, who had been asking for Qazweni, spoke with an Iraqi accent.

In Karbala, meanwhile, an Iraqi police official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the four suspects detained in the Tuesday killings of two Americans and their Iraqi translator were police officers based there. The Americans were working for the occupation authority.

In a telephone interview, Shakir Jaber Abdul-Hussein, the father of one of the suspects, maintained his son`s innocence. Abdul-Hussein said his son, Mahmoud Shakir Jaber Abdul-Hussein, joined the police force less than a year ago and was assigned to a new anti-drug unit after completing a three-week training course.

The father also said that 23 of his relatives were executed during Hussein`s rule and that his son would have no reason to oppose the occupation. "We are grateful for the Americans who have helped us to get rid of the old regime," Abdul-Hussein said.

U.S. officials have called the three killings, the first involving American civilians working for the occupation authority, a "targeted act of terrorism." The FBI and the Iraqi police are investigating the crimes.

Separately, Senor said Robert Blackwill of the National Security Council staff had arrived in Iraq for consultations with Bremer and members of the Governing Council. Although Senor described Blackwill`s scheduled discussions as routine, other U.S. officials have said he is trying to get Iraqi political leaders to agree on the shape of the caretaker government that will assume control of the country after the occupation authority hands over sovereignty on June 30.

Correspondent Sewell Chan in Karbala contributed to this report.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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"Analyzating" Bush`s Grey Matter
The President`s tendency to mangle words and syntax may be due to an undiagnosed language and hearing disability, say some experts By Stan Crock
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4514404/
Updated: 11:00 a.m. ET March 12, 2004
Ever wonder why President Bush says "nuculer" when he means "nuclear" or "subliminate" when he means "subliminal?" Or why he mixes up perseverance and preservation? Why does he mangle the English language often enough for Slate Editor Jacob Weisberg to produce three books of Bushisms such as "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."

Are you still puzzled that Bush:

-- Was a "C" student and class clown, yet became President?

-- Doles out odd nicknames with abandon?

-- Has held only 12 Presidential news conferences, the lowest frequency for a President since Richard Nixon`s scandal-plagued second term?

-- Chose to go one-on-one with Meet the Press`s Tim Russert, one of the roughest interviewers in the business during one of the toughest times in his Presidency?

-- Stunned former Treasury Secretary Paul O`Neill by barely responding in their first hour-long briefing at the White House?

-- Doesn`t "do nuance," as the President himself puts it?

"SUBTLE DISORDER." To some learning-disability experts, the signs are clear: Bush might want to pay them a visit. These experts haven`t tested the President, so they caution that they can`t be certain of the diagnosis. Yet, ample signs indicate that something unusual is going on in the left side of his brain, where language and hearing are processed.

The possibility is high that there`s some dysfunction in the way he hears words, the way he processes what he hears, or the way he retrieves words when he tries to speak. When someone uses the wrong word or malapropisms and has difficulty with grammatical sentences, experts on learning disabilities "typically suspect at least a subtle language disorder," says William Stixrud, a clinical neuropsychologist in Silver Spring, Md.

Some voters infer from Bush`s syntax and behavior that he isn`t the sharpest saw in the tool box. Yet, learning and processing disorders aren`t indicators of native intelligence. If anything, a learning disability would better explain how Bush has accomplished so much, with his critics underestimating him every step of the way.
Weiter:{Text steht auch schon im Thread 12.03.)
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Bombs Kill Six U.S. Soldiers in Iraq


By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 14, 2004; 6:11 AM


BAGHDAD, Iraq - Four American soldiers died in two bomb explosions in Baghdad, the coalition said Sunday, raising to six the number of U.S. forces killed in roadside bombs this weekend.

Hundreds of Iraqis, meanwhile, mourned the death of a Shiite politician`s relative in a bomb blast in his shop the previous day.

A roadside bomb killed three soldiers from the 1st Armored Division and wounded another during a patrol Saturday night in southeastern Baghdad, a spokeswoman for the U.S.-led coalition spokeswoman said.

That followed a similar attack in Saddam Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit that killed two American soldiers and wounded three others.

U.S. forces responded by making several arrests and dispatching troops into the streets in a show of force on the same day that the 1st Infantry Division`s 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, took control of the restive Sunni Triangle town in a troop rotation.

Soldiers who have been on the front line facing the anti-U.S. insurgency - believed led by Saddam loyalists and Islamic militants - have been carrying out joint patrols with the newcomers. Saturday was only the second day that troops from the German-based 18th Regiment patrolled alone.

A sixth soldier died at a combat hospital from injuries suffered in a blast in the Iraqi capital Sunday morning, the spokeswoman said.

In Baghdad, about 1,000 mourners attended the funeral on Sunday of Haidar al-Qazwini, the brother-in-law of Shiite council member Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

"The aim of this criminal act is to ignite sectarian strife in the country," al-Jaafari`s representative, Adnan al-Asadi, said at the funeral.

U.S. and Iraqi security officials suspect militants are trying to trigger conflict between Sunnis, who dominated Saddam`s government, and the resurgent Shiite majority.

Iraqi police said al-Qazwini died after an unidentified man entered a shop and left a bag containing explosives, which later detonated.

The White House said it has sent a senior White House official to Baghdad to help form an interim government - action that`s needed before sovereignty can be transferred to the Iraqi people by June 30.

In Baghdad, coalition spokesman Dan Senor identified the official as Ambassador Robert Blackwill of the National Security Council staff, and said he visits Iraq every four to six weeks.

Blackwill was sent partly to resolve problems some Shiite members of the Iraqi Governing Council have with the interim constitution the council signed on Monday, a senior administration official said. He also is charged with persuading the Governing Council to let the United Nations help set up elections, which are scheduled to be held before the end of the year.

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Disarming Iraq`s Militias




Sunday, March 14, 2004; Page B06


THE INTERIM constitution signed by Iraq`s Governing Council last week is admirable -- and, in the context of the Middle East, revolutionary -- where its language is explicit. Its enumeration of "fundamental rights" such as freedom of speech and assembly and equality under the law is comprehensive, and its limitation of religious authority pretty firm. But where the document is vague, it gives cause for alarm -- and it is vague in several important places.

One gap is the nature and extent of Iraq`s federalism, and the degree of autonomy that will be granted the Kurdish minority -- which, as the protest of Shiite leaders made clear, is far from settled. Even more worrisome is the spare language of Article 27, Section B: "Armed forces and militias not under the command structure of the Iraqi Transitional Government are prohibited, except as provided by federal law." That, so far, is the only provision that has been made for handling the explosive problem of the militia forces that continue to report to a number of Iraqi factional or religious leaders -- and that provide the means for civil war. Though the militias will be technically illegal as of June 30, no plan has been announced by either the United States or the Iraqis to disarm and dismantle the existing groups.

That is a dangerous state of affairs. The largest and best-known militia organizations are the Kurdish pesh merga, which number around 50,000 and are concentrated in northern Iraq, where they have been the de facto security force for years. But at least three Shiite militias operate in Baghdad and southern Iraq, including the Badr Brigades of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, with at least 10,000 members; the Jaish al-Mahdi militia, commanded by the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr; and the Western-trained forces loyal to former exile leader Ahmed Chalabi.

These groups are armed with heavy weapons: mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns. So far they have been held mostly in check. But as U.S. forces increasingly retreat to the edges of Iraqi cities, the militias will have both the means and the motive to intimidate unarmed civilians and political groups -- including those most likely to promote secular and pluralistic agendas -- and to disrupt free elections. It is all too easy to imagine the next step: the beginning of warfare among the rival party armies, like that which destroyed Lebanon in the 1970s and `80s.

Though they have repeatedly declared that the militias must disband, U.S. commanders and occupation officials have not yet moved against them. In part that is because some militia forces are seen as necessary to preserve order, in Kurdish areas or near Shiite holy sites. But U.S. commanders have been reluctant to take on the tough and dangerous task of compelling the groups to disarm.

As a practical matter, it may not be possible to dismantle all the militias by June 30, but a start must be made. Some forces could be incorporated into the Iraqi army or other structures under the central government`s command; some detachments could be allowed to serve as bodyguards for senior leaders or as security guards at religious sites. But if Iraq is to have a genuinely free political system and avoid civil war, thousands of men will have to be demobilized and their weapons collected. Only the United States has the means to force this vital step, and its time is running out.



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All That`s Left Is Violence


By Fareed Zakaria

Sunday, March 14, 2004; Page B07


Does it matter whether the carnage in Madrid last week was the act of the Basque terrorist organization, ETA, or of al Qaeda? Of course there are important differences. ETA is a local organization, al Qaeda a global one. The former is secular, the latter religious. But they have something in common that is revealing about the nature of terrorism. Both groups had political agendas, but as their political causes have lost steam, they are increasingly defined almost exclusively by a macabre culture of violence.

"The purpose of terrorism," Vladimir Lenin once said, "is to terrorize." Like much of what he said, this is wrong. Terrorism has traditionally been used to advance political goals. That`s why a rule of terrorists used to be: "We want a few people dead and a lot of people watching." Terrorists sought attention but didn`t want people to lose sympathy for their cause.

Yet with many terrorist groups -- like ETA, like al Qaeda -- violence has become an end in itself. They want a lot of people dead, period.

Some in Spain have argued that if an Islamic group proves to be the culprit, Spaniards will blame Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. It was his support for America and the war in Iraq that invited the wrath of the fundamentalists. But other recent targets of Islamic militants have been Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, not one of which supported the war or sent troops into Iraq in the after-war. Al Qaeda`s declaration of jihad had, as its first demand, the withdrawal of American troops from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden does not seem to have noticed, but the troops are gone -- yet the jihad continues. The reasons come and go, the violence endures.

The Middle East scholar Giles Keppel makes an analogy between communist groups and Islamic fundamentalists. In the 1940s and 1950s, communist groups were popular and advanced their cause politically. By the 1960s, after revelations about Joseph Stalin`s brutality, few believing communists were left in Europe. Facing irrelevance, the hardcore radicals in the movement turned to violence, hoping to gain attention and adherents by daring acts of bloodshed. Thus the proliferation of terror by groups such as the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Similarly, Islamic fundamentalism tried for decades to gain popular support and topple the regimes of the Middle East. When this tactic failed, radicals like bin Laden turned to terrorism.

ETA follows this pattern. Having been founded to protest the brutal suppression of the Basques under Francisco Franco`s reign, it has foundered as Spain became democratic and provided the Basques with increasing levels of autonomy. Almost every demand of Basque nationalists has been met over the last decade. Basques run their own region (through a mainstream, non-violent nationalist party), collect their own taxes, have their own police, speak their own language and broadcast their own television and radio programs. As a result support for ETA is down to 5 percent at most. Support for its political sympathizers, the political party Batasuna, hovers under 10 percent. In fact support for Basque nationalism itself has waned considerably. In the last election, 60 percent of Basques voted for parties that did not espouse Basque nationalism.

It is in this context that ETA announced in 2000 the "reactivation of armed struggle" after a 14-month cease-fire. In the next two years it launched 87 bombings and assassinations, in which 38 people were killed. But because of effective police work by Spain and France, ETA`s attacks dropped to 20 in 2002, with five deaths, and so far this year there have been 17 hits, in which three people were killed.

In the past ETA hit only Spanish politicians, policemen and other symbols of Spanish rule. Now it targets civilians indiscriminately. In its region, it murders Basques who dare speak out against secession, firebombs bookstores and intimidates the press, creating a pervasive atmosphere of fear.

"Violence has become ETA`s main rationale," a former separatist who renounced ETA told the Financial Times in 2002. "The exercise of violence creates antibodies. ETA`s new recruits can digest barbaric acts that would have been unthinkable under Franco: the torturing of town councillors, the killing of children, of traffic wardens and local policemen. ETA now is led by its most extreme elements, those who are prepared to go furthest in all this senseless killing."

ETA`s goal -- the creation of a single Basque nation -- is not as fantastical as is al Qaeda`s dream of a restored caliphate. But given that part of the Basque lands it wants to unify are in France, and none of the French Basques have any interest in this plan, it is utterly unrealistic. The goals are now charades, excuses for bloodletting.

Spanish authorities have estimated that the number of ETA`s hard-core activists is well under 100. Most estimates of serious al Qaeda operatives are in the hundreds. Technology means that small numbers can still do great harm -- as last week`s tragedy amply illustrates. But that should not obscure the reality that this violence is a sign of weakness.

That`s why Friedrich Engels, a shrewder observer than Vladimir Lenin, wrote to Karl Marx in 1870, "Terror is for the most part useless cruelties committed by frightened people to reassure themselves."

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Army sent mentally ill troops to Iraq
By Mark Benjamin
United Press International
Published 3/12/2004 5:53 PM


WASHINGTON, March 12 (UPI) -- The Army appears to have "inappropriately" deployed soldiers to Iraq who already were diagnosed with mental problems, according to documents obtained by United Press International.

More than two dozen suicides by U.S. troops in Iraq, and hundreds of medical evacuations for psychiatric problems, have raised concerns about the mental health of soldiers in Operation Iraqi Freedom. An Army Medical Department after-action report obtained by UPI suggests that the Army sent some soldiers to war who were mentally unfit in the first place.

"Variability in predeployment screening guidelines for mental health issues may have resulted in some soldiers with mental health diagnoses being inappropriately deployed," the report said. That could "create the impression that some soldiers develop problems in theater, when, in some cases, they actually have pre-existing conditions."

The October 2003 report said the Army should consider quickly changing course to prevent deploying more soldiers with mental problems. In a massive troop rotation now under way, more than 100,000 troops are heading to the region.

"Perhaps stricter predeployment screening is required to keep at-risk soldier from deploying," the report said. That would help in "identifying soldiers that may become non-functional in theater due to mental health problems."

It says that idea, among others, "must be passed on in a timely manner since units will more than likely be deploying in the near future."

A number of veterans` advocates say signs of widespread mental problems among soldiers from Iraq shock them -- one in 10 soldiers evacuated from the war on terror to an Army hospital in Germany were sent solely for mental problems. The Pentagon says that number is not out of line. It also is investigating more than two dozen suicides in Iraq and Kuwait but says the rate is not alarmingly high.

Steve Robinson, executive director of the veterans` National Gulf War Resource Center, has been pressing the Pentagon since 2001 to better screen soldiers for health issues. Robinson, a former Army Ranger, said he is worried about mental problems and suicides among troops in Iraq.

"This information indicates that pre-deployment, during-deployment and post-deployment screening is critical," Robinson said. "If done properly, it will rule in -- or rule out -- the deployability of service members."

"It is time to stop having congressional hearings on what needs to be done and have the Department of Defense step up to the plate and perform the screenings as required by law."

Army spokeswoman Martha Rudd did not respond to requests for comment made Thursday.

Since last summer, the Pentagon has been investigating a string of suicides in Iraq and Kuwait and mental issues among troops there. Top Pentagon health officials told Congress last month that personal problems -- family and money issues - appeared to be the root cause of the suicides.

Army Surgeon General James Peake told a House Armed Services Committee panel Feb. 25 that "failed intimate relationships, legal problems and financial problems -- the same kind of issues that you see back home related to suicide -- seemed to be the predominate triggers in theater as well."

Statistics show that a soldier who had mental health problems when he was deployed would be at much greater risk for suicide in Iraq. According to the American Association of Suicidology, the suicide risk among people with depression is 30 times that of the general population. About two-thirds of those who take their lives have a depressive disorder at the time of their death, the society says.

The Pentagon says at least 21 Army soldiers have committed suicide in Iraq or Kuwait, making the rate of suicides there higher than expected. Another five deaths there are being investigated as possible suicides and at least another six service-members have killed themselves after returning home.

One drug used by the Pentagon to prevent malaria in Iraq, Lariam, is unsuitable for people with mental problems, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Assistant Secretary of Defense William Winkenwerder Jr. told Congress Feb. 25 that soldiers are carefully "screened" for mental problems before taking Lariam.

"Now we follow all the FDA guidelines for using this medication," Winkenwerder said. "Every service member is screened and receives information about possible side effects before taking this product. That`s our policy, and that`s what should be done."

In a number of interviews by United Press International with soldiers who served there over the past year, none said they had been screened for mental problems before taking the drug or received any warning of possible side effects. While some soldiers still had leftover Lariam pills, none of their medical records reflected use of the drug.

The FDA warns that Lariam can cause thoughts of suicide, depression, anxiety, paranoia, delusions and psychosis that can occur long after taking the drug.

The Pentagon told Congress that Lariam, invented by the Army, is not a significant factor in suicides in Operation Iraqi Freedom. "We do not believe that this (Lariam) represents the big causal factor in the suicide rates," Peak said. He said four of the 21 dead soldiers came from units that took the drug.

Pentagon and Army officials have made a variety of statements about suicides in Operation Iraqi Freedom. At issue is whether the rate of suicides is high.

- On Jan. 14, William Winkenwerder Jr., undersecretary of defense for health affairs, told reporters that there were 18 confirmed suicides by Army soldiers Iraq or Kuwait. He said that meant a rate of 13.5 suicides per 100,000 soldiers per year, which was "a little on the high side" of the 10-11 rate the Army had seen in the past.

- In a Jan. 28 speech, Army Col. Thomas J. Burke, Pentagon program director for mental health policy, said deploying to Iraq was not causing an increase in suicide. "Are soldiers killing themselves in increased numbers due to deployment? No," Burke said. Burke said media reports about an unexpectedly high rate of suicides were "false."

- On Feb. 25, Peake told Congress of 21 Army confirmed suicides there, a rate of 15.8 per 100,000. He compared that to Army suicide rates between 9.1 and 14.8 from 1995-2002. Peake told Congress that another five deaths in Iraq or Kuwait were under investigation as possible suicides.

If the Army determined that all those deaths were suicides, the comparable rate would be 19.5 per 100,000, according to a calculation by UPI.








Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-fornpol14…
IRAQ: ONE YEAR LATER
Strengths, Limits of U.S. Foreign Policy Evident
By Doyle McManus and Sonni Efron
Times Staff Writers

March 14, 2004

When the United States invaded Iraq a year ago this week, the action transformed American foreign policy in the Middle East and around the world — but not always as its strategists intended.

The fall of Baghdad after only 21 days of combat gave the world a vivid lesson in the scope of U.S. military might. But the difficulties that followed in Iraq — a year of uphill battles against political chaos, economic collapse and a stubborn insurgency — provided an equally striking lesson in the boundaries of American power when it comes to waging peace.

"Iraq is about our limits rather than our reach," said Lee Feinstein of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The burden of building a new Iraq, said Graham Allison of Harvard University`s Kennedy School of Government, has sapped U.S. resources from other foreign policy priorities — including the pursuit of terrorists elsewhere.

"What has been undertaken [in Iraq] is something hugely ambitious," he said. "Our plate is full, and it`s full for some time. We`re not physically constrained, we`re just constrained in terms of political realities."

President Bush and his aides insist that committing thousands of troops and billions of dollars to Iraq hasn`t subtracted from their ability to deal with challenges anywhere else. But the administration, which only a year ago was willing to invade Iraq without the support of many of its foreign allies, has scrambled recently to win international help not only in Iraq, but also to meet challenges in Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and Haiti.

The yearlong experience in Iraq has wrought other far-reaching effects on U.S. foreign policy:

• The war was the first test of what has been called the Bush doctrine, the assertion that the United States may launch a preventive war against any country thought to hold weapons of mass destruction if it consorts with terrorists. But the war also has been the only instance of that rule being invoked; Iran, North Korea and Syria, which all arguably qualify, have not been attacked. As a result, scholars aren`t sure whether Iraq was the beginning of a pattern or, as now appears possible, merely the high-water mark of an assertive policy.

• The war put other countries on notice that they had better shape up — and, Bush aides argue, produced an immediate effect on Libya, whose mercurial leader, Col. Moammar Kadafi, announced the end of his efforts to build chemical and nuclear weapons. But the hoped-for "demonstration effect" doesn`t seem to have worked on North Korea, Iran or Syria — at least, not yet.

• The war ruptured U.S. relationships with Cold War allies such as Germany and France, ties that only now are being repaired. In the eyes of much of the global public, it made U.S. foreign policy appear aggressive and menacing, a dent in the nation`s image that may take years to repair.

• The war accelerated a remarkable — and risky — shift in U.S. policy in the Arab world. For half a century, the United States sought stability in the world`s most important oil region by supporting friendly dictators, but now the Bush administration says it has ambitious plans to promote rapid political change leading to democracy — even in conservative monarchies such as Saudi Arabia.

"If the Middle East is to leave behind stagnation and tyranny and violence for export, then freedom must flourish in every corner of the region," Condoleezza Rice, Bush`s national security advisor, said in a speech last month.

But some foreign policy experts outside the administration worry that the Bush administration has bitten off more than it can chew — in foreign policy-speak, that the United States may be "overextended."

"The idea that we could launch another preemptive strike or preventive war along the lines of the Bush doctrine is not impossible, but it would be a stretch," said Joseph S. Nye, dean of Harvard`s Kennedy School and a Pentagon official during the Clinton administration.

"We`re not overextended in the sense that we`re about to collapse, but we`d have to increase the size of the Army and the defense budget, and in an era of deficits, that would be difficult."

Nye and other scholars say the greatest constraint on U.S. power — especially in an election year — is the willingness of Congress and the public to support military expeditions that cost lives and money.

Dmitri K. Simes, president of the Nixon Center, a largely Republican think tank, warned in a recent essay that the Bush administration was trying to do too much when it made democracy in the Middle East one of its major goals.

"The pursuit of [a] universal democratic utopia, as attractive as it may seem, is damaging vital U.S. interests," he wrote. "The principal problem is the mistaken belief that democracy is a talisman for all the world`s ills, and that the United States has a responsibility to promote democratic government wherever in the world it is lacking."

But Robert Kagan, one of the intellectuals — often dubbed "neoconservatives" — who long urged the administration to topple Saddam Hussein, argued that some measure of rhetorical overreach is an American tradition.

"Bush isn`t going to be able to do everything he says he would like to do," said Kagan, a former Reagan administration official. "We will be hypocritical in some cases. But we`re like the 650-pound sumo wrestler. We have an effect on things just by getting into the ring."

In fact, Kagan complained that Bush wasn`t aiming high enough. "You don`t hear much from the administration these days about democracy in Russia or democracy in China," he said. "In those cases, democracy seems to be taking a backseat to the desire for good relations with great powers."

Some of the administration`s rhetoric has been aimed at hostile countries, warning them that they too might face U.S. wrath if they don`t abandon efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

But North Korea, Iran and Syria show no signs of capitulating. In fact, some worry that the Iraq war had the perverse effect of spurring North Korea`s Kim Jong Il to redouble efforts to build a nuclear bomb to forestall a U.S. preemptive attack.

"The North Koreans have been highly confident that we were not about to pop `em because they have something Saddam Hussein didn`t have … the ability to reach out and hurt people who matter to us," said Stephen Bosworth, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, where thousands of U.S. troops are based. "It is at least plausible that North Korea will have decided after Iraq that it is more important than ever for them to have what they describe as `a deterrent to U.S. aggression.` "

The Iraq war certainly ruined the sleep of many dictators, even if it didn`t change their behavior. The defeat of the most powerful of Arab armies with 115 U.S. casualties "leads other Arab rulers to recognize the unpalatable fact that they rule on the sufferance of the American president," said Allison, who served in the Pentagon under President Clinton.

Nor did the war in Iraq have any apparent positive effect on the impasse in Israeli-Palestinian relations. The Bush administration has argued that the creation of a democratic Iraq could start a benign domino effect throughout the Arab world, including the Palestinian-ruled West Bank and Gaza Strip. But so far, the administration`s low-key efforts to encourage democratic Palestinians to replace their leader, Yasser Arafat, and to nudge Israel toward renewed peace negotiations have been unsuccessful.

Nevertheless, Yale University historian John Lewis Gaddis argues that the United States is in a far better position today in the Middle East than before the Iraq war. U.S. troops are no longer in Saudi Arabia; a dialogue about reform, however halting, has begun; and "the Arab street has not risen up in wrath, as critics predicted," Gaddis said. He hailed the administration`s decision to signal an end to U.S. support for repressive Arab regimes.

One unexpected effect of the postwar setbacks: the Bush administration`s rediscovery of the value of alliances.

In Nye`s view, Bush`s decision to launch the war without U.N. endorsement damaged the U.S. image overseas in ways that went beyond cosmetics; it eroded what Nye calls America`s "soft power," the ability to persuade other countries to support its policies because of the appeal of its ideals.

Exhibit A, he said, is Turkey, a longtime ally whose parliament refused to allow U.S. forces to cross Turkish territory en route to battle in Iraq.

Exhibit B is the decision of many key nations to delay or skimp on postwar assistance to U.S.-occupied Iraq.

Falling popularity makes it more difficult to get support for U.S. policies — even when they might otherwise not be objectionable — if to be seen as pro-American is a political "kiss of death," Nye said.

The less international support the United States enjoys, the harder it is to carry out U.S. policies, noted Philip H. Gordon of the largely liberal Brookings Institution.

"The more others perceive that the United States … doesn`t have the backing of allies, the more they think we might actually fail and cut and run," he said.

"I think the administration felt that victory would bring its own legitimacy, [that] the allies would be faced with that victory and ultimately have to concede with their tail between their legs," he said.

But that didn`t happen. The United States and its principal critics in Europe — Germany and France, slowly reconciled — because each needed the other.

"I think you`ve seen things over the past couple of months at least nodding in the direction of trying to win more international legitimacy and allied support for what we`re doing," Gordon said.

One of those measures, ironically, has been a new U.S. push to give the United Nations a significant role in Iraq — an idea administration officials dismissed only a year ago.

Last year, the administration "pointed out the flaws in a flawed international system" when it criticized the U.N.`s inability to act in Iraq, Feinstein said. But now, "the administration has gone back hat in hand to the U.N. to broker a solution [in the negotiations over a transitional government in Baghdad]…. It shows that to the rest of the world, the U.N. is the ultimate conveyor of legitimacy."

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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MIDDLE EAST
Arabs See Danger, not Hope, in Iraq
Most think the war heightened instability in the region. Even allies mistrust the United States` intentions.
By Shibley Telhami
Shibley Telhami is Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland and senior fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. His most recent book is "The Stakes

March 14, 2004

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — On the eve of the Iraq war a year ago, I conducted a public opinion survey in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. It was no surprise that the vast majority of Arabs, like many around the world, opposed the war. Most striking was their profound mistrust of American foreign policy and of the stated U.S. objectives in Iraq. Unlike American predictions, the large majority of people in the region anticipated that the Middle East would be less democratic, that terrorism would increase and that the prospects of Arab-Israeli peace would diminish as a result of the war. One year later, this view has grown stronger.

To begin with, the talk of democracy in Iraq has not captured the Arab public`s imagination, for two important reasons. One, Arabs have seen very little of it in their countries. Many Middle East governments that tacitly or overtly supported the U.S.-led war have been anxious about public anger at and opposition to the war, and they have further clamped down on civil liberties. The role these governments have assumed in the war on terrorism — the Saudi`s get-tough policy with militants, for example — has also entailed greater restrictions on freedom.

Second, even those who recognize the obvious benefits of the collapse of Saddam Hussein`s dictatorship have not observed in "liberated" Iraq an outcome they desire. This may change, but for now what they see there frightens them and threatens their core traditional values. The absence of personal security, the near-collapse of Iraqi society, the daily hardship, the unpredictability and instability of the situation — all are barriers to Arabs seeing post-Hussein Iraq as a political model worthy of emulation.

Talk of democracy in the Middle East unexpectedly turns to the "China model." It`s doubtful most truly understand what that model is, except that it means incremental economic and political progress without diluting social norms and unleashing personal insecurity. Still, it plays directly into the hands of Arab governments reluctant to embark on major reforms that might undermine their hold on power.

To many Arabs, the Middle East today is less stable and thus more hospitable to international terrorism of the Al Qaeda brand. Few believed Al Qaeda had any roots in Iraq before the war, but many now believe that Iraq, because of its instability, has become a breeding ground for the terrorist organization and its allies. As a result, they fear the region could become even more unstable.

Contrary to the Bush administration`s prediction that the momentum of victory in Iraq would generate a peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute, most in the Arab world see the prospects of peace to have significantly diminished. The administration has spent most of its energy on making Iraq secure and governable, and now the U.S. presidential campaign has begun in earnest. This doesn`t make for a situation ideal for active U.S. diplomacy. In any case, most believe that the administration deliberately avoids the Arab-Israeli issue, which remains central to their attitudes toward the U.S.

There are many democrats in the Arab world who want to believe that positive change is possible and that the U.S. means what it says. But even among this group of natural U.S. allies there is a lack of trust in U.S. intentions and discomfort with being associated with America`s plans.

The war`s effect on Arab governments has been different from the effect on public opinion. Not all the governments have the same attitude about the war. Kuwait, for one, is mostly pleased with its outcome. In general, though, the war and its aftermath have made most Arab governments nervous. What has made them especially nervous is the seeming unpredictability of the administration`s foreign policy. A powerful nation is frightening enough, especially when it is angry. But an unpredictable powerful nation is even more frightening. To many Arab government officials in the region, the administration`s decision to go to war with Iraq seemed to go against traditional U.S. interests as they understood them; many initially believed that the war was unlikely without greater international support.

Although many Arab governments don`t believe it`s in America`s interests to topple them, they cannot be sure. If there is a reassuring circumstance, it`s an increasing sense among Arab officials that America`s ability to deal with new crises in the region has been significantly undermined by its continuing difficulty in Iraq.

With the U.S. likely to continue its deployment of tens of thousands of personnel in Iraq and its expenditure of tens of billions of dollars to prevent a disastrous outcome, few Arab officials believe the American public would support any new effort in the region. None doubt the U.S. ability to wage a war of necessity even while engaged in Iraq. But many believe that America`s trouble in Iraq requires it to seek the help of other countries rather than antagonize them.

Among Arab officials, this political calculation has fostered an ironic approach toward the U.S. role in Iraq. On the one hand, they do not want the U.S. to succeed quickly and easily, lest it conclude that unilateral wars of preemption are the way to go — and they may be next on the list. On the other hand, they fear that a complete U.S. failure would create more regional instability and unleash increasing Islamic militancy.

This outlook was reinforced by the breakthrough disarmament agreement with Libya. The fall of Hussein no doubt unnerved the Libyan leadership, but many Arab governments believe that it was unlikely that the administration would have accepted such a deal from Moammar Kadafi had the Iraq war gone better than it has. The deal with Libya was about change of behavior, often advocated by the State Department, not change of regime, which was favored by others in the administration.

The evolution of public opinion about U.S. policy in the Arab world will be tied to future events in Iraq. For now, however, the mistrust is so deep that few are willing to give the U.S. the benefit of the doubt.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/164310_march14tony.htm…

Iraq a year later: U.S. should stop thinking it`s right, and just do what`s right
Sunday, March 14, 2004

ANTHONY B. ROBINSON

Reinhold Niebuhr, arguably America`s greatest theologian, often observed that it is not the bad people we have to worry about but the good people. By "good people" Niebuhr meant those who are so convinced of their own righteousness as to be blind to their capacity for evil. These are the ones who really ought to concern us.

One year after the war in Iraq began, Niebuhr`s warning is on target. Consider what the year has revealed. We have learned that this war was on the administration`s agenda when it took office, months before 9/11. The Bush administration wanted this war and was in no mood to build the international coalition or consensus that might have given it legitimacy and heightened the chances of post-war success. This crowd was too sure it was right to do it right.

The year has also revealed that the three oft-repeated reasons for war were largely without substance. Those reasons, some stated explicitly while others were implied, were that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks, that Iraq was linked in substantive ways to al-Qaida and that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, including an active nuclear weapons program. Adding the three equaled the casus belli conclusion: Iraq posed an imminent threat to U.S. national security. Though the United States had not been attacked by Iraq, war -- a pre-emptive war -- was necessary.

None of these three reasons for war have been proved. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz even acknowledged that the weapons of mass destruction argument was simply the best way to sell the war to the American public. Last fall, a sheepish President Bush had to correct his own vice president by acknowledging there was no actual evidence linking Saddam to 9/11. And it seems that with respect to terrorism and al-Qaida, the war in Iraq has proved to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, now Iraq is a center of terrorism and a theater of operations for al-Qaida. Once again this crowd was too certain it was right for it to do right by checking its facts and having solid evidence to support its allegations.

Given the hideous record of Saddam`s regime, one might manage to overlook all of the above. But perhaps the most serious failure came not before the war, but after. So confident was the administration of its power and virtue that it lacked a credible plan for post-war Iraq. Imagining that U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators, valuable time and trust were squandered in the months following the war. As post-war reconstruction has bogged down and liberation became occupation, ordinary Iraqis, who were willing to give the United States a chance to make good on its promises, have grown angry and distrustful. The future appears ominous.

The administration was so mesmerized by U.S. military might and unrivaled technological prowess -- which did indeed prove excellent at the work of destruction -- that it was blind to what cannot be accomplished by bombs, bullets or technical means alone, that is, the work of construction, the work of building and rebuilding a society. Sources inside the administration have made amply clear that the State Department`s own careful plans for post-war Iraq were sent to the circular file by the master of uber-hubris, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Only now are they being dusted off and new consideration given to engaging the United Nations and international community.

Let us hope that the year`s events and experience might have brought some salutary self-doubt to the Bush administration. Let us hope too that the administration begins to speak truthfully to the American public of its plans, its aims and agendas. Moreover, let us hope that the American public ceases to write the administration a 9/11-induced blank check and demands candor and accountability.

Niebuhr commented that, "Man`s sin is never mere ignorance of his ignorance. It is always partly an effort to obscure his blindness by overestimating the degree of his sight and to obscure his insecurity by stretching his power beyond its limits." If events of the past year have revealed anything, it is how greatly the Bush administration has overestimated the degree of its own sight.

It is the season of Lent, a time when Christians examine themselves with fierce honesty and repent of their sins. If the United States is to have anything like success in Iraq and civil war in Iraq is to be averted, repenting of our sins of arrogance and deception would be an excellent place to start.

As the president`s favorite philosopher once remarked to some who were absolutely certain of their own virtue, "If you were blind you would have no guilt, but because you say `We see` your guilt remains" (John 9:41). May we seek God`s forgiveness for our claim to see clearly and, acknowledging our blindness, may we gain both sight and insight.



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Anthony B. Robinson is senior minister at Plymouth Congregational Church: United Church of Christ in Seattle. E-mail: [e-mail]

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Zum Jahrestag des Kriegsbeginns in der nächsten Woche sind heute mehrere Kommentare in den Tageszeitungen erschienen. In der Seattle PI allein 6.
Es wird in den nächsten Tagen wieder mal ein Hauen und Stechen geben, den manche kommen auch jetzt noch mit schon lange widerlegten Argumenten.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/164098_march14ted.html

Iraq a year later: We should focus on making Iraq work
Sunday, March 14, 2004

By TED VAN DYK
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Let`s try to lower the noise level and see the Iraq intervention realistically and in context. Sen. John Kerry`s central critique of it is correct: It was an early, not last, resort to war. But it is not some extraordinary departure from the past.

American mythology says that we never started a war nor lost one. We started the war of 1812 to conquer Canada and got driven back to our borders. The Mexican-American and Indian wars were brutal land grabs. The Spanish-American War was unjustified imperialism. We had no legitimate reason to enter World War I but were drawn in by skillful British propaganda. We invited the Korean War by signaling publicly that South Korea did not fit within the U.S. defense perimeter. It ended in stalemate.

Our entry into the Vietnam War began when we and others tried to stop free national elections there. It was based on a misperception. We lost. The Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, depending on one`s view, was or was not necessary. In any case, it left Saddam in power and to be dealt with later. Recent Somali, Haiti and Balkan interventions likewise were problematic.

The U.N. Security Council sanctioned the Korean War only because the Soviets had taken a walk and did not cast their veto against it. President Clinton did not seek U.N. approval of a Balkan intervention because he knew he would not get it. The current intervention in Iraq is hardly some unique unilateralist venture undertaken without the U.N. Good Housekeeping seal.

Nonetheless, this war might have been avoided. Readers of this column know that I doubted, when war first was discussed, that President Bush was asking sufficiently skeptical questions of Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and others in his administration who had wanted war against Iraq well before 2001. Every U.S. president since Truman has made shaky foreign-policy decisions early in his term because of over reliance on inherited policy or his team of advisers.

Saddam Hussein was a sociopathic killer of his own people and an aggressor against his neighbors. Bush was right to go to the Congress, and then to the U.N. Security Council, to seek Saddam`s compliance with U.N. resolutions. But he was wrong to move to war before a new round of weapons inspections had been completed and until all diplomatic means had been tried to persuade Saddam to comply with the resolutions or to leave.

France and Russia never would have cast Security Council votes for intervention. Both countries, as well as Germany, had big commercial and financial stakes in Iraq. They also had been selling weapons and technology to Saddam. Nonetheless, a longer period of diplomacy might have convinced Saddam that the French, Russians and Germans could not save him.

It is unlikely Bush knowingly lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Not only the United States but also the United Nations and many countries fully believed that such weapons existed and were being developed in Iraq. They had been there when inspectors left in 1998. The Clinton administration believed they were present.

The fateful moment came when Bush let a huge U.S.-British military buildup take place in the Gulf region just before the hot season. He could not leave those forces sitting there so he moved to war, perhaps six months prematurely.

Which brings us to now. It is difficult to believe that a Western-style democracy can be created in a short time, while terror continues, in what is an invented country. Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites, Turkmens and Christians in Iraq all want a degree of autonomy. Iraq resembles Yugoslavia after Tito, with no strong central figure to resist centrifugal forces. A U.S.-style national election would give Shiites control and provoke the other groups.

The United Nations properly has been called in to broker terms of a transition to Iraqi rule. Already it is clear that national elections must be postponed until 2005. The interim Iraqi Ruling Council is to take power June 30. It must be expanded in order to gain greater confidence of Iraqi religious and ethnic factions. During this period Baathist deadeners and Islamic terrorists will keep Iraq a dangerous and unstable environment.

A realist would quote odds no better than 40-60 that sometime in 2005 Iraq will emerge as a democratically governed, politically unified, internally stable state. But we`ve got to try for it. Democratic candidates, in particular, should not appear to be hoping for failure. Voters could put them to the sword.

The Iraq war, as previous wars, has cost us lives and resources. If Bush`s gamble works, both the region and the United States will be safer. If it does not, he`ll bear the consequences. Right now all of us should focus on making it work.



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Ted Van Dyk has been involved in national policy and politics since 1960. E-mail: [e-mail]

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Robert Ariail, The State, South Carolina

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Happy first birthday, war on Iraq
By Robert Fisk

It was almost year ago, on March 20, when the first bombs struck 30km from Baghdad, orange glows that wallowed along the horizon. They came for Baghdad the next day, and the Cruise missiles swished over our heads to explode around the presidential palace compound, the very pile where Paul Bremer, America`s supposed "expert" on terrorism, now works, resides and hides as occupation proconsul over the Anglo-American Raj.

The illusions with which the Americans and British went to war are more awesome now than they were at the time. Saddam Hussein, the man we loved when he invaded Iran and hated when he invaded Kuwait (our dictators have got to learn that only our enemies can be attacked) had already degenerated into late middle-age senility, writing epic novels in his many palaces while his crippled son Oudai drank and whored and tortured his way around Baghdad; hardly the target for the world`s only superpower.

As the American 101st Infantry Division approached Baghdad, one of the last editions of the Ba`athist newspapers carried a telling photograph on its back page. A uniformed, tired, fat Hussein stood in the centre, on his left his smartly dressed son Qusai but on his right Oudai, his eyes dilated, shirt out of his trousers, a pistol butt above his belt. Who would ever fight to the death for these triple pillars of the Arab world?

Yet Hussein thought he could win, that destiny - a dangerous ally for all "strongmen" - would somehow lay low the Americans. It was always fascinating to listen to Mohamed al-Sahaf, the information minister, predicting America`s doom. It was not just Iraqi patriots who would destroy the great armies invading Iraq; the heat would burn them, the desert would consume them, the snakes and rabid dogs would eat their bodies. Not since the Caliphate had such curses been called down upon an invader. Was it not Tariq Aziz, Iraq`s former deputy prime minister, who warned Washington in 1990 that 18 million Iraqis could not be defeated by a computer? And then the computer won.

18 million Iraqis could not be defeated by a computer
United States President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, of course, had a remarkably parallel set of nightmares and dreams, encouraged all the while by the right-wing neo-conservative pro-Israeli American Vulcans. Hussein was the all-powerful, evil state terrorist whose non-existent weapons of mass destruction and equally non-existent connections to the perpetrators of the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington must be laid low. Liberation, democracy, a New Middle East. There was no end to the ambitions of the conquerors.

I remember how anyone who attempted to debunk this dangerous nonsense would be set upon. Try to explain the crimes against humanity of September 11, 2001 and we were anti-American. Warn readers about the crazed alliance of right-wingers behind Bush, and we were anti-Semites. Report on the savagery visited upon Iraqi civilians during the Anglo-American air bombardment, and we were anti-British, pro-Hussein, sleeping with the enemy.

When Blair`s first "dossier" was published - most of it, anyway, was tired old material on Hussein`s human rights abuses, not weapons of mass destruction - the beast`s weapons capability was already hedged around with "mights" and "coulds" and "possiblys". When a day after Baghdad`s "liberation" I wrote in The Independent that the "war of resistance" was about to begin, I could paper my bathroom wall with the letters of abuse I received.

But such venom usually accompanies broken dreams. Hussein thought he was fighting the Crusaders. Bush and Blair played equally childish games, dressing themselves up as Churchill, abusing their domestic enemies as Chamberlains and fitting Hussein into Hitler`s uniform. I remember the sense of shock when I was watching Iraq`s literally fading television screen and heard the first news of an Iraqi suicide bomber attacking US troops - during the invasion. It was a young soldier, a married man, who had driven his car bomb at the Americans near Nasseriyah. Never before had an Iraqi committed suicide in battle like this - not even in the Somme-like eight-year Iran-Iraq war.

Then two women drove their car into the Americans in southern Iraq. This was astonishing. The Americans dismissed it all. They were cowardly attacks which only showed the desperation of the regime. But these three Iraqis were not working for the regime. Even the Ba`athists were forced to admit that these attacks were unique and solely instigated by the soldier and the two women.

We have dangerously altered the narrative of Baghdad`s last days
What did this mean? Of course, we did not pause to ask. Then we created a new myth. The Iraqi army had melted away, abandoned Baghdad, changed into jeans and t-shirts and slunk off in cowardly disgrace. Baghdad was no Stalingrad.

Yet we have dangerously altered the narrative of Baghdad`s last days. There was a fearful battle along Highway 1 on the western bank of the Tigris river in which Hussein`s guerrillas fought off an American tank column for 36 hours, the US tanks spraying shellfire down a motorway until every vehicle - military and civilian - was a smouldering wreck. I walked the highway as the last shots were still being fired by snipers, peering into cars packed with the blackened corpses of men, women, children.

Carpets and blankets had been thrown over several piles of the dead. In the back of one car lay a young, naked woman, her perfect features blackened by fire, her husband or father still sitting at the steering wheel, his legs severed below the knees.

It was a massacre. Did we think the Iraqis would forget it?

And cluster bombs are our creation. And I recall with a kind of raw amazement how, as American gunfire was swishing across the Tigris, I somehow reached the emergency room of Baghdad`s biggest hospital and had to slosh through lakes of blood amid beds of screaming men, one of whom was on fire, another shrieking for his mother. Upstairs was a middle-aged man on a blood-soaked hospital trolley with a head wound that was almost indescribable. From his right eye socket hung a handkerchief that was streaming blood onto the floor.

For days we had seen the news tapes of Basra and Nasseriyah after "liberation". We had seen the looting and pillage there, benignly watched over by the British and Americans.

We knew what would happen when the fighting stopped in Baghdad. And sure enough, a medieval army of looters followed the Americans into the city, burning offices, banks, archives, museums, Koranic libraries, destroying not just the structure of government but the identity of Iraq.

The looters were disorganised but thorough, venal but poor. The arsonists came in buses with obvious pre-arranged targets and did not touch the contents of that which they destroyed. They were paid. By whom? If by Hussein, then why - once the Americans were in Baghdad - did they not just pocket the money and go home? If they were paid post-burning, who paid them?

Of course, we found the mass graves, the hecatombs of Hussein`s years of internal viciousness - for many of which he was backed by the West - and we photographed the tens of thousands of corpses, most of whom he buried in the desert sand after we failed to support the Kurdish and Shia uprisings.

Our "liberation", as the grieving relatives never stopped telling us, had come a little late. About 20 years late, to be precise. Into this chaos and lawlessness, we arrived. Dissension was not to be tolerated among the victors. When I pointed out that "the `liberators` were a new and alien and all-powerful occupying force with neither culture nor language nor race nor religion to unite them with Iraq", I was denounced by one of the BBC`s commentators.

See how the people love us, we cried - which is much the same as Hussein used to say when he took his fawning acolytes on visits to the people of Baghdad. There would be elections, constitutions, governing councils, money - There was no end to the promises we made to this tribal society called Iraq.

Then in came the big American contractors and the conglomerates and the thousands of mercenaries, British, American, South African, Chilean - many of the latter were soldiers under General Augusto Pinochet - Nepalese and Filipino.

And when the inevitable war against the occupiers began, we - the occupying powers and, alas, most of the journalists - invented a new narrative to escape punishment for our invasion. Our enemies were Hussein`s "diehards", Ba`athist "remnants", regime "dead-enders". Then we killed Oudai and Qusai and pulled Hussein from his hole in the ground and the resistance grew more fierce. So our enemies were now both "remnants" and "foreign fighters" - that is, al-Qaeda - since ordinary Iraqis could not be in the resistance. We had to believe this. For had Iraqis - religious or otherwise - joined the guerrillas, how we could explain that they didn`t love their "liberators"? At first, we were encouraged to explain that the insurgents came only from a few Sunni cities, "previously loyal to Hussein".

Then the resistance was supposedly confined to Iraq`s "Sunni triangle". But as the attacks leached north and south to Nasseriyah, Kerbala, Mosul and Kirkuk, the triangle turned into an octagon. Again, we were told about "foreign fighters", failing to grasp the fact that 120 000 of the foreign fighters in Iraq were wearing American uniforms.

Still there was no end to the mendacity of our "success". True, schools were rebuilt - and, shame upon the Iraqis involved, often looted a second time - and hospitals restored and students returned to college. But oil output figures were massaged and exaggerated and attacks on the Americans falsified. At first, the occupying power reported only guerrilla attacks in which soldiers were killed or wounded. Then, when no one could hide the 60 or so assaults every night, the troops themselves were ordered not to make formal reports on bombings or attacks that caused no casualties. But by the war`s first anniversary, every foreigner was a target.

The suicide bomber came into his own. The Turkish embassy, the Jordanian embassy, the United Nations, police stations across the land - 600 of our new Iraqi policemen slaughtered in less than four months - and then the great shrines of Najaf and Kerbala.

The Americans and British warned of the dangers of civil war - so did the journalists, of course - although no Iraqi had ever been heard to utter any demand for conflict with their fellow citizens. Who actually wanted this "civil war"? Why would the Sunnis - a minority in the country - allow "al-Qaeda" to bring this about when they could not defeat the occupying power without at least passive Shia support?

While I was writing this report, my phone rang and a voice asked me if I would meet a man downstairs, a middle-aged Iraqi and a teacher at Cardiff College who had recently returned to Iraq, only to realise the state of fear and pain in which his country now existed. His mother, he said, had just raised 1 million Iraqi dinars to pay a ransom for a local woman whose daughter and daughter-in-law were kidnapped by armed men in Baghdad in January. The two girls had just called from Yemen where they had been sold into slavery. Another neighbour had just received back her 17-year-old son after paying $5 000 (about R32 500) to gunmen in the Karada area of Baghdad. Two days ago - it is Friday as I am writing this - kidnappers grabbed another child, this time in Mansour, and are now demanding $200 000 for his life.

A close relative - and remember this is just one man`s experience out of a current population of 26 million Iraqis - had also just survived a bloody attack on his car outside Kerbala. Driving south after winning a contract to run a garage in the city, he and his 11 companions in their vehicle were last week overtaken by men firing machine pistols at the car. One man died - he had 30 bullets in his body - and the relative, swamped in his friends` blood, was the only man not wounded.

Unsurprisingly, the occupation authorities decline to keep statistics on the number of Iraqis who have died since the "liberation" - or during the invasion, for that matter - and prefer to talk about the "handover of sovereignty" from one American-appointed group of Iraqis to another, and to the constitution that is only temporary and may well fall apart before real elections are held - if they are held - next year.

If we could have foreseen all this - if we could have been patient and waited for the UN arms inspectors to finish their job rather than go to war and plead for patience later, when our own inspectors couldn`t find those weapons - would we have gone so blithely to war a year ago?

For that war has not ended. There has been no "end of major combat operations", just an invasion and an occupation that merged seamlessly into a long and ferocious war for liberation from the "liberators".

Just as the British invaded Iraq in 1917, proclaiming their determination to bring Iraqis liberation from their tyrants - General Maude used those very words - so we have repeated this grim narrative today.

The British who died in the subsequent Iraqi war of resistance lie now in the North Gate Cemetery on the edge of Baghdad, an enduring if largely neglected symbol of the folly of occupation. - Foreign Service



Published on the Web by IOL on 2004-03-14 09:10:47



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© Independent Online 2004. All rights reserved. IOL publishes this article in good faith but is not liable for any loss or damage caused by reliance on the information it contains.

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Sunday, March 14, 2004
War News for March 14, 2004
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
Bring `em on: One US soldier killed by roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Three US soldiers killed, one wounded by roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Unpleasant truths: an over-stretched military, a busted budget and rising anti-US sentiment.

Happy birthday, Bush`s War.

Coming home. "All are coping with the psychological effects of the war, which forced them to question their own mortality and sometimes to kill. Many saw Iraqis dead along roadways and comrades fatally wounded in attacks. From Fort Campbell, 60 soldiers have died in the Iraq war and aftermath more than from any other military installation and hundreds were injured."

Follow-up story on a wounded Indiana soldier.

More wishful thinking. "In less than four months, a sovereign Iraqi government will have authority to impose restrictions on U.S. troops, or even request that they leave. U.S. military officials here, who are planning for American forces to be in Iraq through 2005, say they are sure the latter option won`t be exercised. `We intend to stay here as invited guests as long as we are needed, as long as we are wanted, and as long as we are invited,` Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations chief, said last week." Regular readers will remember that discussions between the CPA and the hand-picked IGC on the status of US forces in Iraq collapsed when no IGC members wanted to be associated with authorizing a continued occupation presence. What makes the CPA so sure a future government, which promises to be even less compliant than the IGC, will consent to American troops remaining on Iraqi soil?

Shock and Awe, Part Deux. "The White House will mark this Friday`s first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq with a week-long media blitz arguing that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was essential to combating global terrorism and making the United States safer."

Military families sound off about Bush`s War. "Today, the Pennington, N.J., woman will be at the U.S. air base in Dover, Del., where her son came home a war statistic. She`ll be joined in protest with other military families who have lost loved ones in a war that has so far killed 555 Americans and wounded nearly 3,200. Tomorrow, many others will gather here in front of the Walter Reed Army Hospital, where the war`s most seriously wounded recuperate, then will march to the White House. They are coming from California, New Jersey, Alabama, Illinois, Ohio, Arkansas and places in between, all paying their own way because they feel they must raise their voices to save others the anguish they feel."

Commentary

Editorial: "… Bush exclaims, `Support our troops.` Then, he cuts benefits to military families and veterans. He allows our troops in Iraq to be provided with supplies that are inferior or run short, forcing our men and women to buy their own. Wounded soldiers are treated like dogs as they languish in miserable accommodations for days or weeks in bases before they receive adequate care for their wounds. Purple hearts are denied and dead soldiers come home in the dark of night to cover up their ballooning numbers."

Editorial: "This unilateral war of choice was not only unjustified on national-security grounds --- that is more obvious than ever -- but was planned and conducted with staggering ineptitude. Thousands of American men and women have died or been injured as a result. Mr. Bush still -- sloppily, or cunningly -- refers to the Iraq war as a facet of the U.S. war on terrorism, but it is his leadership about which Americans ought to be most fearful."

Analysis: "Apart from armed resistance, the US officials in charge of Iraq must also face the likelihood that Iraq’s new leaders will not be typical democrats in any sense. Indeed, al-Sistani, who has broadened his own national authority by channelling anti-American sentiment, already controls an authoritarian-minded clerical network. Like the Shiite clerics that helped garner support for the fight against the British, al-Sistani has been beating the same drum, demanding that the new Iraq be run for and by Iraqis. As a result, despite his unexplained intentions, he is the most popular man in Iraq today." This is one of the best analysis pieces I`ve posted in a long time.

Opinion: "Reinhold Niebuhr, arguably America`s greatest theologian, often observed that it is not the bad people we have to worry about but the good people. By `good people` Niebuhr meant those who are so convinced of their own righteousness as to be blind to their capacity for evil. These are the ones who really ought to concern us.
One year after the war in Iraq began, Niebuhr`s warning is on target. Consider what the year has revealed. We have learned that this war was on the administration`s agenda when it took office, months before 9/11. The Bush administration wanted this war and was in no mood to build the international coalition or consensus that might have given it legitimacy and heightened the chances of post-war success. This crowd was too sure it was right to do it right."

Analysis: The Bush administration has taken a huge gamble in Iraq. The Iraqis may just muddle through in returning to a parliamentary system. But the rest of the Arabs, who resent centuries of Western dominance, will probably resist Iraqi democracy as a model, since it will have a ``Made in America`` tag on it. Given its unwieldy constitution and its outstanding ethnic disputes, Iraq could instead fall victim to gridlock or become another Northern Ireland. If it does, the administration may well have discredited democracy in the region." Another good read, by Juan Cole.

Memorial

Faces of the fallen. "The war, which began a year ago amid non-stop media coverage, has faded from the limelight, although it is still deadly. Gone are the televised missile attacks on Baghdad and rumbling tanks passing through palm groves. Instead, the fighting breaks out along empty roads or at guard posts. Bombings and sniper attacks replaced set-piece battles with swooping aircraft and artillery barrages. Military accidents such as vehicle crashes or helicopter collisions cause many casualties. Despite the far-away feel, the fallen are real people. They have names and faces. Each man and woman deserves recognition for taking on a risky challenge in the service of this country`s armed forces. Compared to past national conflicts, the number of deaths is small. But the sacrifice and loss on a personal level is just as painful…Before the war is wrapped up and American troops depart, there will be more fatalities. Only then can the full human cost of the war be measured. But as the first anniversary of the war approaches, it is time to stop and think about those who have given their lives, and why." The article contains a link to a section containing the portraits of US soldiers killed in Iraq and brief biographies of each.

Casualty Reports

Local story: California soldier killed in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.





# posted by yankeedoodle : 3:29 AM
Comment (1)

[Joerver]

Im Februar gab es relativ wenig Opfer unter den Koalitiontuppen.
In den letzten Tagen gab es 9 Tote.

Military Fatalities:

US**UK**Other**Total

564*59****42****665

The Wounded US Military: 3212

http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx


03/14/04 SFC: Faces of the fallen
THE IRAQ WAR won`t quit. Since Baghdad`s fall, there are no battle lines. Fighting takes on a new lethal form in ambushes, bombings or plane crashes. Injury and death come almost daily.
03/14/04 Reuters: Bomb Attacks Kill Four U.S. Soldiers in Baghdad
Bomb attacks in Baghdad killed four U.S. soldiers, the Army said on Sunday, bringing to nine the number of troops killed in Iraq in the last four days by explosives planted by guerrillas to target American patrols.
03/13/04 DOD: Army Casualties Identified
Staff Sgt. Joe L. Dunigan Jr., 37, of Belton, Texas and Spc. Christopher K. Hill, 26, of Ventura, California
03/13/04 Reuters: One Iraqi Killed, Several Wounded, in Baghdad Blast
A bomb exploded at a shop in a busy commercial district of central Baghdad on Saturday, killing the store owner and wounding several others, police and witnesses said.
03/13/04 DOD: Attacks Against Coalition Forces Averaged About 19 Daily
Kimmitt said the number of attacks against coalition forces has averaged about 19 daily for the past week, and that insurgent attacks averaged fewer than four daily against Iraqi security forces, and two per day against Iraqi civilians.
03/13/04 Reuters: Loud Blast Shakes Central Baghdad
A powerful explosion shook Baghdad on Saturday, rattling windows in the center of the city, but there were no immediate indications of damage or what may have caused the blast.
03/12/04 AP: Roadside bombing kills two more U.S. soldiers
A roadside bomb in Saddam Hussein`s hometown killed two American soldiers and wounded four Saturday, a day after the military said two other soldiers died in a similar explosion elsewhere in Iraq`s so-called Sunni Triangle
03/12/04 AP: Explosion in Tikrit Injures Six U.S. Soldiers
An explosion injured six U.S. soldiers, some seriously, while on patrol north of Baghdad early Saturday, the Army said.
03/12/04 Reuters: Iraqi Police Suspected of Killing U.S. Civilians
Four Iraqi police were being held on suspicion of killing two American civilians and an Iraqi translator, all of whom worked for the U.S.-led administration, in an attack this week, a military spokesman said Friday.
03/12/04 CNN: Aide to top Iraqi Shiite cleric shot
Gunmen shot and wounded an aide of an influential Shiite Muslim cleric heading to Friday prayers in the holy city of Najaf, sources said.
03/12/04 AP: Soldiers kill Iraqi after bomb attack on ICDC forces
U-S forces have killed one militant and captured 18 others suspected of anti-coalition activities in areas north of Baghdad.
03/12/04 DOD: Department of the Army Civilian Casualties Identified
Fern L. Holland, 33 and Robert J. Zangas, 44, of Prince William County, Va
03/12/04 DOD: Army Casualty Identified
Pfc. Bert. E. Hoyer, 23, of Ellsworth, Wis., died March 10, in Baqubah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device hit his convoy.

[Joerver]

Rule of the death squads

Iraq one year on - The shooting isn`t just between occupying forces and guerrillas. The Iraqi Governing Council is "killing people one by one"

Stephen Grey

Monday 15th March 2004 "New Statesman" - On the morning of his death, 19 January 2004, Professor Abdullatif Ali al-Mayah left his house as he always did at 8am. Placing his Samsonite briefcase on the back seat, he took the wheel of his metallic-blue 4x4, a Hyundai Galloper II. Another professor, Sarhan Abbas, who lived in the same compound of university-owned bungalows, took the passenger seat.

Al-Mayah drove down the main road, past shops and an empty plot of rubbish-strewn land. Just before a side road leading to a motorway, the road swings to the left and he slowed down. As people do in Baghdad, he continued driving against the oncoming traffic. Staff at El Banouk (The Bank), an outdoor shish kebab restaurant, were just getting ready to open.

About a hundred metres farther on, al-Mayah was forced by a large pothole to slow again, and his attackers sprung their trap. Mohamed, who works in the restaurant, told me later: "I heard all the shots and looked out on to the road. I thought it was looters who wanted to steal his car."

Al-Mayah, 54, was a prominent human rights campaigner and an opponent of the American and British occupation of Iraq. Just 12 hours earlier, on al-Jazeera TV, he had denounced the corruption of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) and demanded universal elections as soon as possible. "I can endure any Iraqi government," he said, "but the feeling of being under occupation is terrible for me."

His friend Abbas recalled how he died. "Suddenly, a group of seven or eight men with their faces concealed appeared from a side road. Thinking they were carjackers, he was ready to hand them the keys. Then the attackers shot al-Mayah more than 20 times." Like other university staff, al-Mayah had been issued with a revolver for his protection, but he had little idea what to do with it. As a senior director, he was also given a bodyguard, who was in the car that morning. But Mohamed Sahib, 25, said he was waiting for an American licence to carry a gun and could do little to protect his boss.

Sahib remembered how the attackers, all in red keffiyehs (headscarves), with only their dark eyes visible through slits, approached from two sides. "They shouted for the car to stop . . . I remember one person fired directly at al-Mayah inside the car and I think another group also fired from the other side. He was shot three times in his head just as he was opening the car door to get out. He fell dead on to the ground."

There are many such deaths in Baghdad every day: al-Mayah, director of the Baghdad Centre for Human Rights, was the fourth Mustansiriya University professor to be slain. His murder has never been properly investigated by detectives; it was left to amateurs such as myself to interview witnesses and sift through the dirt to find the shell casings of his assassins` bullets.

Al-Mayah was not a victim of the struggle between "occupying forces" and the "resistance". He was crushed as a liberal force that stood between those positions. Not everyone gets this point. A New York Times article about the same murder implied that anti-US forces were responsible. It quoted the coalition`s military spokesman, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, saying: "By silencing urban professionals, the guerrillas are waging war on Iraq`s fledgling institutions and on progress itself. This works against everything we`re trying to do here." But typically, even for a "liberal" American paper, the Times underplayed al-Mayah`s determined opposition to US occupation. It seems unlikely he was a target for the "resistance", even though he supported calls for the elections that many Sunni guerrillas fear.

So who was responsible for his murder? A senior commander at the headquarters of the new American-installed Iraqi police told me: "Dr Abdullatif was becoming more and more popular because he spoke for people on the street here. He made some politicians quite jealous." But, he said, al-Mayah`s killing was just like the seven other political assassinations carried out in the previous four weeks in the same small district. All remained unsolved. Then the leather-clad commander, tightly gripping his new Motorola police radio, looked at me sternly and demanded that his name never be printed.

He had a strong suspicion about who was behind most of these killings, he said. "You can look no further than the Governing Council. There are political parties in this city who are systematically killing people. They are politicians that are backed by the Americans and who arrived to Iraq from exile with a list of their enemies. I`ve seen these lists. They are killing people one by one."



Born in Basra, al-Mayah had spent most of his life as a poorly paid academic, teaching the politics of the Arab region. He became director of the university`s Arab Homeland Studies Centre. "He had no money at all," said one of his brothers. "He had no house that he owned. In his martyrdom, he leaves behind just a pen and his writing." Al-Mayah had once been a member of Saddam Hussein`s Ba`ath Party, though at a very junior level. According to Dr Talal Nathan al-Zuhary, director of the university library, al-Mayah quit the party in 1991 after seeing the reality of Saddam`s regime. He was jailed in 1996 when he called for elections. He managed to escape the secret police because one of his former students was an interrogator.

"He believed in the original Ba`ath ideal of Arab unity," said al-Zuhary, "but he saw how hypocritical the regimes were, and so he wanted no connection to the party any more. After the recent American invasion, he was against both occupation and against dictatorship. He used to tell me that one day he would be bumped off by the Mossad or the CIA, although I never took that very seriously. More recently, he was more worried about the looters who came after the regime fell and stole so much. He was always telling me to watch out for my safety."

Others in Baghdad confirmed the police commander`s story. In what might be called "death by Google", the names of some quite moderate figures, only tenuously connected with the old regime, appear on internet lists as Saddam supporters. Preventing the purges of such people is not a priority for US and British forces. As one British officer told me: "There is a kind of de-Ba`athification going on, a violent one, but it will come to its own natural conclusion."

Al-Mayah`s brother said the professor had received many e-mails advising him to be less outspoken in his criticism of the IGC. At least one came from an IGC member. "He never told me the name of this man, only that he was a dual national, someone who had come back from exile after the Americans invaded. He told me the man never actually threatened him. It was a sort of warning that it would be safer if he left the country. He was determined not to be swayed."

The list of murder suspects is long. Some of the exiles who have returned from London, Washington or Tehran are armed to the teeth. Among the abandoned villas of former Mukhabarat (intelligence service) generals, which are now occupied by the "new" politicians, I`ve met some who clear heaps of revolvers from their breakfast tables as though they were used coffee mugs.

Many are quite shameless in their threats. Last December, in a sermon in the southern city of Najaf, Sadr al-Din al-Kobanchi, a senior Shia cleric and member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which holds power on the IGC, was categoric: "The Ba`ath Party is against God and the Prophet." He told former regime loyalists: "Leave your jobs at the ministries and institutions and companies - or all the workers will kill you by their own hands."

The militias that kill so professionally in Baghdad also flourish in southern Iraq in areas, mainly Shia, which US and British troops regard as safer. Under the noses of the occupying forces, the militias enforce their own kind of law and order. In Basra, they helped to re-establish order when the Ba`athists fled. Now, with a strong influence over the new, British-trained police forces, they continue to eliminate not only political opponents but also those, such as alcohol sellers, who violate what they regard as Islamic law.

Wahed, whose 25-year-old brother, Mohamed, a junior Ba`athist, has disappeared into the hands of the political militias, said the new world of Iraq is a confusing and unjust one. "In the old days, you knew who was running this country. I would have gone to the Ba`ath Party to argue for the release of my brother. Now there are so many different forces, parties and police forces at work; they are all armed and powerful, and how should I know which of them has kidnapped my brother?"

This article first appeared in the New Statesman.

© 2004 New Statesman.

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

March 14, 2004
Bush`s war is a financial disaster
The U.S. won an inevitable military triumph, but political victory remains elusive
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor
WASHINGTON -- The famous words of King Pyrrhus of Epirus after the bloody battle of Heraclea in 280 BC are as appropriate for America`s conquest of Iraq: "One more such victory and we are ruined."

The March, 2003 invasion of Iraq pitted the world`s greatest military power against the largely inoperative army of a small, dilapidated nation of only 17 million (deducting rebellious Kurds), crushed by 12 years of sanctions and bombing.

Thanks to total air superiority, invading U.S. forces achieved a brilliant feat of logistics, racing from Kuwait to Northern Iraq in under three weeks. The 15% of Iraq`s army that stood and fought was pulverized by massive, co-ordinated U.S. air strikes and artillery barrages. Urban resistance failed to materialize.

The rout of Iraq`s forces recalled another colonial war, the Dervish Campaign of 1898. Gen. Kitchener led the imperial British Army far up the Nile into Sudan where it met and massacred a primitive Islamic host at Omdurman. Britain`s quick-fire guns and artillery mowed down Dervish cavalry and sword-waving "fuzzy-wuzzies" as murderously as U.S. precision munitions vapourized Iraqi units.

U.S. air and ground forces in Iraq displayed superb technical, electronic, logistic and combat prowess confirming they are two full military generations ahead of nearly all other nations.

But as the great modern military thinker, Maj.-Gen J.F.C. Fuller, observed 40 years ago, the proper objective of war is not military victory but a politically advantageous peace. While the U.S. won an inevitable military victory against a nearly helpless Iraq, political victory so far remains elusive.

Primary objectives

In my view, two primary objectives drove the U.S. invasion of Iraq: oil and its support for Israel.

White House claims about weapons of mass destruction and terrorism were propaganda smoke screens.

President George Bush`s claims that impotent Iraq posed "a grave and gathering danger" to the U.S., Condoleezza Rice`s hysterical warnings about "mushroom clouds over the U.S.," and Vice President Dick Cheney`s bizarre jeremiads about "Iraq`s reconstituted nuclear weapons" were absurd.

The U.S. now controls Iraq, a strategic nation with the Mideast`s second largest oil reserves.

The CIA estimates China`s and India`s surging, oil-hungry economies will cause world oil shortages by 2030 - or sooner.

Accordingly, the Bush administration moved to assure America`s global hegemony by seizing Mideast and Central Asian oil before the impending crisis. Doing so required occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. imports little oil from the Mideast or Central Asia. However, these regions are primary oil sources for Europe and Japan - and, increasingly, for India and China.

By dominating these oil sources, the U.S. controls the economies of its main commercial and potential military rivals. Control of the Muslim world`s oil is the principal pillar of America`s world power.

The Pentagon plans three permanent major military bases in Iraq from which powerful garrisons of U.S. air and ground forces, backed by mercenary native troops, will police not just Iraq but the entire Mideast and guard the new "imperial lifeline" of pipelines exporting oil from Central Asia and the Arab world.

Other U.S. bases in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, linked to bases in Bulgaria and Romania, will guard the new imperial route.

The second objective, in my view, was aiding Israel.

Influential American supporters of Israel`s rightist prime minister, Ariel Sharon, played a significant role in building the case for war against Iraq.

From various positions in the White House, Pentagon, National Security Council, media, and taxpayer-supported Washington think tanks, these neo-conservatives helped to orchestrate the campaign about Iraq`s non-existent weapons of mass destruction and trumpeted alleged threats from Iraq.

Mini-states

The neo-cons achieved their objective: Iraq, once the Arab world`s most developed, industrialized nation, a bitter foe of Israel, was destroyed, and will likely end up split into three weak mini-states.

Israel is a primary beneficiary of the Iraq war: a potential nuclear rival was eliminated by the U.S.

Many neo-cons believed crushing Iraq would help to cement Israel`s grip on the occupied West Bank and Golan, thwart a Palestinian state and force the Arab nations to accept Israel`s regional hegemony.

But for the United States, Iraq was at best a pyrrhic victory. Invading and occupying Iraq has proven to be a financial disaster. The invasion cost $105 billion US in direct expenses - the price of five complete carrier battle groups, or one million low-cost apartments.

Occupying Iraq costs $9 billion monthly.

Pre-war neo-con plans to finance the occupation by plundering Iraq`s oil have been frustrated by sabotage. Congress estimates the overall cost of "pacifying" and "rebuilding" Iraq for fiscal 2003 and 2004 at a staggering $200 billion.

This money will have to be borrowed by the empty treasury, which, thanks to Bush`s reckless "war" spending, is running huge deficits heading toward $400 billion, risking an explosion of inflation that threatens to undermine the long-term bond market and further weaken the dollar.

The human cost of the war continues to rise. As of this writing, U.S. losses amount to 555 dead, and about 9,000 casualties from combat, accidents and serious illnesses.

Ten thousand Iraqi civilians were estimated to have been killed by U.S. forces - in a war now described as waged under "mistaken intelligence assumptions."

Iraqi military casualties are 6,000-10,000.

Iraq lies in ruins. "Rebuilding Iraq" means paying for all the damage caused by massive U.S. bombing and years of sanctions.

Puppet regime

In spite of rosy claims from the White House about handing sovereignty to Iraqis, American troops will garrison Iraq for years to guard the oil fields and maintain a "democratic" puppet regime in power in Baghdad that obeys Washington`s orders.

U.S. forces will continue to face a simmering, low-grade guerrilla war that will kill or wound more American troops, and increasingly brutalize and corrupt occupation forces - the inevitable result of all colonial wars. In short, America now has its own West Bank, or Lebanon.

The brazen arrogance and profound ignorance shown by the Bush administration in its crusade against Iraq has turned the world against the United States. Occupied Iraq is acting as a terrorism generator. For the next generation of young Muslims, Iraq is becoming what Afghanistan was in the 1980s, a rallying point to fight foreign occupation, battle imperialism and defend the tattered honour of the Muslim world. Bush and his men have created millions of new enemies.

Half of all U.S. ground combat forces are tied down in and around Iraq. Reserves are being mobilized for long tours. Wear and tear on overstretched U.S. forces and their heavy equipment is a grave, though little discussed, problem.

Neo-con promises of "liberation" of Iraq, of joyous, flower-tossing crowds and of rapid "democratization" have turned to dust. Iraq remains a dangerous, volatile mess seething with violence and implacable Shia political demands. Twenty resistance groups now battle U.S. and allied occupation troops. Militant Islamic jihadis are heading for Iraq to fight "Great Satan" America. Yet Bush still claims invading Iraq made America safer.

However, because of Iraq, much of the world now regards America itself as a menacing, unstable threat.

President Bush has stuck his head into a hornet`s nest. The U.S. will bleed men, money and reputation for a long time before it figures out how to get out of the first colonial misadventure of the 21st century.

[Joerver]

Baghdad Burning

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_riverbendblog_a…
... I`ll meet you `round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...

Friday, March 12, 2004

Spring...
Discussions around the dinner table mainly focus on the Transitional Law these days. I asked a friend to print out the whole thing for me and have been looking it over these last two days. I watched only a part of the ceremony because the electricity went out in the middle of it and I didn`t bother watching a recap of it later on.

The words look good on paper- as words often do. Some parts of it sound hauntingly like our last constitution. The discussions about the Transitional Law all focus on the legitimacy of this document. Basically, an occupying power brought in a group of exiles, declared Iraq `liberated`, declared the constitution we`ve been using since the monarchy annulled and set up a group of puppets as a Governing Council. Can these laws be considered legitimate?

Furthermore, just how sincere are these puppets about this new Transitional Law? For example, there`s a lovely clause that reads, "No one may be unlawfully arrested or detained, and no one may be detained by reason of political or religious beliefs." Will the American troops discontinue the raids and arbitrary detentions (which are still quite common) come June 30? Or is the Transitional Law binding only to Iraqis?

One example of an arbitrary detention we heard about the other day was of a man who was arrested in Tikrit. They raided his home and gathered the 25-year-old man, two brothers and an elderly uncle. They got the usual treatment: a bag on the head, and hands behind their backs. They were taken to a place outside of Tikrit and thrown into a barn-like area with bags on their heads- still tied up. For 3 days, they were kicked and cursed by the troops. In between the kicking and cursing, a hefty soldier would scream questions at them and an interpreter would translate, "Are you part of Al-Qaeda?! Do you know Osama bin Laden?!" On the third day, one of the young men struck up a deal with who he gathered was their `head`- the man who gave all the orders. They agreed that one of the soldiers would accompany the man back to the city and wait while he came up with $300/detainee. The rest of the men would be freed a couple of days later.

And it worked. Two days later, his three relatives came walking home after being dropped off on the side of the road. Basically, they paid a ransom for their freedom. Just one of the many stories about life in the `New Iraq`- no wonder Chalabi was so jubilant while signing the Transitional Law document. The country is currently like an unguarded bank- especially for those who bear arms.

The general attitude towards the document is a certain weariness. Iraqis are weary of everything `transitional` and `temporary`. I guess, after almost a year of instability and strife, we just crave something more definite and substantial.

Spring is in the air- and that means dust storms and a mellow sun for Iraqis. We`re enjoying the weather because by the end of April, summer will be in full swing and the heat will come in almost palpable waves. The mornings are slightly cool and by noon we`ve shed the jackets. We no longer need the `sopas` or kerosene heaters at home- which is a relief to E. who has been designated the job of filling them up and making sure the kerosene tank in the yard is always full (the kerosene man has become a dear friend).

These last few days have brought back memories of the same dates, last year. What were we doing in early March? We were preparing for the war… digging wells, taping up windows, stocking up on candles, matches, kerosene, rice, flour, bandages, and medicine… and what are we doing now? Using them.


- posted by river @ 11:02 PM
Saturday, March 06, 2004

Sistani and the Green Zone...
Today was a mess. It feels like half of Baghdad was off-limits. We were trying to get from one end to the other to visit a relative and my cousin kept having to take an alternate route. There`s a huge section cut off to accomodate the "Green Zone" which seems to be expanding. We joke sometimes saying that they`re just going to put a huge wall around Baghdad, kick out the inhabitants and call it the "Green City". It is incredibly annoying to know that parts of your city are inaccessible in order to accomodate an occupation army.

Another section was cut off because there was some sort of crisis unfolding in or around the Ministry of Health. We later learned that former employees- some fired before the war and others fired during the occupation- had invaded the ministry and were trying to break into the minister`s office. They were demanding work and some channels even mentioned a hostage situation. All we know is that there was a huge, angry mob outside of the ministry and tanks, cars and angry soldiers facing them. They say almost 1,300 employees working with the Ministry of Health have been fired since the end of the war. This includes doctors, nurses, hospital guards, etc.

Today the Iraqi Puppet Council was attempting to sign the Basic Law document which is sort of a prelude to a permanent constitution. I want to read it and see what it`s about. They had everything set up in an elegant conference room- chrome and gray chairs with name tags on them, expensive pens ready for the GC members, a podium, a bunch of little kids ready to sing and a little orchestra to play music. They didn`t sign the long-awaited document. Some of the Shi`a members of the council refused to sign it because, apparently, there had been disagreements to the presidency, women`s rights, federalism and, generally, the constitution- should they ever decide to draft one.

Al-Sistani appears to be running the show, along with Bremer. I don`t know why they don`t just set up an office for him in the Green Zone- it would make things much easier for the GC members. They wouldn`t have to keep running down to Karbala to beg for his approval. It`s unbelievable. Sistani is a respectable cleric. He has millions of followers both inside and outside of Iraq... but when you get down to it, he is Iranian. How is it that an Iranian cleric is moulding the future of Iraq?

His opinion is important in many ways- but he seems to have some sort of invisible veto within the Council. All he has to do is murmur disapproval in the ears of one of his followers and it is immediate dissent with his followers. It is so frustrating. How is Iraq going to be secular and, well, *Iraqi* if we have a cleric of Iranian origin making conditions and rules?!

You can read more about the constitutional mess over at Juan Cole and Back to Iraq.

- posted by river @ 11:53 PM

[Joerver]

Saddam`s Links To 9/11?
How the Pentagon Made Its Case
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4523156/
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

By Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
March 22 issue - Where did Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration hard-liners get the information they used to make controversial comments linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda and 9/11? One principal source was a slide show, classified "Top Secret/Codeword," prepared by an obscure Pentagon policy unit nicknamed "Team B." The office, originally composed of two analysts (one of whom, David Wurmser, now works as a Mideast adviser to Cheney), was assigned shortly after 9/11 to pore through raw intelligence reports looking for data CIA analysts might have missed, linking foreign governments to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. After two months of research, Team B came up with an elaborate presentation, more than two hours long, suggesting that Hizbullah and Al Qaeda jointly sponsored the 9/11 attacks with likely support from several governments, including Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia (whose royal family was allegedly implicated).

By the time the slide show was ready for presentation to top administration policymakers, it had shrunk to about 50 minutes and focused on one topic: possible links between Saddam`s regime and Al Qaeda. According to people familiar with the slimmed-down presentation, it strongly implied possible Iraqi involvement in 9/11, mentioning allegations that Muhammad Atta had met in Prague in spring 2001 with an Iraqi agent and that Saddam had operated a training camp for Arab terrorists (among others) at Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. The abridged briefing also included a slide that criticized the CIA for employing what sources characterized as "fundamentally flawed" analytical methods, which led agency officials to dismiss potentially interesting reports because they lacked a "juridical level of certainty." The slide also accused the CIA of not being aggressive enough and of averting its eyes to "grim realities" about international terrorism.

The slide show was presented to top Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in summer 2002. In August, Pentagon officials traveled to CIA headquarters to present the briefing to CIA Director George Tenet and aides; the slide that criticized CIA methods was omitted from this presentation. In September, a Pentagon briefer gave the presentation to White House national-security officials, including Condoleezza Rice`s deputy, Steven Hadley. Cheney`s chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, sat in for part of the presentation. Officials close to the CIA now say the agency was "underwhelmed" by the presentation, many of whose key points—including the Atta meeting in Prague—have been widely discredited. Even some Pentagon officials acknowledge that the allegation about Saddam`s training Arab terrorists is not supported by evidence. A Pentagon official said that the slide critical of the CIA was probably left out of the CIA briefing to be "collegial." A Cheney spokesman said Libby "came late and left early" from the briefing and did not tell the veep about it. A spokesman for the National Security Council said that the slide show had "no effect on Mr. Hadley`s thinking. He receives his intelligence information from the CIA."

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

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washingtonpost.com
White House Marks Invasion Anniversary


By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 14, 2004; Page A21


The White House will mark this Friday`s first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq with a week-long media blitz arguing that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was essential to combating global terrorism and making the United States safer.

The message is crucial to President Bush`s reelection campaign, which has tried to shift the focus of the race from troublesome issues such as the economy to his biggest strength in polls -- his handling of the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Bush`s presumed opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), is responding with events this week focusing on troops and veterans in West Virginia and other battleground states. Kerry will say that Bush has shortchanged soldiers and their families in a time of war. Retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who lost his bid for the Democratic nomination, will speak for Kerry in Ohio.

Jim Wilkinson, deputy national security adviser, said the administration`s main message for the week is that the nation is "more secure" because of the capture of Hussein. "A dangerous regime with a history of aggression and links to terrorist organizations is no longer in power," Wilkinson said. "The principled action taken by the United States in Iraq has sent our enemies a clear signal about resolve in the war on terror."

Other administration officials said they will use appearances in coming weeks to begin setting what the White House calls "realistic expectations" for the condition of Iraq`s infrastructure -- including its electricity supply, gas lines and food distribution network -- in advance of the scheduled end of the U.S.-led occupation on June 30.

Administration officials plan to point out that the demand for oil and electricity has soared now that more Iraqis have cars, air conditioners and satellite dishes. Administration officials have said they overestimated Iraq`s modernity before the attack and now want to dampen expectations about the progress of the reconstruction, which will come under increased scrutiny before June 30.

The war-week events began Friday with a town hall meeting by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld with Pentagon employees.

Three members of Bush`s war cabinet are on talk shows today. On Monday, the National Security Council and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will hold a show-and-tell in Oak Ridge, Tenn., of centrifuge parts and other gear that Libya surrendered after agreeing to halt its nuclear-weapons program.

A huge ship bearing the rest of the equipment from Libya`s nuclear program will dock on the East Coast as soon as late this week.

On Tuesday, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Rumsfeld and other administration officials will give interviews to radio stations around the country from the Pentagon.

On Wednesday, two U.S. government television stations beaming into the Middle East will mark the anniversary of the 1988 gassing of Kurds in Halabja, in northern Iraq, that killed an estimated 5,000 people. The administration points to this episode as proof that Hussein once had weapons of mass destruction and used them.

Also Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House is scheduled to hold four hours of debate and vote on a resolution that says the world is better off without Hussein in power. It does not mention Bush or weapons of mass destruction, except in connection with the Kurdish attack.

Bush will speak Thursday at Fort Campbell, Ky. He and first lady Laura Bush will eat lunch with troops.

And on Friday, the president and the first lady will pay their third visit in six months to wounded soldiers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Bush also will give a major speech in the East Room to ambassadors from countries that were members of the U.S.-led coalitions that attacked Afghanistan and Iraq.

Kerry, who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, will point to times that he questioned whether Iraq had or could obtain nuclear material.

Republicans will counter that Kerry started emphasizing his opposition only after the campaign of former Vermont governor Howard Dean began catching fire.

Rand Beers, a former high-level Bush national security official who left the administration and joined Kerry`s campaign as his adviser on national and homeland security, said the White House is trying to use images from the week to "paint the picture that they want to be seen rather than allowing others to describe the more dismal reality."

Bush and the first lady will end the week at a "Florida Welcome" rally in Orlando -- the first time he will speak at a Bush-Cheney event that is not a fundraiser.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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"You can tell the campaign has shifted into high gear because whenever President Bush refers to John Kerry, he calls him `the senator from that gay marriage state,`" David Letterman

I find Bush`s grey matter to revolve around his ego, power and pretzels.

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Focus: One year on - war without end
Robert Fisk - 14 March 2004

The surviving Iraqi employees of the United Nations fearfully changed the plates on their white, unmarked vehicles last week. From now on, there will be no "UN" next to the registration number. When I visited the headquarters of the Muslim Red Crescent society to talk to the lone representative of the Red Cross, the man at the desk fingered my business card and looked into my eyes with palpable fear - as if an Englishman was a potential suicide bomber.

At night, in my grubby hotel, I listen for gunfire and fear the attack which so many of the guests have been predicting for weeks. Will the bombers arrive at dinner-time when the South African and British mercenaries come clanking back from their "security duties", all Heckler and Koch automatics, silver pistols and black flak jackets, ready for their beers and cheap French vin rouge? Or at 6am, just after the fajr dawn prayers, their Islamic souls cleansed for self-immolation amid the infidels and crusaders? I count the minutes between 6am and 8am, the hours when they most often strike. I`ve lost count of the number of times my bedroom windows have rattled at breakfast-time.



When Haidar and Mohamed arrive to take me off to Mosul or Basra or Najaf, I feel relief. On the road south, we all wear kuffiah scarves round our heads now, two Iraqis and an Englishmen pretending to be tribal toughs to avoid the killers on Highway 8. We were driving down there at first light last week - ah, the relief to be away from my hotel at that hour of the morning - when the US presidential envoy to Iraq, Paul Bremer, came on the car radio. We were just approaching the spot where two American civilians working for the occupation authorities had been shot dead by men in Iraqi police uniform. The car radio crackled away. Things are improving in Iraq, Bremer told us. Haidar and Mohamed and I exchanged glances, eyes crinkling beneath our scarves. Then our car was filled with hollow laughter.



A year ago, there were no problems on Highway 8. The monstrous old tyrant Saddam had seen to that. If robbers had been looting and raping north of Basra since the 1991 Gulf War, Baghdad was law-and-order land. There the looting and raping was done by the government, not the people. Now it`s the other way round. I still have a souvenir of my last pre-war flight into Baghdad, my baggage tag on the last Royal Jordanian aircraft into pre-invasion Iraq, the very final airliner to touch down in the dictatorship. "Saddam Hussein International Airport," it says. We passengers were fleeced as usual at the terminal. Ten dollars to immigration, $20 to the man who checked my computer, $40 to the guy who accepted the paper from the man who had taken the $20, and another $20 to the soldiers at the gate.



It was raining outside and our tyres hissed on the highway, but Baghdad was illuminated like a Christmas tree. The mosques were floodlit, the Iraqi police cars dozing beneath the palm trees, the foliage rich and sweet-smelling under the street lamps. Didn`t they know, I kept asking myself? Didn`t they realise what was coming?



I remember the last night before war. I had gone to buy toilet rolls and bandages, observing a soldier in uniform carrying his young son on his shoulders. Last leave, I thought. Did Iraqi soldiers write poems like Sassoon and Owen? Or was it just Saddam`s infantile novels that they read on their way to the front? In the pharmacy, I joked with the chemist that he was kind to sell me bandages when the RAF might be bombing him within hours.



"Yes," he said. "I rather think they will."



We all had our "minders" then, Saddam`s lads from the corrupt old ministry of information whose job was to steer us away from the paths of political unrighteousness and towards the sclerotic anti-American street demonstrations and the interminable press conferences of junior ministers. But after a while, once their own bosses had been paid off, we paid the minders too, bought them from their government allegiance until they were taking us where we wanted to go, even into the firestorm of America`s armour, the Iraqi army dead bouncing in the back of the pick-ups in front of us.



The first bombs struck 20 miles from Baghdad, orange glows that wallowed along the horizon. They came for Baghdad next day, and the Cruise missiles swished over our heads to explode around the presidential palace compound, the very pile where Paul Bremer, America`s supposed expert on terrorism, now works and hides as occupation proconsul over the Anglo-American Raj.



The illusions with which the Americans and British went to war seem more awesome now than they did at the time. Saddam, the man the British and Americans loved when he invaded Iran and hated when he invaded Kuwait (pet dictators have got to learn that only our enemies can be attacked), had already degenerated into senility, writing epic novels in his many palaces while his crippled son Uday drank and whored and tortured his way around Baghdad; a classic Middle East tale from the city of a thousand and one nights but hardly the target for the world`s only superpower.



As the American 101st Infantry Division approached Baghdad, one of the last editions of the Baathist newspapers carried a telling photograph on its back page. A uniformed, tired, fat Saddam stood in the centre, on his left his smartly dressed son Qusay but on his right Uday, his eyes dilated, shirt out of his trousers, a pistol butt above his belt, the beloved son gone to seed and drugs. Who would ever fight to the death for these triple pillars of the Arab world?



Yet Saddam thought he could win; that destiny - a dangerous ally for all "strongmen" - would somehow lay low the Americans. It was always fascinating to listen to Mohamed al-Sahaf, the information minister, predicting America`s doom. It was not just Iraqi patriots who would destroy the great armies invading Iraq; the heat would burn them; the desert would consume them; the snakes and rabid dogs would eat their bodies. Not since the Caliphate had such curses been called down upon an invader. Was it not Tariq Aziz who warned Washington in 1990 that 18 million Iraqis could not be defeated by a computer? And then the computer won. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair had a remarkably parallel set of nightmares and dreams, encouraged by the right-wing, neo-conservative, pro-Israeli American Vulcans, who did so much to bring about this catastrophe and who - now that everything is falling to pieces - are working so hard to minimise their pre-war ideological importance. To them Saddam was the all-powerful, evil state terrorist whose non-existent weapons of mass destruction and equally non-existent connections to the perpetrators of the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington must be laid low.



Liberation, Democracy, a New Middle East. There was no end to the ambitions of the conquerors. I remember how anyone who attempted to debunk this dangerous nonsense would be set upon. Try to explain the crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001, and you were anti-American. Warn readers about the crazed alliance of right-wingers behind President Bush and you were anti-Semites. Report on the savagery visited upon Iraqi civilians during the Anglo-American air bombardment and you were anti-British, pro-Saddam, sleeping with the enemy. When Blair`s first "dossier" was published - most of it, anyway, was old material on Saddam`s human rights abuses, not weapons of mass destruction - the beast`s weapons capability was already hedged around with "mights" and "coulds" and "possiblys". When a day after Baghdad`s "liberation" I wrote in The Independent that the "war of resistance" was about to begin, I could have papered my bathroom wall with the letters of abuse I received. Letters like those no longer arrive.



But such venom usually accompanies broken dreams. Saddam thought he was fighting the Crusaders. Bush and Blair played equally childish games, dressing themselves up as Churchill, abusing their domestic enemies as Chamberlain and fitting Saddam into Hitler`s uniform. I remember the sense of shock when I was watching Iraq`s literally fading television screen and heard the first news of an Iraqi suicide bomber attacking US troops - during the invasion. It was a young soldier, a married man, who had driven his car bomb at the Americans near Nasiriyah. Never before had an Iraqi committed suicide in battle like this - not even in the Somme-like mud of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. Then two women drove their car into the Americans in southern Iraq. This was astonishing.



The Americans dismissed it all. They were cowardly attacks which only showed the desperation of the regime, journalists were told. But those three Iraqis were not working for the regime. Even the Baathists were forced to admit that these attacks were unique and solely instigated by the soldier and the two women themselves.



What did this mean? Of course, we did not pause to ask. Then a new myth was created. The Iraqi army had melted away, abandoned Baghdad, changed into jeans and T-shirts and slunk off in cowardly disgrace. Baghdad was no Stalingrad. Yet that was to alter, dangerously, the narrative of Baghdad`s last days. There was a fearful battle along Highway 1 on the western bank of the Tigris where Saddam`s guerrillas fought off an American tank column for 36 hours, the US tanks spraying shellfire down a motorway until every vehicle - military and civilian - was a smouldering wreck. I walked the highway as the last shots were still being fired by snipers, peering into cars packed with the blackened corpses of men, women, children. Carpets and blankets had been thrown over several piles of the dead. In the back of one car lay a young, naked woman, her perfect features blackened by fire, her husband or father still sitting at the steering wheel, his legs severed below the knees. Sure, the Iraqi military had mixed themselves up amid the civilians; so in the end the Americans had fired at all of them. It was a massacre. Did we think the Iraqis would forget it?



What do we remember most now about those few terrible weeks a year ago? In war, all day you try to stay alive and all night you lie awake because the roar and explosion of aircraft and bombs are too loud for sleep. And then you have to stay awake and alive all next day. Is it any surprise that there comes a moment - when a man holds out to you what you think is half a loaf of bread and which turns out to be half a baby - that anger is the only integrity left? Cluster bombs are our creation. And I recall with a kind of raw amazement how, as American gunfire was swishing across the Tigris, I somehow reached the emergency room of Baghdad`s biggest hospital and had to slosh through lakes of blood amid beds of screaming men, one of whom was on fire, another shrieking for his mother. Upstairs was a man on a soaked hospital trolley with a head wound that was almost indescribable. From his right eye socket hung a handkerchief that was streaming blood on to the floor.



For days, we in the city had seen the news tapes of Basra and Nasiriyah after "liberation". We had seen the looting and pillage there, benignly watched over by the British and Americans. We knew what would happen when the fighting stopped in Baghdad. And sure enough, a medieval army of looters followed the Americans into the city, burning offices, banks, archives, museums, Koranic libraries, destroying not just the structure of government but the identity of Iraq. The looters were disorganised but thorough, venal but poor. The arsonists came in buses with obvious pre-arranged targets, did not touch the contents of that which they destroyed. They were paid. By whom? If by Saddam, then why - once the Americans were in Baghdad - did they not just pocket the money and go home? If they were paid post-burning, who paid them?



Of course, we found the mass graves, the hecatombs of Saddam`s years of internal viciousness - for many of which the Western powers were his allies - and we photographed the tens of thousands of corpses, most of whom had been buried in the desert sand after the West failed to support the Kurdish and Shia uprisings. The "liberation" had come, as their grieving relatives never stopped telling us, a little late. About 20 years late, to be precise. Into this chaos and lawlessness, we arrived. Dissent was not to be tolerated among the victors. When I pointed out in The Independent that the "liberators" were "a new and alien and all-powerful occupying force with neither culture nor language nor race nor religion to unite them with Iraq", I was denounced by one of the BBC`s commentators. See how the people love us, the Westerners cried - much as Saddam used to say when he took his fawning acolytes on visits to the people of Baghdad. There would be elections, constitutions, governing councils, money ... there was no end to the promises made to this tribal society called Iraq. Then in came the big American contractors and the conglomerates and the thousands of mercenaries, British, American, South African, Chilean - many of the last were soldiers under Pinochet - Nepalese and Filipino.



And when the inevitable war against the occupiers began, we - the occupying powers and, alas, most of the journalists - invented a new narrative to escape punishment for our invasion. Our enemies were Saddam`s "diehards", Baathist "remnants", regime "dead-enders". Then the occupation forces killed Uday and Qusay and pulled Saddam from his hole in the ground and the resistance grew fiercer. So our enemies were now both "remnants" and "foreign fighters" - al-Qa`ida - since ordinary Iraqis could not be in the resistance. We had to believe this. For had Iraqis joined the guerrillas, how could we explain that they didn`t love their "liberators"?



At first, journalists were encouraged to explain that the insurgents came only from a few Sunni cities, "previously loyal to Saddam". Then the resistance was supposedly confined to Iraq`s "Sunni triangle", but as the attacks leached north and south to Nasiriyah, Karbala, Mosul and Kirkuk, it turned into an octagon. Again, journalists were told about "foreign fighters" - a failure to grasp the fact that 120,000 of the foreign fighters in Iraq were wearing American uniform.



Still there was no end to the mendacity of the occupation`s "success". True, schools were rebuilt - and, shame upon the Iraqis involved, often looted a second time - and hospitals restored and students returned to college. But oil output figures were massaged and exaggerated and attacks on the Americans falsified. At first, the occupying power only reported guerrilla attacks in which soldiers were killed or wounded. Then, when no one could hide the 60 or so assaults every night, the troops themselves were ordered not to make formal reports on bombings or attacks which caused no casualties. But by the war`s first anniversary, every foreigner was a target.



In the meantime, the suicide bomber came into his own. The Turkish embassy, the Jordanian embassy, the United Nations, police stations across the land - 600 new Iraqi cops slaughtered in less than four months - and then the great shrines of Najaf and Karbala. The Americans and British warned of the dangers of civil war - so did the journalists, of course - although no Iraqi had ever been heard to utter any demand for conflict with their fellow citizens. Who actually wanted this "civil war"? Why would the Sunnis - a minority in the country - allow al-Qa`ida to bring this about when they could not defeat the occupying power without at least passive Shia support?



While I was writing this report, my phone rang and a voice asked me if I would meet a man downstairs, a middle-aged Iraqi and a teacher at Cardiff College who had recently returned to Iraq, only to realise the state of fear and pain in which his country now existed. His mother, he said, had just raised a million Iraqi dinars to pay a ransom for a local woman whose daughter and daughter-in-law were kidnapped by armed men in Baghdad in January. The two girls had just called from Yemen where they had been sold into slavery. Another of his neighbours had just received her 17-year-old son after paying $5,000 to gunmen in the Karada area of Baghdad. Two days ago - it is Friday as I am writing this - kidnappers grabbed another child, this time in Mansour, and are now demanding $200,000 for his life. A close relative of my visitor - and remember this is just one man`s experience out of a population of 26 million Iraqis - had also just survived a bloody attack on his car outside Karbala. Driving south after winning a contract to run a garage in the city, he and his 11 companions in their AKEA vehicle were last week overtaken by men firing pistols at the car. One man died - he had 30 bullets in his body - and the relative, swamped in the blood of his friends, was the only man unwounded.



Not surprisingly, the occupation authorities decline to keep statistics on the number of Iraqis who have died since the "liberation" - or during the invasion, for that matter - and prefer to talk about the "handover of sovereignty" from one American-appointed group of Iraqis to another, and to the constitution which is only temporary and may well fall apart before real elections are held - if they are held - next year. If we could have foreseen all this - if we could have been patient and waited for the UN arms inspectors to finish their job rather than go to war and plead for patience later, when our own inspectors couldn`t find those oh so terrible weapons - would we have gone so blithely to war a year ago?



For that war has not ended. There has been no "end of major combat operations", just an invasion and an occupation that merged seamlessly into a long and ferocious war for liberation from the "liberators". Just as the British invaded Iraq in 1917, proclaiming their determination to bring Iraqis liberation from their tyrants - General Maude used those very words - so we have repeated this grim narrative today. The British who died in the subsequent Iraqi war of resistance lie now in the North Gate Cemetery on the edge of Baghdad, an enduring if largely neglected symbol of the folly of our occupation.



© 2004 The Independent. UK

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American troops and vehicles Sunday encircled a military truck that had been hit by a roadside bombing west of Baghdad, killing one soldier.

So neu kann die Taktik nicht sein, denn vor einigen Wochen berichtete, ich meine, Fisk in einem seiner Berichte von der Taktik, dass die Aufständigen Bomben in Tierkadavern verstecken und diese an den Rand der Straße legten.
Deshalb fuhr er mit seinem Wagen meist mehr in der Mitte der Straße, was für die großen Militärwagen nicht möglich ist.
Die Behauptung in dem folgenden Artikel scheint eine Ausrede zu sein, weil man die wieder ansteigende Zahl der Opfer nicht erklären kann.



March 15, 2004
G.I. Toll Is Rising as Insurgents Try Wilier Bombs and Tactics
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 14 — Insurgent bombmakers, whose roadside explosives claimed the lives of six more American soldiers this weekend, have adopted new and grimly devious tactics, military officers said Sunday.

The tactics include setting multiple charges along convoy routes, disguising bombs inside animal carcasses and planting hollow artillery shells to draw troops into an ambush, they said.

One American soldier was killed early Sunday when his convoy west of Baghdad was blasted by a roadside explosive. Three soldiers died Saturday when their patrol in southeast Baghdad also fell victim to a homemade bomb.

Those deaths, announced by a military spokesman on Sunday, followed an attack on Saturday with an improvised explosive device and small-arms fire in Tikrit that left two soldiers dead.

Explaining the number of deaths this weekend from improvised explosive devices, military officers in Iraq said the lethality and effectiveness of those weapons had intensified.

Early in the insurgency, the handcrafted bombs tended to be bulky, usually made from discarded artillery shells with a detonator wired to a garage door opener or doorbell. Attackers laboriously buried or hid the homemade bombs along roadways between midnight and dawn.

As ground patrols and surveillance planes put pressure on the labor-intensive strategy of concealing booby traps, the insurgents learned to create smaller bombs that could be planted quickly, officers said.

"We call them `drop and pop,` " said an American officer in Iraq who briefs arriving soldiers on the threat from the improvised explosive devices, called I.E.D.`s by the military.

"We used to be able to look for a signature," the officer said. "Anybody out doing road work before the sun came up was probably digging a hole to plant a bomb. Now, they just roll by or walk alongside, and dump them out."

Insurgents also have adopted a tactic of planting empty shell casings and wiring in an obvious spot to draw the attention of American forces, said a military officer in Baghdad. Those fake explosives appear intended to waste the time of explosive-disposal squads or to draw soldiers into an ambush of small-arms fire.

Insurgent foot soldiers are also laying the bombs on both sides of convoy routes, instead of one as in the past, and new designs include the wiring of multiple explosives in a "daisy chain" to explode in several places, several yards apart, along the routes, military officers said.

Technological improvements have been noted by the military headquarters here, as the improvised explosive devices are being detonated from greater distances.

In a few cases, American soldiers have taken to firing 50-caliber rounds or even shotguns to detonate suspected explosives spotted on the roadways, although local unit commanders discourage that practice in urban or other congested areas, where bystanders could be hurt.

While more improvised explosives are being detected than are not, those bombs remain the leading cause of American casualties to hostile fire since the end of major combat operations on May 1.

For now, commanders are keeping up the pace of ground patrols while Air Force surveillance planes remain alert for explosives and those planting them.

"If we`re not out there patrolling, we`re losing ground," said a senior commander in Baghdad. "If we`re not forward-leaning, we`re going to lose even more soldiers."

A senior Air Force official involved in planning missions over Iraq said surveillance planes, by their mere presence, reduced insurgents` ability to conceal explosives.

"The pressure of air power limits their ability to dig and hide, pushing them to less effective `drop and pop` devices," said the officer, who was visiting Baghdad to discuss future air-power strategy to halt the insurgency in Iraq. The air patrols make it difficult for insurgents to carry out time-consuming larger or more complex operations, he said.

A valuable tool in the battle has turned out to be a Navy airplane designed for antisubmarine warfare and maritime surveillance.

The Navy P-3 aircraft and its British counterpart patrol convoy routes looking for bombs or unusual activity of individuals who may be planting them. Their sensors detected 15 of the explosive devices in recent weeks, air commanders reported.

Even fighter aircraft assigned to escort convoys or to fly direct combat missions when ground troops raid suspected insurgent hideouts or seek to seize militants are told to watch for roadside bombs as well.

Between 55 and 60 combat sorties are flown over Iraq each day, and 45 to 50 combat support sorties, including surveillance and intelligence-gathering missions to counter those devices, the Air Force officer said.

In Washington, an Army official with recent experience in Iraq said insurgents were using a range of explosives, from bulk TNT to a malleable explosive called PE-4 to modified ordnance, like old artillery shells. The bombmakers use commercial blasting caps or detonation cords connected to the timers or remote-controlled devices.

The American authorities have determined that the improvised explosives are being planned, built and planted by a fairly sophisticated network, which officials in Washington say includes leaders or organizers; the bomb builders, who in some cases appear to have been trained in techniques used by the militant Shiite group Hezbollah based in Lebanon; those who recruit people for the effort; those who link various parts of the operation; and those who plant the bombs.

"It`s a whole chain," the Army official said." If you just focus on the guy putting a bomb in the road, you`re missing something."

To counter the threat, the military created the I.E.D. Task Force, with about 20 members drawn from all of the armed services operating in Iraq and Kuwait at any one time, including experts in weapons, tactics, forensics and engineering. Team members are sent to bombing scenes to analyze the weapons, and relay information quickly to be shared throughout the military.

"The priority is to ensure that the troops have the most up-to-date tactics, techniques and procedures in theater," the Army official said.


Thom Shanker reported for this article from Baghdad and Eric Schmitt from Washington.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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March 15, 2004
Some Iraqi Leaders Now Balk at Giving U.N. a Big Role
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 14 — In a surprising turnabout, several Iraqi leaders are balking at allowing the United Nations to return to the country to help it prepare for the return of sovereignty on June 30.

Several members of the Iraqi Governing Council, which clamored for United Nations help on elections weeks ago, now say they are reluctant to give the organization a big role either in helping to prepare the Iraqi government to stand on its own or in readying the country for nationwide elections — to take place as early as December.

Those council members, whose skepticism about the United Nations dates from the time of Saddam Hussein, said they had been disappointed by the failure of a team of United Nations experts who visited the country recently to help schedule early elections.

"We have had bad experiences with the U.N. in the past," said Yonadam Kanna, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. "There is a difference of opinion on what their role should be here."

The about-face by these council members has prompted concern among American officials here and in Washington, who are eager to enlist the help of the United Nations in preparing the Iraqi government to accept sovereignty by June 30. The worry is that without United Nations` help, the Iraqi government might lack legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis.

At the same time, American officials feel strongly that United Nations` help is crucial in enabling the Iraqis to hold elections by the end of the year or by early January 2005, as called for in the country`s interim constitution.

A senior American official, Robert Blackwill, met with council members over the weekend in an effort to overcome their reluctance about the United Nations role. Whether Mr. Blackwill had succeeded was unclear, though at least one member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, emerged from a meeting with Mr. Blackwill and indicated he approved of accepting the help of the United Nations.

"We need to get the United Nations involved in the political discussion in Iraq," Mr. Rubaie said, adding, "We need them to have a role here. We need them immediately."

But some Iraqi leaders continued to express deep skepticism about whether the United Nations should be allowed to return to take a role in Iraq. Intifad Qanbar, a spokesman for Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the council, said that while the United Nations might have a role in the country, it ought to be strictly limited.

"There is a track record that shows the U.N. is not efficient in these things," Mr. Qanbar said. "We cannot have anyone overseeing or managing this Iraqi process from outside Iraq."

The hostility expressed by some Iraqi leaders comes at a delicate time, as the Americans are preparing, in little more than three months, to turn over sovereignty to an Iraqi government that was not elected by the Iraqis. The current Iraqi council, made up of 25 men and women, was appointed by the Americans.

Iraqi and American officials have discussed ways of making the Iraqi government more representative in time for the June 30 hand-over. Among the possibilities is expanding the current council, although there has been wide disagreement over how its new members might be selected. Some Iraqi leaders say they would like United Nations` help in figuring out a way, short of elections, of making a revamped Governing Council more representative.

United Nations assistance is also thought to be crucial in laying the groundwork for nationwide elections either late this year or early next year. Earlier this year, a United Nations team led by Lakhdar Brahimi, an Algerian diplomat, concluded that while it was impossible to hold credible elections before June 30, it might be possible by the end of the year. That, the United Nations team said, depended on Iraqi leaders` taking a number of steps, like setting up an electoral commission and writing laws governing future elections.

So far, the Iraqi Governing Council has not taken those steps.

United Nations officials, including Secretary General Kofi Annan, have said that they will return to Iraq only if they are invited to do so. So far, no such invitation has been extended. Iraqi leaders say the Governing Council drafted a letter to the United Nations last week in which the council pointedly failed to ask it to return. That letter, for reasons that are unclear, has not been sent, the Iraqis said.

The suspicion with which the United Nations is regarded by many Iraqis dates from the time of Mr. Hussein, when the organization enforced the global economic sanctions on the government and presided over such unpopular programs as inspections for unconventional weapons.

Some Iraqi leaders said that antipathy toward the United Nations was reinforced when the team of experts, led by Mr. Brahimi, concluded that elections were not possible before June 30, and that Shiite leaders directed some rancor at Mr. Brahimi personally.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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March 15, 2004
U.S. Videos, for TV News, Come Under Scrutiny
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, March 14 — Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines.

The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. Several include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare law on Dec. 8.

The materials were produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, which called them video news releases, but the source is not identified. Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In Washington, I`m Karen Ryan reporting."

But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired her to read a script prepared by the government.

Another video, intended for Hispanic audiences, shows a Bush administration official being interviewed in Spanish by a man who identifies himself as a reporter named Alberto Garcia.

Another segment shows a pharmacist talking to an elderly customer. The pharmacist says the new law "helps you better afford your medications," and the customer says, "It sounds like a good idea." Indeed, the pharmacist says, "A very good idea."

The government also prepared scripts that can be used by news anchors introducing what the administration describes as a made-for-television "story package."

In one script, the administration suggests that anchors use this language: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare. Since then, there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details."

The "reporter" then explains the benefits of the new law.

Lawyers from the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, discovered the materials last month when they were looking into the use of federal money to pay for certain fliers and advertisements that publicize the Medicare law.

In a report to Congress last week, the lawyers said those fliers and advertisements were legal, despite "notable omissions and other weaknesses." Administration officials said the television news segments were also a legal, effective way to educate beneficiaries.

Gary L. Kepplinger, deputy general counsel of the accounting office, said, "We are actively considering some follow-up work related to the materials we received from the Department of Health and Human Services."

One question is whether the government might mislead viewers by concealing the source of the Medicare videos, which have been broadcast by stations in Oklahoma, Louisiana and other states.

Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for "publicity or propaganda purposes" not authorized by Congress. In the past, the General Accounting Office has found that federal agencies violated this restriction when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles written by the government or its contractors without identifying the source.

Kevin W. Keane, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said there was nothing nefarious about the television materials, which he said had been distributed to stations nationwide. Under federal law, he said, the government is required to inform beneficiaries about changes in Medicare.

"The use of video news releases is a common, routine practice in government and the private sector," Mr. Keane said. "Anyone who has questions about this practice needs to do some research on modern public information tools."

But Democrats disagreed. "These materials are even more disturbing than the Medicare flier and advertisements," said Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey. "The distribution of these videos is a covert attempt to manipulate the press."

Mr. Lautenberg, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and seven other members of Congress requested the original review by the accounting office.

In the videos and advertisements, the government urges beneficiaries to call a toll-free telephone number, 1-800-MEDICARE. People who call that number can obtain recorded information about prescription drug benefits if they recite the words "Medicare improvement."

Documents from the Medicare agency show why the administration is eager to advertise the benefits of the new law, on radio and television, in newspapers and on the Internet.

"Our consumer research has shown that beneficiaries are confused about the Medicare Modernization Act and uncertain about what it means for them," says one document from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Other documents suggest the scope of the publicity campaign: $12.6 million for advertising this winter, $18.5 million to publicize drug discount cards this spring, about $18.5 million this summer, $30 million for a year of beneficiary education starting this fall and $44 million starting in the fall of 2005.

"Video news releases" have been used for more than a decade. Pharmaceutical companies have done particularly well with them, producing news-style health features about the afflictions their drugs are meant to cure.

The videos became more prominent in the late 1980`s, as more and more television stations cut news-gathering budgets and were glad to have packaged news bits to call their own, even if they were prepared by corporations seeking to sell products.

As such, the videos have drawn criticism from some news media ethicists, who consider them to be at odds with journalism`s mission to verify independently the claims of corporations and governments.

Government agencies have also produced such videos for years, often on subjects like teenage smoking and the dangers of using steroids. But the Medicare materials wander into more controversial territory.

Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, expressed disbelief that any television stations would present the Medicare videos as real news segments, considering the current debate about the merits of the new law.

"Those to me are just the next thing to fraud," Mr. Kovach said. "It`s running a paid advertisement in the heart of a news program."


Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting for this article.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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March 15, 2004
Bush Losing Some Mystique of Presidency
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 4:57 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Springtime is creeping up on Washington and flowers are starting to bloom, but there will be no luxury of a Rose Garden strategy for President Bush this season.

With the election still nearly eight months away, Bush has surrendered some of the mystique of the presidency to take on a very public role as candidate for re-election. After spending months steadily building up campaign cash, he now is taking on Democrat John Kerry directly by name both in speeches and in a huge first burst of campaign ads.

Many think the president had no choice but to shift into an overtly political role early, given his deteriorating poll numbers, the speedy selection of a Democratic presidential candidate and continuing public concern about the state of the economy. Plus, he`s got all that money burning a hole in his pocket.

``And so, off you go,`` said presidential scholar Calvin Mackenzie of Colby College in Maine. ``It`s a trade-off. You`re not going to look as presidential. You`re going to be down in the gutter slinging mud. And I assume somebody smart in the Republican strategy sessions has said, `We`ve got to do this.```

But Democratic consultant Paul Begala, a former chief political adviser to President Clinton, said Bush has turned himself into ``politician in chief,`` giving up one of his greatest assets -- the mystique and power of incumbency.

Begala called Bush`s appearance last month on NBC`s ``Meet the Press,`` in which he had to defend his National Guard service record during Vietnam, ``a gift to the Democratic Party. He didn`t look 10 feet tall. He didn`t look unbeatable.``

Striking the right balance between the roles of president and politician has always been a challenge for incumbents seeking re-election.

Gerald Ford practiced the Rose Garden strategy brilliantly in 1976, even though he lost the election to Jimmy Carter, Mackenzie said. Known as a rather ``bumbling campaigner,`` he said, Ford largely stuck around the White House during a tough primary battle with Ronald Reagan and strategically doled out grants and nominations to states that just happened to be voting that particular week.

Carter, who lost his re-election bid four years later, dispatched his wife, Rosalynn, and others to campaign and said he needed to stay at the White House to focus on the hostages in Iran.

Presidential scholar Steven Hess said Bush appears determined to avoid the path of his father, who waited much longer to adopt a candidate`s stance in his losing bid for re-election. The first President Bush, he said, was overly careful to put his White House duties ahead of his needs as a candidate.

``It was not a mistake his son was going to make,`` said Hess. ``It was always in the cards that they would run sooner rather than later.``

Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman Terry Holt rejected the notion that it`s premature for the president to be running anti-Kerry ads. He said Clinton used campaign dollars to run ads more than a year before the 1996 elections.

Those ads faulted Republicans for trying to repeal a crime bill and offered photos of a somber Clinton working at his Oval Office desk. ``President Clinton is helping us make this a safer nation,`` a police officer said.

That`s a strikingly different tone from the more partisan flavor of the spots Bush began airing Friday, which open with pictures of him as he takes responsibility for the ad, then quickly shift to claims that Kerry will raise taxes by at least $900 billion.

Mike McCurry, who was Clinton`s White House spokesman, said Clinton`s campaign apparatus went after GOP nominee Bob Dole fairly early in 1996, but the president himself ``didn`t get feisty and political until pretty late in the process.`` This time, he said, Bush has been tugged into the fight earlier because of his weaker position and pressure from ``people inside his own party who were beginning to sweat.``

``If he could do this with a little more humor and do it with an easy human touch it would go over better, but that`s not his style,`` said McCurry. ``There`s a way to be political and have fun as sort of a happy warrior.``

Kerry, for his part, has helped lure Bush into the fight by spending millions over the past six months on ads critical of the president and his policies.

``The Rose Garden strategy is an illusion once you have a Democratic nominee and you have a full-bore campaign going on from the other party,`` said GOP strategist Ralph Reed.

He added that Bush is well situated to simultaneously wear the two hats of president and politician because this year`s campaign issues so closely track the themes of his presidency -- strengthening the economy, protecting the homeland and fighting terrorism.

``You`d be hard-pressed to find a time when the two messages were more seamless and mutually reinforcing,`` Reed said.



Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

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washingtonpost.com
Trade and the Campaign




Monday, March 15, 2004; Page A24


GEORGE W. BUSH has a rubber spine on trade. He campaigned as a free-trader, and his administration launched a new round of multilateral trade talks, but he has caved in to steel protectionists and farm protectionists. It is therefore pleasantly surprising that, during a thinly disguised campaign stop in Ohio last week, Mr. Bush denounced "economic isolationism." Ohio is a swing state with 6 percent unemployment, higher than the national average: the sort of place where Mr. Bush might have been expected to echo the protectionist tone of the Democratic primary campaign.

Mr. Bush`s rhetoric poses a challenge to Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Trade is one of the issues on which the senator is fuzzy: He voted consistently for trade deals in the Senate -- for the North American Free Trade Agreement, for China`s accession to the World Trade Organization and for a limited trade opening to Africa and the Caribbean -- but in July 2003 he declined to vote for deals with Chile and Singapore, and his campaign rhetoric has since had a protectionist tinge. He says that as president he would subject all trade pacts to review, a promise that implies a willingness to undo them but may actually mean little. He says that companies proposing to move jobs offshore must serve notice to employees and government agencies three months ahead of time, a requirement that would generate paper without changing where jobs go.

Mr. Kerry`s most serious-sounding contribution to trade policy is his insistence that labor rights be protected by trade deals. In refusing to vote for the Chile and Singapore agreements, Mr. Kerry explained that both failed to go beyond the requirement that countries enforce their own labor laws; he says he would vote against the recently negotiated Central American Free Trade Area for the same reason. But Mr. Kerry underestimates how much has been achieved in these deals. Requiring Central America to enforce its labor laws is a big step, because those laws are actually strong on paper: The International Labor Organization recently reported that all five Central American countries have rules upholding core ILO standards. The problem (in the United States, as well as in Central America) is precisely that enforcement is haphazard. By giving the United States the option of complaining to an impartial panel if trading partners don`t enforce the law, trade agreements create a new enforcement tool. In the Central American deal that Mr. Kerry opposes, U.S. complaints would result in fines against countries that don`t enforce their labor laws, and the fines would be used to strengthen enforcement.

If this is not enough for Mr. Kerry, what more is he after? Some of his labor supporters would like to use trade deals to enforce minimum wages in poor countries, but this is inadvisable. If a country includes a large reservoir of subsistence farmers desperate for jobs, it is wrong to deny them their first step out of poverty.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kerry speaks warmly of the recent free-trade agreement with Jordan, which he says went beyond the Chile and Singapore deals by specifying enforceable labor standards in the agreement rather than merely requiring that domestic law be upheld. But the labor standards in the Jordan text are barely different from the ILO standards that exist in law in Guatemala or Honduras. Besides, Mr. Kerry is probably wrong in saying that the Jordan standards are enforceable: Jordan merely promises to "strive to ensure" compliance, a term too vague to provide for a strong right of action.

In sum, it is hard to know what Mr. Kerry means by his trade-and-labor rhetoric, just as it is hard to know how to balance his pro-trade votes in the Senate against his campaign denunciation of "Benedict Arnold" companies. It`s good that Mr. Bush is attacking on these issues, and it`s time for Mr. Kerry to clarify his thinking.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Gegenwind für Kerry im US-Wahlkampf
Heftige Attacken seitens Bushs und der Republikaner
Seitdem John Kerry als Kandidat der Demokraten für die Präsidentschaftswahl in den USA feststeht, wird er von den Medien kritischer unter die Lupe genommen und ist er unter Dauerbeschuss seiner republikanischen Gegner geraten. Ungewöhnlich früh hat sich auch Präsident Bush persönlich in die Niederungen des Wahlkampfs begeben.


A. R. Washington, 10. März

Auch diese Woche haben die Demokratische und die Republikanische Partei der USA in einer Reihe von Teilstaaten Primärwahlen abgehalten. Aber die Spannung ist gewichen, weil die Kandidaten für die Präsidentenwahl vom November in beiden Grossparteien längst feststehen: John Kerry und George W. Bush. Der Demokrat Kerry, den in seiner Partei nur noch einige Aussenseiter anfechten, konnte sich am Dienstag mit mühelosen Siegen im Süden der USA nochmals einige hundert Delegierten-Plätze für den Parteikonvent vom Sommer sichern. Spätestens in einer Woche wird Kerry genug Delegierte gesammelt haben, um am Konvent eine absolute Mehrheit hinter sich zu haben, womit seine Nomination zum offiziellen Kandidaten mit letzter mathematischer Gewissheit feststehen wird.

Vorwurf der Unentschlossenheit
Kerry dürfte sich derzeit jedoch mit anderen Problemen als mit solchen rechnerischen Überlegungen plagen: Nach dem Zuckerlecken der letzten Wochen, als er seinen innerparteilichen Triumph auskosten konnte, wird Kerry nun abrupt mit der Realität des eigentlichen Wahlkampfs konfrontiert. Nachdem ihn die meisten amerikanischen Medien vor einigen Monaten vorzeitig abgeschrieben haben, nehmen sie den Herausforderer des Präsidenten nun erst richtig unter die Lupe. Dabei wird oft das Bild eines Politikers gezeichnet, der die Welt nicht schwarz-weiss sieht wie Bush, sondern in vielen Grautönen, der vor lauter Nuancen aber bei vielen Entscheidungen endlos hin und her gerissen wird.

Weil Kerry fast zwei Jahrzehnte lang im Senat gedient hat, hat er seine Haltung in ungezählten Sachabstimmungen offenbaren müssen. Manches «Ja» will Kerry heute allerdings als «Ja, aber» verstanden wissen oder definiert es geradezu ins Gegenteil um. Beispielsweise tritt Kerry inzwischen als scharfer Kritiker der Erziehungsreform von 2001 und des Antiterrorgesetzes desselben Jahres auf, obwohl er damals für beide Vorlagen gestimmt hatte. In anderen Fällen hatte Kerry im Vorwahlkampf politische Schwenker gemacht, um sich den linken Strömungen in seiner Partei anzupassen. So beklagte er im Chor mit seinen demokratischen Rivalen, dass die Freihandelsverträge der neunziger Jahre zur Abwanderung von Arbeitsplätzen geführt hätten. Dabei hatte Kerry im Kongress Handelsliberalisierungen stets befürwortet. Erst jetzt, wo das Vorwahl-Rennen bei den Demokraten gelaufen ist und es um die Stimmen breiterer Wählerschichten geht, schwenkt er wieder auf seine frühere Linie ein.

Das Bush-Lager greift solche Kursverschiebungen gnadenlos auf. Den Republikanern geht es darum, den Herausforderer als wankelmütigen Softie darzustellen, der nicht das Format besitzt, das Land durch schwierige Kriegszeiten zu führen. «Unentschlossenheit ist tödlich», erklärte Vizepräsident Cheney diese Woche. Auch Bush selber fährt bereits in dieser frühen Phase heftiges Geschütz auf. Er warf Kerry vor, keine tieferen Überzeugungen zu besitzen und in vielen Sachfragen seine Meinung geändert zu haben.

Erwartungsgemäss versucht man, Kerrys Bekenntnis zu einer robusten Sicherheitspolitik in Zweifel zu ziehen. Anfang der Woche pflückte Bush einen Vorschlag Kerrys aus dem Jahr 1995 heraus, wonach das Geheimdienstbudget jährlich um 300 Millionen Dollar hätte gekürzt werden sollen. Bush sprach von einer zutiefst verantwortungslosen Idee; man könne nicht gute Geheimdienstinformationen verlangen und die entsprechenden Behörden massakrieren. Sachlich war Bushs Vorwurf wenig überzeugend, denn die Kürzung hätte nur ein Prozent des Geheimdienstbudgets betroffen. Der Vorschlag kam zudem in einer Zeit, als die republikanische Kongressmehrheit in diesem Bereich selber das Messer ansetzte.

Risiken einer Strategie
Noch gehässiger tönt es aus dem restlichen republikanischen Lager. Das Republican National Committee, die Parteiführung, machte sich dieser Tage darüber lustig, dass Kerry Applaus aus Nordkorea und - nicht viel besser - aus Frankreich erhalten habe. Der frühere französische Umweltminister Brice Lalonde ist ein Cousin Kerrys, was für frankophobe Kreise in den USA offenbar schon verdächtig genug ist. Und die konservative Gruppe Citizens United mokiert sich in Fernseh- Werbespots über den angeblich teuren Haarschnitt Kerrys und qualifiziert den Kandidaten als Vertreter der linken Oberschicht von Massachusetts ab. In der Wahl ihrer Mittel sind die Demokraten nicht zurückhaltender. Beobachter sind jedoch überrascht, dass sich Bush selber schon zu diesem frühen Zeitpunkt an die innerste Front des Wahlkampfs begibt. Andere Präsidenten haben mit persönlichen Angriffen jeweils bis zum Sommer vor der Wahl zugewartet.

Vermutlich erwartet das Weisse Haus ein äusserst knappes Rennen. Meinungsumfragen, nach denen Kerry derzeit um einige Prozentpunkte vor Bush liegt, scheinen dieser Sichtweise Recht zu geben. Die republikanische Strategie birgt allerdings auch Risiken. Indem Bush so früh in die Niederungen des Wahlkampfs absteigt, begibt er sich nach Ansicht von Parteistrategen auf die Ebene des Herausforderers und verliert in einem gewissen Mass seine Aura als Führer der Nation.



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The truth leaks out
Ruth Rosen
Monday, March 15, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ


URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/15/EDGLU4UDP51.DTL


ONE YEAR LATER, the lies that led to the war in Iraq are coming unraveled. Last week, even CIA Director George Tenet admitted that he had privately disputed public statements made by top government officials who had twisted intelligence reports.

It`s about time. One year ago, I watched as our nation`s highest officials exploited the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001, by manipulating fears of terrorism and exaggerating the existence of weapons of mass destruction.

President Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, declared that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger -- a bogus story that was discredited in the foreign press. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his address to the U.N. Security Council, cited "solid" British evidence of Iraq`s WMDs that was immediately exposed as 10-year-old data posted on the Internet by a graduate student.

By the time the war began, the government`s Big Lie had turned into conventional wisdom. Much of the American media, according to a study by the Center for International Security Studies at Maryland, amplified administration assertions and failed to critically analyze how officials "framed the events, issues, threats and policy options."

As a result, more than half of the American people believed that Iraqis had been among the Sept. 11 terrorists and that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda had forged an alliance to destroy the United States.

Yet none of this was true.

One year later, more than 500 Americans soldiers have died in Iraq and thousands more have returned home with missing limbs and scarred souls. Countless Iraqi civilians have been killed, injured and humiliated by the American occupation.

One year later, our world is far more dangerous. Many of our allies are alienated by Bush`s arrogant, unilateral deployment of military power. Hatred of our country has grown in much of the Islamic world.

Fortunately, lies have a way of unraveling because people with integrity step forward to speak the truth.

In a memorable July 6, 2003, New York Times opinion essay, Joseph W. Wilson, a career diplomat, broke his silence by disclosing that he had found no evidence that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq, and concluded that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq`s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

For that truth-telling, some senior administration officials leaked Wilson`s wife`s intelligence cover to journalist Robert Novak.

David Kay, the government`s chief weapons inspector, returned from Iraq and publicly reported that his survey team had not found any evidence of WMDs. Paul O` Neill, former treasury secretary, revealed that as soon as Bush officials took office, they began plotting to invade Iraq.

Today, we also know why there was a so-called "intelligence failure." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and company established their own private Pentagon intelligence unit -- the Office of Special Plans -- to seek evidence that confirmed only what they believed. CIA Director George Tenet, for his part, failed to expose the administration`s manipulation of intelligence.

In "The New Pentagon Papers," published last week on Salon.com, Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired lieutenant colonel formerly assigned to the Pentagon`s Office of Special Plans, writes, "I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to the Congress."

Now, as the one-year anniversary of the war approaches, the shelves in American bookstores groan under the weight of tomes that describe the deception that led to war in Iraq. The titles, to name just a few -- "The Price of Loyalty;" "Weapons of Mass Deception;" "Big Lies;" "The Lies of George W. Bush;" and "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq" -- reflect the president`s growing credibility gap.

To these, add "Disarming Iraq," written by Hans Blix, the former U.N. weapons inspector, who says the war was illegal and criticizes the Bush administration for failing to allow his team to verify if Iraqi WMDs actually existed.

One year later, the media and Congress finally are asking tough questions and holding the Bush administration accountable for its past deeds and deceptions. Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, clearly intends to make the betrayal of soldiers and the American people a centerpiece of his campaign for the presidency.

For those of us who never believed Bush`s statements and opposed the war, despair gives way to a glimmer of hope. American democracy is stronger than it was a year ago. But the political battle for the soul of the nation has just begun.

E-mail Ruth Rosen at [e-mail].

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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GI to test morality of war: `Deserter` who refused to fight will turn himself in
Date: Monday, March 15 @ 10:40:06 EST
Topic: War & Terrorism


An AWOL guardsman who refuses to return to Iraq duty plans to turn himself in and become the first soldier to publicly challenge the conflict

By Michael Martinez, Chicago Tribune

NEW YORK -- In Iraq last April, freshly promoted Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia led squads of Florida National Guard soldiers in the fight against insurgents in the deadly Sunni triangle.

But Mejia became increasingly pained by his war experiences, and when he went on leave in the autumn, he decided not to come back. The staff sergeant--one of about 600 soldiers counted as AWOL by the Army during home leaves from Iraq--eventually was labeled a deserter.

Now, after five months in hiding, Mejia plans to surrender Monday in Boston on the eve of the war`s first anniversary, and he aims to become the first Iraq war veteran to publicly challenge the morality and conduct of the conflict. At a time when polls indicate that Americans` support for the war is slipping, Mejia intends to seek conscientious-objector status to avoid a court-martial.

In an interview with the Tribune, Mejia, 28, of Miami, said he found the war and many of his combat orders morally questionable and ultimately unacceptable. He has been living in New York and other Eastern cities, traveling by bus instead of by plane or car to escape the attention of the police and military. He has avoided using his credit cards and cell phone.



Mejia accuses commanders of using GIs as "bait" to lure out Iraqi fighters so that U.S. soldiers could win combat decorations. He also says operations were conducted in ways that sometimes risked injuring civilians. He has accused his battalion and company commanders of incompetence and has reiterated other guardsmen`s complaints about being poorly equipped.

Those commanders, however, defended their conduct. His immediate commander described Mejia as a poorly performing soldier who "lost his nerve" as bloodshed intensified in one of Iraq`s more violent cities, Ramadi.

Perhaps the turning point for Mejia was the day in Iraq when he was ordered to shoot at Iraqis protesting and hurling grenades toward his position from about 75 yards away, which he considered too far of a distance to be a real threat. Mejia and his men opened fire on one, and he fell, his blood pooling around him.

"It was the first time I had fired at a human being," Mejia recalled. "I guess you could say it was my initiation at killing a human being. . . . One thing I ask myself a lot, `Did I hit him?`

"It was part of a general feeling that we had no right to be there, and every killing, whether provoked or not provoked, was unjustified because we had no right to be there."

His commanders, however, said the orders to shoot were justified to protect American personnel.

The 457 soldiers of the Florida National Guard`s 1st Battalion of the 124th Infantry Regiment, activated in January 2003, entered Iraq late in April expecting to do security detail, as they had done in two prior months in Jordan at Patriot anti-missile batteries.

But facing an insurgency armed with roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, the battalion became primary combat troops trying to stabilize a hot spot along the Euphrates River, 70 miles west of Baghdad.

The battalion was led by Lt. Col. Hector Mirabile, 46, who was being deployed for the first time in his 24 years in the National Guard and whose civilian job the past 23 years was in the Miami Police Department, where he had risen through the ranks to become chief financial officer.

After 200 missions between last April and February, mostly in Ramadi, the battalion received 39 Purple Hearts, a combat decoration for wounded soldiers, Mirabile said. Eleven more are expected, he said. No one was killed.

More than half of those Purple Hearts were awarded to Charlie Company, where Mejia was a squad leader of seven to nine soldiers.

Of the 127 men in C Company, 98 participated in welcome-home ceremonies at Ft. Stewart, Ga., earlier this month. The remainder were "28 casualties and one deserter," said its commander, Capt. Tad Warfel, 39, a full-time Florida Guardsman.

In seeking conscientious-objector status, Mejia is taking a route used frequently during the Vietnam era by draft resisters and one that`s still offered to today`s all-volunteer soldiers. A handful of soldiers left the Army with that status last year.

Mejia wants an honorable discharge, with full benefits. Warfel, a former aide to the Florida National Guard`s top commander, wants Mejia court-martialed and punished severely, including a dishonorable discharge.

Mirabile said he is investigating Mejia`s case and hasn`t made a decision on court-martial.

"I`m sorry that he felt that way," Mirabile said of Mejia`s accusations. "That`s his ability [to exercise free speech] for his living in the United States."

Punishment uncertain

Desertion during wartime can be punishable by death, but that is unlikely, said Mejia`s attorney, Louis Font, noting that there was never an official act of war declared by Congress, though the use of force was authorized in a resolution. Since the Civil War, only one American soldier has been executed for desertion: Pvt. Eddie Slovik, who was shot by a firing squad in 1945.

Mejia, a soft-spoken young man with Jesuit schooling who comes from upper-middle-class households in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, arrived in the United States in the 1990s to attend college. He joined the Army for three years and then the National Guard for five more.

He recounted several experiences in Iraq that he said rendered him a prisoner of his own conscience.

One week, his commanders ordered overnight blocking positions on major roads leading into Ramadi because insurgents were believed to be transporting weapons under cover of darkness.

Mejia said the checkpoints were stationed in the same place on the same schedule during a five-day period. Troops even used the same movement techniques each day, he said.

On the third or fourth day, a checkpoint platoon of 30 soldiers in Humvees was ambushed by Iraqi fighters, he said.

Four soldiers, including a friend of Mejia, were severely injured--the worst single incident of casualties incurred by Charlie Company during its yearlong tour.

Iraqi motorist killed

In the aftermath of the attack, a passing Iraqi motorist, who apparently was confused and didn`t heed orders to halt, was decapitated by U.S. machine gun fire, Mejia said.

"You make yourself incredibly and stupidly vulnerable by doing [the same maneuver] over and over four, five times," Mejia said. "We were basically being used as bait.

"All this could have been avoided by doing what we were simply taught to do and follow the procedures, but it wasn`t done that way so soldiers could win combat badges ... Bronze Stars, Purple Hearts. It was a problem of ambition," he said.

Warfel described the action, Operation Shutdown, as a "sound" mission.

"It was just a bad situation when they got ambushed," Warfel said in an interview at Ft. Stewart

"I had three roads to shut down, and the only way to do it is to go to the same point. We didn`t have a choice where we could go and when we could go. The platoons did the same spot three or four nights in a row so they could become familiar with the intersection" and set up defensive positions, he said.

Surviving ambush

On another occasion, Mejia and his squad in two Humvees narrowly survived an ambush by a half-dozen Iraqi riflemen atop buildings on both sides of the street. Mejia earlier was ordered to maintain a roadblock for 2 1/2 hours, which was two hours too long, he said, giving insurgents a chance to prepare the ambush.

What especially disturbed him, he said, was that after his squad celebrated its survival back at a post, a platoon sergeant relayed a message from a commander stating the squad should have stayed in the firefight and called for reinforcements.

"They were doing everything to put soldiers in harm`s way and against military doctrine and practice in order to instigate a fight," he said.

Warfel disagreed and said an infantryman`s job is to "look for contact."

"So, if he thought it was not a good order, that`s too bad. As a commander, I don`t question orders ... and I don`t expect anybody below me to question my orders.

"It`s not the infantryman`s job to hightail it out of the area. I would berate anyone who didn`t close in and kill the enemy," he said.

Mejia went AWOL on Oct. 16 after he was allowed to return to the U.S. to renew his permanent resident card, he said.

Born in Nicaragua, Mejia arrived in the United States with his mother, now a U.S. citizen.

While home, he called the Army several times seeking a discharge based on a regulation limiting non-citizens` service in the U.S. military to eight years--a period that Mejia reached last May while in Iraq, he said.

His calls were ignored, cementing his dismay and his decision not to return to Iraq, he said.

Mirabile said such time limits have been suspended during the Iraq campaign.

`I expect you to be back`

When Mejia told Warfel he had to return home, Warfel suspected Mejia of planning to go AWOL. Infantrymen complained of Mejia`s reluctance to conduct patrols, which damaged morale, Warfel said.

"I looked him dead in the eye. I said, `Staff Sgt. Mejia, I expect you to be back,` and he said, `I`ll be back.`

"But I told him I knew he wasn`t coming back," Warfel said. "I think he`s a mommy`s boy and his mom greatly influences him."

Warfel said Mejia told him that his mother opposed the war and wouldn`t assist with his paperwork and financial issues for renewing his permanent resident status.

"So there were indications that he wasn`t in the fight. He just basically pressed out. He just lost his nerve," Warfel said.

Though obtaining conscientious-objector status has been problematic for soldiers, the Army recently approved all five applications received between September and January, all relating to the Iraq war, Army spokesmen said. In February, at least six more applications were received and are under review, spokesmen said.

Last year, the Army approved five of 11 applications from objectors and rejected two, officials said. The others are pending.

In 2002, the service approved 17 of 23 applications; the others were rejected, officials said.

Andrea Takash, an Army spokeswoman in the Pentagon, explained why conscientious objection is sometimes allowed even for those who have volunteered. "We understand that after soldiers join, they may have a change of mind or transformation," she said.

AWOL rate low

At most, 600 soldiers in the Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard have gone AWOL or deserted since two-week leaves began for 60,000 GIs in Iraq last year--a 1 percent rate, the Army said.

Being AWOL more than 30 days classifies a soldier as a deserter, but by surrendering, Mejia will show a willingness to return, disputing desertion, his attorney argued.

The Army says its desertions have declined in recent years: 2,731 in the fiscal year ended last Sept. 30; 4,013 desertions in the 2002 fiscal year; 4,598 in 2001; and 3,949 in 2000, officials said.

With several GI advocates and peace activists planning to support his surrender, Mejia seeks to become the first test case weighing the moral impact of the Iraq conflict as tens of thousands of guardsmen, reservists and Army regulars are returning to the U.S. after yearlong tours and as their replacements are being rotated into Iraq, said Tod Ensign, director of Citizen Soldier, a GI advocacy rights group working with Mejia.

One soldier recently convicted of deserting just before the Iraq deployment was Pfc. Kenneth Carter, 20, court-martialed at Ft. Benning, Ga. He received a six-month sentence in a Ft. Knox prison, his mother said.

Mejia`s lawyer, Font, is a civilian who has practiced military law for 26 years. Based in Brookline, Mass., Font is a 1968 West Point graduate who became a conscientious objector and did not go to Vietnam. He received an honorable discharge in 1971, he said.

Font plans to compare the Iraq conflict to Vietnam and even refer to political accusations about President Bush`s military service during the Vietnam War.

"We are asking the military to treat [Mejia] the same way that the military treated President George Bush when he was in the Texas National Guard. That is, his alleged AWOL or desertion and failure to report to Alabama was treated through administrative channels rather than acted upon judicially," he said.

The White House has disputed such characterizations of Bush`s service, insisting that he fulfilled his military duties when the Texas Air National Guard allowed him to transfer to Alabama so he could help with a political campaign.

Not much support for him

Mejia`s resistance has divided Charlie Company. A few comrades support him. Many don`t.

Sgt. Richard Ritz, 38, of Titusville, Fla., a team leader in Iraq and a 1991 gulf war veteran, said he, too, found some of his battlefield commanders` orders and conduct disturbing but didn`t say anything.

Ritz backed Mejia`s complaints about soldiers being used as bait. Ritz said Mirabile "made too many errors in judgment and put a lot of people at risk." Mirabile has denied those accusations.

"We were put in awkward positions in which you felt you were a target of opportunity," said Ritz, who was being treated this month for depression at Ft. Stewart because his wife left him in January.

Sgt. Joshua Madsen, 25, of Indian Harbor Beach, Fla., said he was upset to see Mejia, a friend, abandon his post.

"To claim to be a conscientious objector would neglect what your [military] oath is about," Madsen said. "For him, if he wants to do that, that`s why I fought the war--so that people could have that freedom."

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

Reprinted from The Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/
chi-0403150159mar15,1,3952804.story

[Joerver]

_____________

[Joerver]

Monday, March 15, 2004
War News for March 15, 2004
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
Bring `em on: US soldier stabbed and wounded in Baghdad`s Green Zone.

Bring `em on: Arab city council member assassinated in Kirkuk.

Bring `em on: Police station mortared in Mosul.

Bring `em on: One US soldier killed, 20 wounded during anti-insurgency operations near Ramadi.

Bring `em on: Four civilians wounded during mortar attack near Abu Ghraib.

New Spanish Prime Minister promises to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. "He today said that no decision on the 1,300 Spanish troops in Iraq would be taken until he was in power and without wide political consultation, but insisted he did not intend for them to stay. He told Cadena Ser: `The war has been a disaster, the occupation continues to be a disaster, it has only generated violence.`"

US troops blamed for six Iraqis killed, four wounded near Baquba.

IGC now squabbling over UN role in elections.

Tensions between Iraqi Shi`ites and US increasing. "The Iraqis sent a delegation to Tehran, which is high on Washington`s `enemy list`, presenting it as just a neighbourly visit. But the Americans would have been stunned by the inclusion in the team of their hand-picked candidate as the likely next leader of Iraq - returned exile and former banker Ahmed Chalabi. US retaliation was swift. It closed all but three of the crossing points on the Iraq-Iran border. This was presented by the chief of the US occupation, Paul Bremer, as just another security measure, but observers saw the border tightening as a rebuke to the Iraqi Shiites who depend on the spending of thousands of Iranian pilgrims who cross daily to visit the Shiite shrine cities in Iraq - Karbala and Najaf." I suppose Chalabi is still miffed at losing that sweet $327 million security contract.

Baghdad`s trailer trash. "Smith was hired as an aide to the U.S. senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Interior but now works as a policy adviser in the civil division for fire and emergency services. He is helping to organize a national conference of emergency officials. Smith said he has spent most of his time in the Green Zone, where the occupation forces are based. Lately, he has been traveling more to other parts of the country as an interim government is being set up to assume control on July 1."

Insurgent improve tactics and bomb techniques.

"Progress in Iraq? Depends on who you ask." It sometimes seems that the Stars and Stripes is the only US news organization that actually compares the "progress reports" issued by the CPA with the perceived reality of the average Iraqi citizen. If you heard Lianne Hansen yesterday on NPR gushing during an "interview" with an IGC member, you know what I mean.

Military families sound off at Dover.

AWOL Guardsman plans to surrender, fight Bush`s War. I saw this story earlier today, but I didn`t post it until Navy Wife posted it comments and I realized that it is a relevant story. As a man, I feel sympathy for Staff Sergeant Mejia, but as a soldier I feel nothing but contempt and revulsion for an NCO who deserts his comrades in combat. Still, it`s interesting that 600 soldiers are classified as AWOL after failing to return to their units in Iraq from leave.

Selective Service creating procedures for "special skills" conscription. "Flahavan said Selective Service planning for a possible draft of linguists and computer experts began last fall after Pentagon personnel officials said the military needed more people with skills in those areas...The military has had particular difficulty attracting and retaining language experts, especially people knowledgeable about Arabic and various Afghan dialects." Of course, bogus counterintelligence investigations and prosecutions - like, say, Captain Yee`s ordeal, and Ashcroft`s targeting of those Arab-American communities that could provide a suitable recruiting base has nothing to do with the recruiting and retention problem. Move along, citizen, nothing to see here.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Wisconsin soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Maryland soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Utah soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Florida contractor killed in Iraq.



Off Topic: Texas soldier with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. "First, the disease robbed Alford of his dignity and the career he had craved since boyhood. Not knowing the monster was consuming his brain and central nervous system, his superiors in the 2nd Battalion of the Army`s 5th Special Forces Group berated and demoted him for a pattern of dereliction that included losing equipment, going AWOL and repeatedly failing to carry out commands. He was bucked down a rank and was about to be stripped of his Special Forces uniform patch, having been shipped home early from Iraq. Once the diagnosis was made, the Army made amends. Rank and pay were restored. But Alford`s parents and wife wonder why no one questioned how a soldier who had earned a Bronze Star in Afghanistan in 2002 could become, 18 months later, the foul-up of the unit. They want answers, and apologies." I live about 20 miles from Midway Meats, the slaughterhouse where a cow with BSV was slaughtered and processed a few months ago. You can see it from the southbound lanes of Interstate 5 if you`re driving from Seattle to Portland. I often see it when I fly because it`s just north of Runway 15 at the Chehalis airport, and I use the building as a reference point to start my base turn when I`m landing on that runway. Every time I see that place I`m reminded that Lieutenant AWOL has done nothing to protect the US food supply except point fingers and shout, "Not my fault!" Now, I`ll think about Sergeant Alford, too.

86-43-04. Pass it on.




# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:32 AM
Comments (7)

[Joerver]

The West was warned. Now it is paying the price of the `war on terror`

By Robert Fisk

15 March 2004 "The Independent"

They had been warned. The Aznars and the Blairs and the Bushes had been told by those who were their allies - France and Germany and many others, not to mention the Arabs - that their crusade against al-Qa`ida could most cruelly rebound upon them. The Madrid bombings are not only a terrible revenge for Spain`s participation in "part two" of the "war on terror" - the illegal invasion of Iraq - but a cruel and incrementally more painful attack on civilians by al-Qa`ida.

If America`s neo-conservatives believe in the "war of civilisations", then so does al-Qa`ida: what other effect could the Madrid slaughter have in the West than to reinforce the notion - however preposterous historically - that Islam and the West were in conflict? Civilians are
now to die in Europe as brutally as they have died in Bali and Tunisia and Istanbul and - let us, for a moment, see the world through another prism - as they have been torn to pieces by our bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sources close to Osama bin Laden`s organisation are puzzled about the strange message, supposedly from the attackers, which was printed in the Arabic language paper Al-Quds al-Arabi. It suggested that the initial response to Spain`s involvement in Iraq was the attack on Italian troops in Kerbala - if real, it would surely have referred to the killing of seven Spanish intelligence officers near Hilla. Using a public statement to order its own "cells" to make more attacks does not show the desperate discretion which al-Qa`ida normally shows in its communications.

But the arrests in Spain, the mobile phone calls, the sheer scale of the train bombings shows an al-Qa`ida as confident and ruthless as ever - and now resolved to attack in Europe. If the right foot fell in Istanbul
and the left foot fell in Madrid, where, geographically, will the next right foot fall? We can take out an atlas and a ruler and work it out for ourselves.

I don`t believe this is the Third World War. Nor is it a "war on terror". Nor is it a "war of civilisations". But our own leaders are wilfully leading us into a period of appalling suffering because they will not address the causes of injustice in the Islamic world. Repeatedly, our leaders were told of the consequences of participation in America`s Iraqi folly. They lied to us. They told us about weapons of mass destruction that didn`t exist, about links between Iraq and 11 September 2001 that didn`t exist. Now, trapped in Iraq, we are desperate to scuttle away, leaving behind us a half-trained force of collaboration police who will - supposedly - shed their blood for ours.

No, the murderers are the men who plant the bombs. The killers are those who kill - and that includes our pilots as well as their bombers. We don`t want to kill civilians. But we know that our wars will do that, and death does not come more pleasantly, less painfully, because the victims are killed by the supposedly benevolent West rather than the supposedly cruel East. Now we are beginning to pay the price.

Did it really begin on 11 September 2001? No, it began long before. And no amount of weasel words, no amount of church warden sincerity can mask the degree to which we have been taken by our leaders into this insane conflict.

Copyright: The Independent. UK.

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INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR AFGHANISTAN

AT TOKYO

THE PEOPLE

Versus

GEORGE WALKER BUSH

President of the United States of America

Present: Presiding Judge Professor Osamu Niikura( Japan ) , Professor Dr. Asaho Mizushima( Japan ), Professor Dr. R.I .Akroyd ( England ),Professor Peter Erlinder,(USA ) Professor Ms. Niloufer Bhagwat ( India ).

Judgement of Professor Ms Niloufer Bhagwat J.

For the Prosecution : Amicus Curiae

Attorneys : Ken-ichi Okobo

( Japan ) Fumito Morikawa Kohken Tsuchiya Michael Warren( US) Akira Obori

Hiroshi Yamaguchi Gyoergy Szell ( Germany)

Uyema Tsutomu Anya Mukharji (USA)

Kazuko Ito

Kenta Hagio

Hajime Kanbara

Kanae Doi

Chieko Tabe

Akiko Narumi

Sayo Saruta

Aruta Kagami

Akio Tabe

Ryosuke Kuboki

The Prosecution has presented a formidable Indictment against the Defendant, George Walker Bush, President of the United States and Commander -in-Chief of US military forces for serious crimes ; waging a war of aggression on Afghanistan, war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Afghan people, against prisoners of war ; and the use of radioactive depleted uranium weapons of mass destruction , against the people of Afghanistan ; with serious fall out effects on the military personnel of the United States ,UK and other forces deployed ; and on countries, in and around the region .

Relevant for the trial, is the profile of the Defendant , elected as the 43rd President of the United States, and sworn in as President in January 2001 ; the year of the military attack on Afghanistan ; after an election which received international focus , in view of the issues involved , resolved by the Supreme Court. The Defendant`s past history, of close association, with the Corporate sector in the United States of America, has been highlighted in the indictment by the prosecution ,in particular with the Oil and Energy sector ; the Defendant formed an oil company, the Arbusto Energy Inc in 1978, which was unsuccessful ; after which Spectrum 7 Energy of Ohio was formed in 1984 with the Defendant as CEO ; thereafter the Defendant was a Consultant to Harken Energy from 1986 , prior to being elected as Governor of Texas in 1994 and re-elected in 1998.

2.Accomplices and Accessories to the Crimes of waging a war of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity .

In view of the undisputed facts, that apart from the military forces of the United States ,ordered to be deployed by the Defendant as Commander-in-Chief for the war on Afghanistan , military forces of other governments were deployed and leading members of the defendant`s administration , participated in the decision making ; the prosecution has clarified in the indictment , that other members of the Defendant`s administration who were a party to the conspiracy to wage a war on Afghanistan ,and those heads of government who have deployed military forces of their countries to assist in the military occupation ; are equally accomplices and accessories to the crimes committed by the Defendant ; though in this trial it is the Defendant who has been proceeded against .



3. Universal Jurisdiction

The Tribunal being conscious of the basic principle of jurisprudence that ` no one must be condemned unheard ` , that ` justice must not only be done but appear to be done `; appointed amicus curiae , a Senior counsel from Japan ,to assist with the defense of the Defendant; amicus curiae entered a plea of "not guilty", on behalf of the Defendant and questioned the jurisdiction of the Tribunal as and by way of preliminary objection ; the Defendant, though duly served by the Secretariat of the ICTA through the embassy of the United States in Tokyo and directly , failed to appear before the Tribunal and enter a plea .



Professor Willaird B. Cowles in an article titled `Universality of Jurisdiction over War Crimes ( California Law Review , Vol. 33 ( 1945) p.177 ) emphasized that :

…….." all civilized states have a very real interest in the punishment of war crimes "…and that " an offense against the laws of war , as a violation of the laws of nations , is a matter of general interest and concern"…..

This was in an academic paper written more than half a century ago, when the principle of ‘Universality of Jurisdiction’, and the personal accountability of individuals for War Crimes, was gaining adherents among jurists , after the Second World War.



The objection raised to the exercise of jurisdiction by this Tribunal on behalf of the Defendant, by amicus curaie ; and the United States government claiming "impunity" in various forums , against indictment for war crimes ; is best answered by the undertaking given to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg , by the Chief Counsel for the government of the United States of America , Mr. Justice Robert H. Jackson , who stepped down temporarily ,as Judge of the United States of America , to represent the United States before the Nuremberg Tribunal , established pursuant to the Moscow Declaration and the London Agreement of 1945 , to which the government of the United States was a signatory . Justice Jackson categorically declared that:



" If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes , they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others , which we would not be willing to have invoked against us ……."



In view of this position taken before the Nuremberg Tribunal , the Defendant is liable not only before this Tribunal ,but the entire claim of ‘impunity’ of the government of the United States, is legally untenable ; no government can surrender the right vested in its citizens to invoke International Criminal Law, not by a Resolution of the Security Council nor by bilateral treaty.



On the issue raised by amicus curiae , of how authoritative is the verdict of such a Tribunal ; it is necessary to restate , that sovereignty is a constitutional and political concept , which resides in the final analysis with the people ; who have a right to judge through legal forums created by them ; at a critical period of history for serious crimes committed against humanity ; in particular , when several governments across continents have abandoned the democratic principle of governance; many being elected in seriously flawed electoral process ; on the basis of Corporate support and campaign contributions



4. The World Disorder.

The critical question , among others, posed before this Tribunal by the Prosecution is, how do we challenge this `world disorder ` ; this is a juridical question ; yet the law is always a reflection of existing economic and political systems ; though all legal systems maintain that the purpose and objective of law , is the preservation of the ‘Rule of Law’ within and between nations; this presupposes that there are no privileged individuals , classes, or groups, within and across nations .



5. The Charge of Waging a War of Aggression .

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg referring to the charge of waging a war of aggression , highlighted the gravity of this offense in the following words:



" To initiate a war of aggression …….is not only an international crime ; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes, in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole".



The legal defense of the Defendant to this charge , is to be found in public statements made by the Defendant ,after the terrorist attacks of 11th September 2001 , on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, by hijacking of aircraft in the United States ; which admittedly , destroyed the lives of approximately three thousand innocent citizens of the United States; and of other nationalities and religious beliefs .



The defense advanced by amicus curiae is, that the military attack of 7th October 2001 ordered by the Defendant, as President of the United States and its Commander in Chief , was a ‘just war’ or a ‘bellum justum’; a war of self defense, a preventive war ; in response to the terrorist attacks of al Qaeda , masterminded by Osama bin Laden, harboured by the Taliban government in Afghanistan , which had permitted terrorist camps on its territory ; who were committing hostile acts against the United States of America .



6. 11th September 2001 attacks in the United States had no connection with Afghanistan .

The prosecution has questioned the factual and legal basis of this defense , submitting at page 17 of its Indictment that -

"….. it is not etablished that the 9.11 incidents were the acts of Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda ……..the letter to the Chairman of the UN Security Council which the United States sent on October 7 ,2001 and another letter which the United Kingdom sent of October 4, 2001 and the videotape released on December 13 are inadequate as defences .Therefore the criminal activities of Osama bin Laden and the members of the al Qaeda have never been established enough to prosecute them for 9.11 incidents".



Admittedly videotapes of an individual claiming to be Osama bin Laden , reaching swiftly into the hands of the administration of the Defendant, and other governments , desiring to advance their own explanation for events; is not proof of the involvement of Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda organization ,in the terrorist attacks of 9.11 ; this is tainted evidence.



On the basis of the facts which have emerged in the public domain , of the background of Osama bin Laden and of those alleged to have perpetrated the attacks of the 11th September 2001 ; of which judicial notice can be taken as per rules of evidence of the ICTA statute ; the core issue which confronts this Tribunal is whether those who allegedly committed the crimes of the 11 th Septermber 2001 in the United States, had any connection with Afghanistan .The relevant facts to assess the defense are :



A. As per identities of the hijackers/terrorists of 11th September disclosed by US Intelligence Agencies ; 15 are citizens from Saudi Arabia ; and four others are citizens of countries like Kuwait ,Morocco , UAE .



B. There is yet , no authoritative report on the perpetrators of 9.11.The organization and circumstances, which resulted in the hijacking of so many aircraft .The US Senate Investigative Commission has held back crucial pages of its report, dealing with the role of "friendly " governments .



C. The families of the victims of the 11th September 2001 terrorist attacks , have demanded another Commission ; publicly requesting disclosure of vital evidence, such as the "black boxes " , "voice recorders" , the complete "air traffic control records" of the relevant flights ; and the airport "surveillance tapes" showing passengers boarding the flights and passenger lists.



D.Administration and Justice Department officials moved to prevent disclosure of evidence ,that could be used in discovery proceedings, in Civil Law Suits filed by many families of 9.11 victims ; Judge Hellerstein ,hearing the suits has suspended 9.11 tort law suits, pending clarification of government`s decision .



E Another 10 member commission jointly of the Senate and White House ,the Keenan Committee has been appointed , which has yet not given an authoritative report on the events of 9.11 ; some of the members of this committee ,have issued statements of being denied Daily Intelligence Briefings made to the President by the CIA in the months preceding the attack .



F. General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States military , admitted , that no US aircraft from any US air base, or from Norad , the joint US -Canadian Air Defense Command were mobilized or scrambled on 11 th September 2001 to protect the citizens of the United States .



G .Osama bin Laden is not an Afghan or a religious fighter, but a wealthy billionaire ; a citizen of Saudi Arabia ; recruited as the Intelligence asset of the United States and other countries for many years ; the pivot of the `Arab fighters `; trained in furtherance of the military strategic interests of the government of the United States on the Pakistan/ Afghanistan border; for deployment in various regions . The bin Laden family has had extensive financial interests in the United States and Saudi Arabia, including in the Carlyle Corporation, in which the Defendant and his family also had investments .



H. The takeover of the Taliban militia in 1996 , as the de facto government in Kabul controlling several regions of Afghanistan , was with the backing of the California based oil and energy company, Unocal , with extensive military and logistic support from the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Jane`s Defence Weekly an authoritative journal on defense acquisitions the world over , has conservatively estimated that half of all military supplies of the Taliban militia were from Pakistan ; which in turn obtains substantial military supplies from the government of the United States .



I. The de facto Taliban government in Kabul, was wholly dependent for support on the government of the United States and Pakistan; and had not committed a single act hostile to people of the United States ; prior to the military invasion of Afghanistan on 7th October 2001 and the dispersal of the Taliban forces .It was not the case of the Defendant that the United States was attacked by the Taliban government .



J. The al Qaeda a fact which is undisputed was not an organized military force ; they were "foreign fighters" recruited by covert agencies from several countries .



K.On the submission advanced by amicus curiae that this was a "just war " what has been termed as "bellum justum " against international terrorism, to disperse terrorist bases in Afghanistan ; it is public knowledge that the terrorist bases , were established to conduct the "holy war " against communism on the Pakistan/Afghan border by the United States with the assistance from the ISI in Pakistan ; this has been officially confirmed by the public admissions of Zbigniew Brerzinski, the eminent former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter ; who has disclosed that the first directive sanctioning assistance for the training of such fighters on the Pakistan /Afghanistan border, to pursue the civil war against the communist government in Afghanistan, was issued by President Jimmy Carter on July 3 ,1979; prior to the arrival of Soviet troops into Afghanistan ;this had the desired effect of involving the Soviet military in support of the Afghan government, which escalated the civil war ; these facts have been independently confirmed by the former Director of the CIA Robert Gates in the book "From the Shadows ".



On the basis of the aforesaid factual position the defense advanced that the military attack on Afghanistan was a "just war" as a measure of "self- defense" or a "preventive war" cannot be legally sustained.

7. The war on Afghanistan not in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations, customary International Law and the decisions of the International Court of Justice .

Despite the aforesaid findings on facts , the absence of evidence to establish that the 9.11 attacks had any connection with Afghanistan; even if such a conclusion was possible, as per the public statements of the Defendant on the reasons for waging this "War against Terror" ;would this justify a full scale military onslaught on Afghanistan by the Defendant, with hundreds of bombing sorties .

One of the most significant 20th Century developments in International Law, has been the restriction and regulation by treaty and customary law of the former unregulated privileges of States to resort to war .



The Defendant as President of the United States and as Commander -in-Chief of the United States Armed forces, was not constitutionally empowered to declare war ;the Congress under the US Constitution was not authorized to delegate to the President of the United States its constitutional power to declare war. Whereas under Article 1, Section 8 , clause 11 of the Constitution of the United States, the power to declare war vests with Congress ; limitations are imposed on the exercise of this power , by Article 1 , Section 8 , clause 15 , which mandates that Congress is not authorized to "call forth the militia " except to "execute the laws of the Union and to suppress insurrections and invasions ". The terrorist attack of 11th September 2001 was neither an invasion or insurrection of the United States of America; Congress could not delegate what was constitutionally impermissible ; prima facie the military attack on Afghanistan was an unconstitutional and illegal exercise of power by the Defendant.



Moreover the war on Afghanistan was not justified in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations ;Article 2, paragraph 4 of the United Nations , a treaty ratified and signed by the United States ,specifies that-

" all members shall refrain in their International relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State , or in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations ."

The only exception to the aforesaid binding rule, is the right to resort to self -defense under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, strictly subject to the rule of law and procedure laid down in the UN Charter ; the nature of incidents of 9.11 , were terrorist attacks ; as such Article 51 of the United Nation Charter could not be resorted to ; the issue ought to have been resolved by resorting to Conventions against terrorism to which the United States is a signatory . Article 33 of the UN Charter mandates that before resorting to war , every government is required to resort to negotiation ,mediation ,conciliation ,arbitration and judicial settlement. Admittedly this mandatory procedure was not complied with .



The communication of John Negroponte ,US Permanent Representative to the Security Council , indicates , that the decision by the Defendant to resort to war was taken , before the complete facts were available on the nature of the attack .This communication informed the Security Council that :



" Since 11 September , my government has obtained clear and compelling information that the Al Qaeda organization which is supported by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan , had a central role in the attacks. There is much we do not know .Our enquiry is in its early stages .We may find that our self-defense requires further actions with respect to other organizations and States "



It was clear that the enquiry, as to the nature and cause and perpetrators of the attack were in the "early stages" ; war cannot be resorted to unless the facts are clearly ascertained , it is a remedy of last resort ; the last sentence of this communication, that the government of the United States reserves its right to take "further actions with respect to other organizations and States" establishes that a case for continuous military intervention was already being made .



The right to resort to war as a measure self-defense , is neither unrestricted nor subjective ; as observed by the International Court of Justice in the case relating to "Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua ( Nicaragua V The United States of America , I.C.J. Reports 1986 p.94 para 176 ) ruling that;

……" the submission of the right to self-defense to the conditions of necessity and proportionality is a rule of customary International Law .."

…." there is a specific rule whereby self-defense would warrant only measures which are proportional to the armed attack and necessary to respond to it , a rule well established in International Law "…

This dual condition applies as much to customary International law and to the right of self-defense under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations .



The terrorist attacks of 9.11 in the United States were not carried out by any government or an armed contingent of any government or State party; nor authorized in any manner whatsoever by the de facto Taliban government in Kabul ; the response of the Defendant in waging a war to devastate an entire nation ,was neither a proportional response , nor warranted .



The Defendant and his administration from the past practice of States ,was wholly aware, that many countries facing terrorist attacks ; hijackings of aircraft , shooting down of civilian aircraft, and continuous cross border terrorism for several years ; have not resorted to war ; opting to negotiate on the issues .The United States government could have resorted to the provisions of the Tokyo Convention or to the 1971 Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the safety of Civil Aviation ; or to any of the existing Conventions against terrorism; a proportionate response .



Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations permits the exercise of the right to self-defense only "until the Security Council has taken measures" .The Security Council responded immediately ; the Security Council , by Resolution No.1368 passed on 11th September 2001 and Resolution No.1373 dated 28th September 2001; called on member States to work together urgently to "fully implement the relevant International Anti-Terrorist Conventions" and "prevent and suppress the financing" of terrorist attacks by "freezing financial" assets.



It may be argued, that the Defendant made an attempt to prevent the war, by demanding that Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda , should be handed over by the Taliban; this admittedly was not a bona fide attempt ; as wholly inadequate time was allotted for the staged negotiations , even though the Taliban government ,made some responses .In less than a month of the terrorist attack , before dawn on 7th October 2001 , the US-UK coalition forces launched serial bombings in Afghanistan on Kabul and on 31 major cities and towns without exhausting other alternative remedies .



The document Prosecution Ex. B-1 which is the address of the Defendant to Congress dated 20th September 2001 establishes that the Defendant declared that the Al Qaeda organization , was to be found in sixty countries; that the "war against terror" ,was just beginning with Afghanistan, as the first target ,but not the last ; and that for the Defendant , the military attack on Afghanistan was only the first of a series of wars to be initiated against different nations.



In any assessment of the nature of the war in Afghanistan , it must be remembered that the United States had termed Soviet military troop presence in Afghanistan, in support of the then Afghan government in 1979 ; as Soviet military aggression ; applying the same standards , the war waged by the Defendant could not be regarded as a "just war" or a war in "self –defense"; as the Taliban government admittedly did not request for any military assistance from the United States ,which the Afghan government in 1979 had sought from the former USSR, against the Mujahideen groups waging covert war .



The issue of waging a war of aggression cannot be judged by this Tribunal blindfold ; events in Iraq , even before the hearings of this Tribunal commenced , establish a consistent pattern which this Tribunal is entitled to take judicial notice of ; the war in Afghanistan was followed, by the military attack on Iraq; on the basis of "non-existing weapons of mass destruction"; a war in which the entire infrastructure of Iraq was destroyed in a manner similar to Afghanistan ; DU weapons were extensively used in both countries as weapons of extermination of present and future generations , genocidal in properties .It is only the oil pipelines , oil wells and platforms and the contracts of Corporations which had to be secured ;even as the livelihood and economies of both nations were destroyed.

The war waged on Afghanistan was manifestly a war of aggression .



8.The alternative reaons advanced by the prosecution for the War of Aggression - UNOCAL`s ( Centgas consortium ) objective of regime change for the pipeline project.

The prosecution has referred in the Indictment to the involvement of oil and energy Companies of the United States ,in the internal affairs of Afghanistan as the real reason for this war, and relied on public documents, establishing that the California based Oil Company , the Unocal , through a seven member consortium Centgas , had commenced negotiations with various factions, in the government of Afghanistan ; for its pipelines project , across Afghanistan , Pakistan , to the Indian Ocean ; from the oil-gas rich Central Asiatic Republics of the former USSR ; in preference to the old pipeline routes through Russia or an alternative route through Iran. ( UNOCAL Position Statement : "Proposed Central Asian Pipeline Projects" ,(1998 ) www,unocal.com ).

This project aimed at exercising monopoly control over the hydrocarbon resources in this region and distribution through pipelines ; referred to in the Complaint/Petition lodged in 1998 , by citizens groups to the Attorney General of California , under California Code of Civil Procedure 803 and the California Corporations Code ,1801 , for cancellation of Charter of UNOCAL, for violation of human rights within the USA, in Afghanistan and Myanmar.

The Unocal company commenced negotiations with various political factions in the government ; however the internecine fratricidal struggle of the former Mujahideen groups ,created a difficult situation for negotiation ; as a consequence the Unocal , supported the creation of a hard line Taliban militia government , with arms supplies and logistic support from Pakistan ; supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia ;which gradually captured Kabul and extensive areas in the southern ,central and eastern regions of Afghanistan .

The proposed pipeline project once again faced difficulties, on the failure of the Taliban militia , to control the entire geographical territory of Afghanistan, in particular the Northern regions close to Turkmenistan and other Republics ; vital for the pipelines, which continued under the control of the Northern Alliance; and the difficulties in respect of the alternative negotiations being conducted by the Argentinian Company Bridas in the same region . Unocal in these circumstances, increasingly frustrated , sought political /military alternatives by way of "regime change ".

Admittedly Unocal’s case on the pipeline project was advanced through successive US administrations. Financial investments and inflows of capital into the United States, it has always been emphasized by US oil and energy Corporations; could be controlled, by monopoly control and distribution of hydrocarbon resources of the world .

The prosecution has placed on record before this Tribunal , Prosecution document Ex.A -40 which is the testimony of John J. Maresca , Vice President , International Relations , UNOCAL Corporation, to the House Committee on International Relations , Subcommittee on Asia and Pacific on 12th February,1998(www.house.gov/international_.relations105th ap/wsap212982.htm.) A core document on the stand of the prosecution, that the reason for the war lay elsewhere ; in the hydrocarbon resources of the region .



John Maresca , Vice President of Unocal , in his testimony outlined implicitly a future rational for a military invasion of Afghanistan and take over of its resources .The testimony indicates disillusionment with the Taliban forces, which UNOCAL had once supported and spells out future possibilities-

……" The country has been involved in a bitter warfare for almost a decade. The territory across which the pipeline would extend is controlled by the Taliban , an Islamic movement that is not recognized as a government by most other nations .From the outset we have made it clear that construction of the proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments , lenders and our company……….Inspite of this , a route through Afghanistan appears to be the best option …….Centgas cannot begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan government is in place .For the project to advance it must have international financing ……"



In 1998 even as the Taliban and Northern alliance battled for control of the Northern Region , the UNOCAL company posted on its web page on August 21 ,1998 ( also reproduced in the memorandum submitted by citizens groups in the USA to the Attorney General of California in 1998 referred to earlier ) the following statement --



" As a result of sharply deteriorating political conditions in the region , Unocal which serves the development manager for the Central Asian ( Centgas) pipeline consortium , has suspended all activities involving the proposed pipeline project in Afghanistan "……..

………."Unocal will only participate in construction of the proposed Central Asian Gas Pipeline when and if Afghanistan achieves peace and stability, necessary to obtain financing from International Agencies for this project and an established government is recognized by the United Nations and the United States ."

Simultaneously the economic and political reasons, which was the ideology for the new wars for oil, hydrocarbon and other resources , amid deteriorating economic conditions for Corporate America ; was being worked out by the Project for the New American Century , which dovetailed with the aggressive economic policies of the Oil , Energy and other Corporations .

In 1997 prominent Republican party members among them , Donald

Rumsfield , Dick Cheney , Jeb Bush , Paul Wolfwitz , John Bolton , Peter Rodham , Zalmay Khalilzad ( an employee of UNOCAL ) and 18 other prominent Americans ,broadly known as the neo-conservatives , organized the Project for the New American Century, the PNAC (www.newamericancentury.order )for the establishment of a New World Order .A reference to these facts, influencing the ideology of the Defendant is necessary ; just as a reference to the ideology of the Nazi party was permitted to be brought on record at the Nuremberg trials.

Objectively considered , governments of both Republican and Democratic parties have resorted to war , to control regions and resources prior to, during and after the Second World War .However the PNAC in its document published in September 2000 called "Rebuilding America`s defenses :Strategy , Forces and Resources for a New Century " was an ideological justification to prepare the citizens of the United States for continuous wars..The PNAC documented highlighted that -

….." At present United States faces no global rival .America`s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position so far into the future as possible ……`

……." Further the process of transformation , even if it brings revolutionary change is likely to be a long one , absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -----like a new Pearl Harbour ……."

……." And advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool …….."

The prosecution has conclusively proved its case, for the alternative reasons for the war of aggression waged by the Defendant ; which was regime change , in the interest of Unocal ‘s pipeline project , by inviting judicial notice of the Tribunal to established facts , that whereas Afghanistan was attacked on 7th October 2001 ; a conference was convened by the government of the United States and NATO on 27th November 2001 ,acquiesced to by the Secretary General of the United Nations to form a transitional government, not in Afghanistan but in Bonn ; where the four non-Taliban Northern Alliance groups remained present .The cabinet was nominated on 5th December 2001 by the United States of America and other occupying powers not by these groups . Even earlier ,on 1st December 2001 , President Hamid Karzai, a resident of the United States over several years, a green card holder ; the former official Representative of Unocal to the erstwhile Taliban militia`s de facto government in Kabul , was sworn in as head of the interim government ( officially called the Transitional Government of Afghanistan ).Unocal now directly controls the government of Afghanistan.



On 23rd January 2003 , the Project for the New American Century , the PNAC sent one more note to President Bush which stated …………" we write to endorse the bold course you have chartered for American National Security strategy ……..the victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan was an essential step in stabilizing that country………other rogue states remain a major problem."

In 1864 referring to the increasing interference of Corporations in the political life of the USA ;President Abraham Lincoln was to warn in a letter to Colonel William Elkins :

" I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country………Corporations have been enthroned and an era of high corruption will follow and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed …"

The decision for regime change in Afghanistan, as in the changes of the earlier governments in Afghanistan , was dictated by the interests of Unocal and the Centgas consortium ; the result was war.



9.Testimony of RAWA Revolutionary Association of Afghan Women

A vital and independent witness at this trial , is Witness D, a representative of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of Afghan Women (the name of the witness cannot be disclosed for reasons of personal security; the Tribunal has resorted to alphabetical identification of these witnesses with a view to ensure their security ) who deposed on the tragedies inflicted by the government of the United States and other outside powers on the Afghan people; emphasizing that the war waged by US forces did not liberate the people and women of Afghanistan as was claimed by the Defendant ;the militarily attack on Afghanistan ,brought even more suffering on the Afghan people ; who faced bombings and were once again refugees in the camps . Women faced increasing insecurity and even rape and kidnapping by warring factions .That the Taliban militia was initially supported by the United States, as were the former Mujahideen who had regrouped as Northern ‘war lords" ; Osama bin Laden ,not an Afghan had been supported by the United States . The witness emphasized that women in Afghanistan ,did not need to be emancipated by foreign military forces ; they had been emancipated by the Afghan ruler Shah Amanullah in 1920, and had the right to vote from 1929;. Despite the dispersal of the Taliban women continued to be oppressed , by the "war lords" who were members of the Karzai Government and some of the provincial governors .Coercive laws ,continued to exist against women , even in Kabul ; the dignity and equal rights of Afghan women , which prevailed in the period prior to 1979, before the civil war commenced in Afghanistan, has not been restored.; Afghanistan because of these civil war conditions, followed by military occupation , was economically devastated and had been reduced to the world’s biggest producer of opium .

The evidence of this witness , who does not belong to any of the political factions in the tortuous history of Afghanistan , supports the prosecution case, that the war waged by the Defendant was not a "just war ", against terrorism ;and that the defendant had committed the serious crime of waging a war of aggression against a nation already facing difficult conditions , by external support to extremist and other organizations misusing religion in Afghanistan ; and that women had not been emancipated by this war as was claimed by the Defendant .



10.The effects of 9.11 and of the war on the people of the United States.

The 11th September 2001 terrorist attacks and the war , raise issues as to the use of 9.11 attacks and the war; within the United States ; even as Corporations, collapsed ,due to financial accounting frauds and systemic problems ,which resulted in millions of job losses , attributed to 9.11 by the media ,

Two witnesses appeared before the Tribunal, to depose about conditions in the United States, immediately after the 11 th September 2001 . Mr. Bobby Marsh who lost a loved one in the World Trade Centre , gave the Tribunal a poignant account of the personal tragedies of so many people in the United States , including his own.. The attacks were seen by him and other people in the United States , first on Television .The visual images had a devastating impact on him and other people ; those who had loved ones in these buildings were agonized about their safety .The witness deposed that he was informed on the cell phone by Margaret, his close friend and companion who worked at the World Trade Centre , ; that instructions had been given by some officials to all those trapped in the towers , when the attack took place , to stay where they were ,till the fire brigade department gave further instructions ;his companion who obeyed the instructions died . This was the last communication that he was to receive from her .Many people who rushed to safety , ignoring official instructions , survived . This witness further deposed that the terrorist attacks of 11th September 2001 were used to create paranoia among the people ;there was an attempt to create a war hysteria .The media in particular was immediately mobilizing people for war ; on the other hand the anti- war movement was supported by thousands of Americans across the United States who did not support a war on Afghanistan ; even some of those who were affected by the 9.11 terrorist attacks and had lost their loved ones .

Ms Gloria Lavera, President of the press workers union , the Union of Typographical Workers gave detailed evidence on the use of the print and television media to create mass hysteria ; and on the deteriorating situation within the United States for the freedom and democratic rights of citizens ; with workers losing jobs , facing repression, and reductions in their social security benefits ;the witness mentioned that immigrants were detained in hundreds without trial and no access to legal counsel .Simultaneously surveillance commenced, on different groups and individuals ,by intelligence organizations within the United States including illegally accessing their internet., telephones , and even libraries to verify their political beliefs .In this atmosphere , the Patriot Act was passed , sacrificing political freedom in the name of National Security; authorizing detentions and extensive surveillance of law abiding citizens. In answer to a question from the Tribunal , as to in whose interest the Patriot Act was passed ; this witness replied that it was passed in the interest of the Corporations in the context of mounting job losses .



11. War Crimes

The Defendant as Commander –in –Chief of US forces ,was aware that the military attack on Afghanistan was unjustified ; yet orders were given for the carpet bombing of cities , towns , and villages .The nature of weapons of mass destruction used , the range of firepower unleashed in a country with few military targets ; resulted in mass murder of civilians and unnecessary loss of life of combatants who were surrendering .The entire infrastructure of Afghanistan was destroyed;



The women of Afghanistan who have lived through the horror of these war crimes , have given evidence before this Tribunal; their oral evidence has been reinforced and supported by authoritative reports of humanitarian and scientific organizations . It is clear from these reports from neutral sources, that the bombings of United States military forces were indiscriminate, sparing neither the International Red Cross Hospitals in Kabul and Kandahar, the Kajakai dam ; warehouses of the Red Cross where food was stored ; the maternity hospital at Kabul ; the military hospital at Herat ; homes ,electrification facilities , irrigation projects , schools, TV stations and telephone exchanges were among other institutions indiscriminately bombed and destroyed ; constructed over years of development efforts by the people of Afghanistan ,a landlocked developing country .

The testimony of Kenji Katsui, a journalist from Japan, who with a team investigated the destruction caused by the war and bombing ; reveals that in several parts of Kabul , in towns and villages across of Afghanistan ,civilian homes and the infrastructure of the country was in ruins, due to bombing ; sources of water supply and electricity were affected, normal life in such circumstances for the people was impossible .The witness conceded that a civil war, had raged in Afghanistan for more than 20 years , causing immense suffering ; however he emphasized, that the war waged by the United States was the final blow. The witness handed over the video film taken by him which was screened by the Tribunal , of the destruction caused and interviews with people in Afghanistan .The witness maintained that his testimony was supported by the entire investigative team ; present as observers at the trial.

There have been other agonizing accounts before this Tribunal , of indiscriminate bombing of civilian homes and areas; from witnesses for whom it was not easy to depose ,as they were women from Afghanistan ,the victims of the bombing , directly affected .Witnesses A, B and C ( whose identities have been concealed on request by referring to them in an alphabetical order )

Witness A had lost members of her family in the bombings of Kabul in a civilian home ; Witness B fled from Afghanistan ,when the bombings commenced from US aircraft ; trekked several miles seeking shelter in refugee camps on the borders of Afghanistan/Pakistan ,which she said lacked in 2001 the basic facilities ,such as food and other amenities, which had been available during the earlier civil war in Afghanistan , when she had sought shelter from successive regimes and their atrocities; deposing that she and her family had become a refugee four times since 1979 .Witness C had lost her daughter , a dedicated young teacher in her early twenties , immediately after her marriage ; the couple had been bombed in their home, by United States forces while they were asleep ; her only desire was that a school be constructed, to commemorate her daughter`s commitment to education .

On answers to questions from the Tribunal the witnesses denied that their homes were military targets , or in close proximity to any military installations ; Witness A stated that a few Taliban were residing in residential homes in the area , but there were no military installations .

The witnesses agonized by their loss, maintained , that the reason for their presence at the trial , was the necessity to find a voice for the suffering inflicted on them ,without reason ; and the disruption of their lives earlier by the civil war between the Mujahideen forces and the government of Afghanistan , when Russian troops arrived ; thereafter by the warlords ; after that by the Taliban forces ; and finally by the US military invasion , bombings and occupation ; they had lost hope for the future .

Even as the Tribunal prepared for its concluding hearings in December 2003 ; a UN spokesmen on 5th/6th December expressed regret that 15 children were killed in US bombing ,on a village .Whereas US forces claimed that this was collateral damage as they were pursuing the Taliban .



12. Plea on behalf of the Defendant of "collateral damage" on civilians that use of weapons of mass destruction not prohibited by a specific Convention; legally untenable in view of clear rules of International Humanitarian Law for the conduct of warfare.



The defense advanced by amicus curiae on behalf of the Defendant , to the charge of war crimes committed on civilians, by indiscriminate bombings on the population, and on existing civilian infrastructure; on combatants and non-combatants alike ; is that this was collateral damage in a just war against terrorism ; that the Defendant had no knowledge of the bombings on civilians and civilian infrastructure; and that none of the weapons used in Afghanistan by US forces , even though weapons of immense destructive power were prohibited by specific Conventions to which the United States was a signatory .



It is necessary to reiterate well established principles of Interntaional Humanitarian Law which prohibit such war crimes. In the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Nuclear Weapons rendered in 1996 ; Judge Christopher Gregory Weeramantry, in a learned and reflective judgement , recalled , that traditional principles of Humanitarian Law is deep rooted in many cultures and civilizations ,whether "Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese , Christian , Islamic and traditional African" among other civilizations, over thousands of years, Referring to and quoting the famous "Martens clause" introduced by unanimous vote into the Hague Convention of 1899 on the Laws and Customs of War on Land ( Hague IV ) and the 1907 Hague Convention which mandated that -



……." In cases not included in the Regulations adopted by them , the inhabitants and belligerents remain under the protection and the rule of the principles of the law of nations , as they result from the usage established among civilized peoples , from the law of humanity and the dictates of conscience ."



Justice C.G. Weeramantry referred in his judgement to an interesting historical fact , relevant in this trial of the Defendant; that Mr Martens, author of the aforesaid " Marten Clause " had clarified, during the negotiations of the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions ;that Mr.Martens owed the inspiration of this clause" to President Abraham Lincoln ‘s directives to Professor Leiber, to prepare instructions for General Grant , to draw up regulations ,for the humane conduct of the War of Secession in the United States ,between forces of the Union and Confederacy"….. and what was referred to as the "Martens clause" in International Humanitarian Law was its "logical and natural development".

To contend as the Defendant does, that the United States Armed forces and its President , is not bound by rules of International Humanitarian Warfare for the manufacture , stockpiling and use of weapons , in violation of the laws of warfare ; of which a critical clause, reproduced thereafter in practically every Convention regulating International Humanitarian Law, was inspired by President Abraham Lincoln of the United States ; is an attempt to turn back the clock of history, and to continue the tragic and criminal decision making of the government of the United States , that led to the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki , serious war crimes ; and which the Tokyo District Court in Shimoda v The State( The Japanese Annual of International Law ,Vol 8 1964 ,p 240 ) did not take to its correct logical and legal conclusion; though the court conceded in a part of its reasoning, that it could "safely see that besides poison gas and bacterium the use of means of injuring the enemy which causes at least the same or more injury is prohibited by International Law…." It is necessary to recall the threat of the government of the United States

to bomb Vietnam "into the stone age " while assessing these Crimes.

The International Court of Justice in the Advisory Opinion on Nuclear

Weapons in 1996 ; referred to customary International law regulating the conduct of war ;to the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions; the four Geneva Conventions including the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating Poisonous and other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare; the two Additional Protocols of 1977, binding on all State parties, even those who are not signatories ,as these protocols merely reaffirm existing principles of International Customary Law regulating armed conflict ; the Environmental Modification Convention of 1977 and the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980;as International Humanitarian Law on the conduct of warfare emphasizing that the " Martens Clause " is the link between Treaty Law and Customary International Law in International Humanitarian Law.

In addition to the aforesaid Conventions , the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use , Stockpiling , Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction of 1997 , and similar Conventions ; merely codify ,established principles of customary International law , that the right of parties "to adopt means of injuring the enemy are not unlimited" and "arms , projectiles or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering shall not be used "; and that civilian populations are not to be harmed , among other principles codified subsequently by Convention .



The working paper prepared , pursuant to the Resolution 2001/6 , by Y.K.J.Yeung Sik Yuen on " Human Rights and Weapons of Mass Destruction , Or With Indiscriminate Effect , or of a Nature to Cause Superfluous Injury or Unnecessary Suffering" for the Sub-Commission on the promotion and protection of Human Rights , of the Commission of Human Rights, Economic and Social Council( E/CN.4/Sub.2/2002/38 dated 27th June 2002 ) broadly reiterates the principles of the aforesaid Advisory Opinion of the ICJ.The author referring to the principles of customary International Humanitarian Law ,and to the Conventions and treaties , in force for over a century has correctly summarized the tests to be satisfied before weapons systems fulfil the legal test for deployment as follows-



"The above Conventions are by no means exhaustive and taken together with the precepts of customary International Law show that a number of legal principles banning or limiting certain arms are now firmly established .



Weapons are to be considered banned if :

Their use has indiscriminate effects ( no effective distinction between civilians and belligerents);
Their use is out of proportion with the pursuit of military objective;
Their use adversely affects the environment in a widespread , long term and severe manner;
Their use causes superflous injury and unnecessary suffering."
In accordance with these tests, the following weapons systems used in Afghanistan are illegal and their permitted use by the Defendant, Commander-in –Chief of US forces are War Crimes .The illegal weapons are:

1.Depleted Uranium munitions

2. Fuel –air explosives (FAEs) or Daisy Cutters

3.Cluster bombs.

4.Anti-Personnel mines



13. Use of genocidal and omnicidal radioactive Depleted Uranium weapons in Afghanistan , a war crime ,genocide, and omnicide

The evidence presented before the Tribunal , which has shocked the conscience of the judges of this Tribunal, is the thoroughly researched evidence on the genocidal and omnicidal nature of Depleted Uranium weapons used in Afghanistan by United States military forces , with the Defendant as their Commander-in-Chief by Leuren Moret , President , Scientists For Indigenous People, City of Berkely Environmental Commissioner ; Professor Katsuma Yagasaki of the Faculty of Science of the Ryukyus University, Okinawa ; and of Major Doug Rokke , Professor of Physics and Geosciences of Jacksonville State University , former Director of DU weapons project of the US army from 1994- 1995 in charge of the cleaning up of DU in Iraq , himself affected by DU .

These three witnesses made available to this Tribunal , details of their investigations , scientific documents, memorandum from the US army sources and the Manhattan project ; statistical studies of people of Iraq , children and others exposed to DU ordnance after the first Gulf War, including from the Gulf War Veterans Association , on the nature of this weapon ; which prove beyond doubt that the Defendant as Commander-in-Chief of US forces used DU weapons in Afghanistan ,in the manner that Zyklon-B was used across Europe ; as a weapon of mass murder in Afghanistan calculated to destroy of all living species exposed .

Professor Albrecht Schott , Scientist , World Depleted Uranium Centre, Berlin in an address titled "Consequences of the Military and Civil Use of Depleted Uranium (DU)", at the public symposium on `American Policy and its Consequences`, has described Depleted Uranium as " A Weapon Against This Planet ." Prosecution Document E-130 ; this leads logically to the word "Omnicide" used by witness Leuren Moret, among other scientists while describing the effect of this weapon system ; as going beyond the "silent genocide" it has inflicted on the Afghan and Iraqi people .

Rosalie Bartell author of the classic book "No Immediate Danger" has given the following comprehensive meaning of the term Omnicide as :



"The concept of species annihilation means a relatively swift , deliberately induced end to history , culture , science , biological reproduction and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection of the gift of life , an act which requires a new word to describe it as omnicide ."



The use of DU ordnance in Afghanistan by the United States military forces has not been denied . The US military forces with the Defendant as Commander-in-Chief ,with full knowledge of the nature and impact of the weapons system, known to the Manhattan project as early as 1943 ; used DU ordnance by way of attack aircraft, AH-64 helicopter gun ships , advanced cruise missiles ,CALCM among others . PGU -14 API uranium piercing munitions fired by Vulcan Canon installed on A10 Gun ships, and AH-64 Apache gun ships apart from the Bunker buster bombs( DU weapons ) which were dropped from F-16 attack planes .

It is authoritatively estimated by independent scientific investigations and reports on record before this Tribunal , and the prosecution conservatively estimates , that at the very minimum 500-600 tonnes of DU ordnance were used throughout Afghanistan including at Tora Bora, Shaikoot , Paktia , Mazare-e-Sharif , Jalalabad , Nangarhar ,Khost , Kundoz and Kabul around Bagram from October 2001 after the bombings commenced on 7th October 2001, whereas Dr Mohammed Daud Miraki of the Afghanistan Recovery Fund refers to not less than 1000 tonnes of Depleted and undepleted Uranium being used .

On 16th January 2002 , the Secretary for Defense, Mr.Rumsfield in a briefing confirmed that "high levels of radioactive count" had been confirmed due to the result of "Depleted Uranium shells on some warheads"-Prosecution Document Ex . E-122. Mr Philip Coyle Senior Adviser of the Centre for Defense Information in Washington DC , admitted that DU weapons had been used in Afghanistan.

The documented reports of Marc Herold and Dai Williams , Prosecution documents at Ex . E-118 and E-119; the Survey of the Uranium Medical Research Centre, Washington DC ; Prosecution Document - E 120; the reports of Dr Mohammed Daud Miraki , Afghan Recovery Fund, referred to above , Prosecution Documents Ex. E-137 and E -138, among other documents; refer in detail to the widespread use and effects of DU weapons on the people in Afghanistan inflicting slow and painful death , termed the "silent genocide "; affecting the unborn , altering irreversibly the genetic code of all those exposed .

Testimonies of fathers and mother , made to the field teams of the Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC ) are horrifying : " What else do the Americans want ?They killed us , they turned our new borns into horrific deformations , and they turned our farm lands into grave yards and destroyed our homes. On top of all this their planes fly over and spray us with bullets……we have nothing to lose …….we will fight them the same way we fought the previous invaders …….( Sayed Gharib at Tora Bora ).

Ms Leuren Moret gave vital evidence of United States military policy , on the use of DU weapons, tracing the history of its creation and the politics of its use - Prosecution document Ex .E 156 .Ms Leuren Moret deposed that - after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , an international outcry and taboo against nuclear weapons, prevented the further use of nuclear and radioactive weapons ;this policy was abandoned in 1991;a decision was made by the Strategic Command in the USA to blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons by introducing DU into the battlefield ; this witness has aptly described DU as the "trojan horse " of nuclear weapons ; with similar effects .

The witness maintained that it was the cost factor which made DU weaponry an attractive weapon for the arms industry ; though on the other hand the cost to humanity ,was an unacceptable cost ; deposing further, that DU being a byproduct from nuclear weapons and nuclear power industries; a "radioactive" hazard , a liability to the Department of Energy ; millions of tons were passed on to the "military -industrial " complex for the manufacture of weapons . By selling depleted uranium weapons to more than 20 countries , the DOE has made a profitable business for the arms industry.



The documents produced by this witness, handed over to her by Major Doug Rokke ; prove conclusively that the United States government and military were aware from 1943 , of the genocidal and omnicidal nature of DU weapons .A memorandum dated 30th October 1943 , received by General Groves in charge of the Manhattan Project ( nuclear weapons project ) from three physicians working under him , Prosecution document Ex -E 126, recommends that radiological materials be developed for use as a military weapon on the battlefield .It was a blueprint for depleted uranium weaponry.

The aforesaid memorandum describing the property of DU weapons describes that "……. The material ….. ground into particles of microscopic size …..would be distributed in the form of dust and smoke by ground fired projectiles , land vehicles and bombs……. inhaled by personnel …….it is estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a persons body would be fatal .There are no known methods of treatment for such casualty……areas so contaminated by radioactive dusts and smokes would be dangerous as long as high concentration of metal was maintained .……reservoirs or wells would be contaminated….. food poisoned ….particles larger than I micron would be deposited in the nose ,trachea and bronchi……..particles smaller than 1 micron are more likely to be deposited in alveoli where they will remain ….or be absorbed into the lymphatics or blood…….Beta and gamma emitting fission products ……may be absorbed by the blood and distributed to the whole body."



In the second document produced , memorandum dated 1ST March 1991 addressed by Lt.Col.M.V.Zeiman (after the first Gulf War of 1991 ) to Major Larsson of the Studies and Analysis Branch on the subject of " The Effectiveness of Depleted Uranium Penetrators , Prosecution Document Ex. E-127 ,emphasizes that ……" the impact of DU penetrators were very effective against Iraqi armour ………..there has been and continues to be concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment……DU rounds may become politically unacceptable……and thus be deleted from the arsenal …………we should ensure their future existence ………I believe we should keep this in mind when after action reports are written" .



The interpretation of this memorandum ,by the witness Leuren Moret , that this memorandum in fact directed ,that after action reports should be falsified , to conceal the real effects of DU weaponry , is correct.



The third significant document produced by this witness , is the communication dated 19th August 1993, Prosecution Document Ex . E -128, by Brigadier Eric .K.Shinskei ,at the relevant time Brigadier General ,GS , Director of Training forwarded to the Assistant Secretary of the Army ( Installation , logistics and Environment ) on the subject : Review of Draft Report to Congress -Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium in the US army .This communication states that after Operation Desert Storm ( the first Gulf War ) the GAO examined the Army`s ability to contend with Depleted Uranium contamination .The GAO published a draft memorandum which was accepted by the Department of Defence on 15th January 1993 which was a tasking memorandum directing the Secretary of Army to -



Provide adequate training for personnel who may come in contact with DU contaminated equipment ;
Complete medical testing of all personnel exposed to DU contamination.
Develop a plan for DU contaminated equipment recovery during future operation .


Leuren Moret , concluding her testimony deposed ,that from the properties of DU weapons ; its radioactive particles travelling through air ,water and food sources ; it is not only countries where these weapons are used which are in the affected zone ,but all countries within a radius of approximately 1000 miles of the use of DU weapons ;due to the wind factor and atmospheric dusts ; a map was displayed indicating the countries in the DU affected zone from the use of the weaponry in Afghanistan and Iraq , placed on record of this Tribunal which indicates that Iran, Pakistan , Turkey , Turkmenistan , Uzbekistan , Russia , Georgia , Azerbaijan , Kazakhstan, China and India, are among the countries affected by the use of DU weaponry in Afghanistan ; and Saudi Arabia , Syria , Lebanon , Palestine , Israel , Turkey , Iran are among the countries affected by the use DU weapons in Iraq during both the military attacks against Iraq.

Major Doug Rokke Director of the DU project from 1994
to 1995 , himself a victim of the DU weapons, clean up operations after the first Gulf War ; was interviewed at the Hamburg Conference on DU in October 2003 , by Prosecutor Kazuko Ito ;the video of interview is Prosecution document Ex. E 124 ; amicus curiae who has seen the interview has raised no objections to its production .Major Doug Rokke commenting on his attempts to focus on the risks of DU weapons while in charge of the DU program of the US army stated:



"……military officers from the UK , Australia , Canada and Germany participated in the project to study the risk of DU weapons and I was directed by the Army to direct the team……..we submitted recommendations which were completely ignored ……..the US army has not taken any measures to protect soldiers .Although we made a proposal that clean-up is essential , complete clean up is impossible .Therefore we proposed, not to use DU weapons any longer .However our proposal was ignored by the upper level of the government and completely ignored by NATO, UK , Australia and others"

Referring to the videos which had been made for the Pentagon about DU weapons ; on risks , clean up measures , method of measuring radioactivity etc. for the US army ; the witness emphasized that these videos were never used and the U.S decided to seal this DU project ,because the results revealed that DU weapons were extremely risky and its use would be prohibited by international pressure. The United States government the witness stated , continues to use these weapons because they are inexpensive and effective , and also because it is a milestone to make fourth generation nuclear ordnance acceptable , by advancing the proposition that contamination of fourth generation nuclear weapons ,would not exceed the levels of radioactive contamination of DU .

The evidence of Major Doug Rokke , has to be assessed in the light of the report on Gulf War Veterans .By now half of all the 697, 000 soldiers involved in the 1991 Gulf War have reported serious illnesses. According to the Gulf War Veterans Association ,more than 30% are chronically ill .Children born to soldiers of coalition personnel after the Gulf War were born deformed or with serious birth defects; including those who had healthy babies earlier .Recently a soldier in the UK has succeeded after several years of struggle, in obtaining a judgement which recognizes the DU weapons had caused serious physiological effects .

The third witness before the Tribunal on the issue of the use of DU weapons as a War Crime , Professor Katsuma Yagasaki , Prosecution documents Ex. E 158 and 159 presented oral and documentary evidence clarifying that the term "depleted "seems to convey the incorrect impression that DU is uranium that does not contain radioactivity any more , which is not the case ; as DU ammunition causes radioactive contamination and is no less serious than nuclear weapons .Even one DU particle has adequate capacity to cause cancer and once absorbed into the body can transform genes , cells and affect all the organs and lymph nodes . Professor Yakasaki deposed that the total amount of 235U dispersed in Hiroshima was 61.2 kilograms ; since it was estimated that about 500-600 tons of DU weapons were used in Afghanistan ,DU pollution in Afghanistan is 8,170 tons more than in Hiroshima ; that the adverse effects of radioactive contamination in Afghanistan and the internal radiation risk is beyond our imagination, as the alpha ray from the DU damages the DNA irreversibly and that the entire concept of low radiation risk was misleading with respect to internal exposure, as DU is absorbed by inhalation and internal con

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The American elections, the future of alliances and the lessons of Spain

The author is a leading historian of modern warfare. He wrote `Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914" and, in 2002, `Another Century of War?`

by Gabriel Kolko

The American elections, the future of alliances and the lessons of Spain

March 15, 2004 "Sydney Morning Herald" -We are now experiencing fundamental changes in the international system whose implications and consequences may ultimately be as far-reaching as the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.

The United States` strength, to a crucial extent, has rested on its ability to convince other nations that it was to their vital interests to see America prevail in its global role. But the scope and ultimate consequences of its world mission, including its extraordinarily vague doctrine of "preemptive wars," is today far more dangerous and open-ended than when Communism existed. Enemies have disappeared and new ones - many once former allies and even congenial friends - have taken their places. The United States, to a degree to which it is itself uncertain, needs alliances, but these allies will be bound into uncritical "coalitions of the willing."

But the events in Spain over the past days, from the massive deadly explosions in Madrid to the defeat of the ruling party because it supported the Iraq war despite overwhelming public opposition to doing so, have greatly raised the costs to its allies of following Washington`s lead.

So long as the future is to a large degree - to paraphrase Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - "unknowable," it is not to the national interest of its traditional allies to perpetuate the relationships created from 1945 to 1990. The Bush Administration, through ineptness and a vague ideology of American power that acknowledges no limits on its global ambitions, and a preference for unilateralist initiatives which discounts consultations with its friends much less the United Nations, has seriously eroded the alliance system upon which U. S. foreign policy from 1947 onwards was based. With the proliferation of all sorts of destructive weaponry, the world will become increasingly dangerous.

If Bush is reelected then the international order may be very different in 2008 than it is today, much less in 1999, but there is no reason to believe that objective assessments of the costs and consequences of its actions will significantly alter American foreign policy priorities over the next four years.

If the Democrats win they will attempt in the name of internationalism to reconstruct the alliance system as it existed before the Yugoslav war of 1999, when even the Clinton Administration turned against the veto powers built into the NATO system. America`s power to act on the world scene would therefore be greater. Kerry voted for many of Bush`s key foreign and domestic measures and he is, at best, an indifferent candidate. His statements and interviews over the past weeks dealing with foreign affairs have been both vague and incoherent. Kerry is neither articulate nor impressive as a candidate or as someone who is likely to formulate an alternative to Bush`s foreign and defense policies, which have much more in common with Clinton`s than they have differences. To be critical of Bush is scarcely justification for wishful thinking about Kerry. Since 1947, the foreign policies of the Democrats and Republicans have been essentially consensual on crucial issues - "bipartisan" as both parties phrase it - but they often utilise quite different rhetoric.

Critics of the existing foreign or domestic order will not take over Washington this November. As dangerous as it is, Bush`s reelection may be a lesser evil because he is much more likely to continue the destruction of the alliance system that is so crucial to American power. One does not have to believe that the worse the better but we have to consider candidly the foreign policy consequences of a renewal of Bush`s mandate.

Bush`s policies have managed to alienate, in varying degrees, innumerable nations, and even its firmest allies - such as Britain, Australia, and Canada - are being required to ask if giving Washington a blank check is to their national interest or if it undermines the tenure of parties in power. Foreign affairs, as the terrorism in Madrid has so dramatically shown, are too important to simply endorse American policies. Not only the parties in power can pay dearly for it; more important are the innumerable victims among the people.

Germany has already called for European Union action to prevent repetitions of the Madrid catastrophe but nations that have supported the Iraq war enthusiastically, particularly Great Britain, Italy, and the Netherlands, have made their populations especially vulnerable to terrorism, and they now have the expensive responsibility of protecting them - if they can.

The way the war in Iraq was justified compelled France and Germany to become far more independent, much earlier, than they had intended, and NATO`s future role is now questioned in a way that was inconceivable two years ago. Europe`s future defense arrangements are today an open question but there will be some sort of European military force independent of NATO and American control.

Germany, with French support, strongly opposes the Bush doctrine of preemption. Tony Blair, however much he intends acting as a proxy for the U.S. on military questions, must return Britain to the European project, and his willingness since late 2003 to emphasise his nation`s role in Europe reflects political necessities. To do otherwise is to alienate his increasingly powerful neighbors and risk losing elections. His domestic credibility is already at its nadir due to his slavish support for the war in Iraq.

In a word, politicians who place America`s imperious demands over national interest have less future than those who are responsive to domestic opinion and needs. The tragedy in Madrid and the defeat of the ruling party in last Sunday`s Spanish election is a warning that no politician in or out of power will ignore.

This process of alienating traditional close friends is best seen in Australia, but in different ways and for quite distinctive reasons it is also true elsewhere - especially Canada and Mexico, the U.S.` two neighbors. In the case of Australia, Washington is willing to allow it to do the onerous chores of policing the vast South Pacific and even take greater initiatives, at least to a point, on Indonesia.

But the Bush Administration passed along to it false intelligence on Iraq`s alleged weapons of mass destruction, which many of Australia`s own experts disputed, and Bush even telephoned Prime Minister John Howard to convince him to support America`s efforts in innumerable ways. As Alexander Downer, the foreign minister, admitted earlier this month, "it wasn`t a time in our history to have a great and historic breach with the United States," and the desire to preserve the alliance became paramount. But true alliances are based on consultation and an element of reciprocity is possible, and the Bush Administration prefers "coalitions of the willing" that raise no substantive questions about American actions - in effect, a blank check. Giving it produced strong criticism of the Howard government`s reliance on Washington`s false information on WMD and it has been compelled to endorse a joint parliamentary committee to investigate the intelligence system - sure to play into opposition hands this election year.

Even more dangerous, the Bush Administration has managed to turn what was in the mid-1990s a blossoming cordial friendship with the former Soviet Union into an increasingly tense relationship. Despite a 1997 non-binding American pledge not to station substantial numbers of combat troops in the territories of new members, Washington plans to extend NATO to Russia`s very borders--Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania especially concern Moscow - and it is in the process of establishing a vague number of bases in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Russia has stated that the U.S. encircling it warrants its retaining and modernizing its nuclear arsenal - to remain a military superpower - that will be more than a match for the increasingly expensive and ambitious missile defense system the Pentagon is now building. It has over 4,600 strategic nuclear warheads and over 1,000 ballistic missiles to deliver them. Last month Russia threatened to pull out of the crucial Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which has yet to enter into force, because it regards America`s ambitions in the former Soviet bloc as provocation.

"I would like to remind the representatives of [NATO]," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told a security conference in Munich last February, "that with its expansion they are beginning to operate in the zone of vitally important interests of our country."

The question Washington`s allies will ask themselves is whether their traditional alliances have far more risks than benefits - and if they are necessary.

In the case of China, Bush`s key advisers were publicly committed to constraining its burgeoning military and geopolitical power the moment they took office. But China`s military budget is growing rapidly - 12 percent this coming year - and the European Union wants to lift its 15-year old arms embargo and get a share of the enticingly large market. The Bush Administration, of course, is strongly resisting any relaxation of the export ban. Establishing bases on China`s western borders is the logic of its ambitions.

The United States is not so much engaged in "power projection" against an amorphously defined terrorism by installing bases in small or weak Eastern European and Central Asian nations as again confronting Russia and China in an open-ended context which may have profound and protracted consequences neither America`s allies nor its own people have any interest or inclination to support. Even some Pentagon analysts have warned against this strategy because any American attempt to save failed states in the Caucasus or Central Asia, implicit in its new obligations, will risk exhausting what are ultimately its finite military resources.

There is no way to predict what emergencies will arise or what these commitments entail, either for the U. S. or its allies, not the least because - as Iraq proved last year and Vietnam long before it - its intelligence on the capabilities and intentions of possible enemies against which it is ready to preempt is so completely faulty.

Without accurate information a state can believe and do anything, and this is the predicament the Bush Administration`s allies are in. It is simply not to their national interest, much less to their political interests or the security of their people, to pursue foreign policies based on a blind, uncritical acceptance of fictions or flamboyant adventurism premised on false premises and information. It is far too open-ended both in terms of time and political costs.

If Bush is reelected, America`s allies and friends will have to confront such stark choices, a painful process that will redefine and perhaps shatter existing alliances. Independent, realistic foreign policies are likely to be the outcome, and the dramatic events in Spain over the past days have reinforced this probability.

But America will be more prudent and the world will be far safer only if the Bush Administration is constrained by a lack of allies and isolated.

Copyright © 2004. The Sydney Morning Herald.

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U.S. Charged With War Crimes

The Evidence File

Court case against General Franks in Brussels

WARNING:

The video and pictures in this report contain images and descriptions, depicting the reality and horror of the U.S. - UK invasion of Iraq

WARNING:

Court case against General Franks in Brussels
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3450.htm

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Iraqi Recruits Put In The Firing Line While Americans Retreat To Safety Of Barracks

Robert Fisk

10 March 2004 "The Independent" - A drive to the former Saddam Hussein International Airport to meet a colleague. Palm trees cut down on the airport road by the Americans to deprive snipers of cover, the wood given free of charge to Iraqis who sell it in turn to bakeries in Baghdad.

In a dusty car park, I find eight recruits to the new Iraqi army, standing to attention in uniforms that would do credit to a takeaway. Some are in the clothes of the old Iraqi army of the 1960s, heavy khaki that just might have once been British, a few old camouflage fatigues. Two have beards, two are giggling and one stares forlornly at his Iraqi officer, a fat man smoking a cigarette with three large golden stars on his shoulders. "Attention!" The eight men put their hands to their sides, holding plastic bags of clothes.

An American soldier with "Wilkins" written on his helmet and with an "Old Ironsides" badge on his sleeve - Old Ironsides was the most shelled gunboat of the American civil war - is watching this parade. "When I see this," he says to me, "I don`t like what I see." When I suggest that I`d rather have my job than his, he grins. "I bet you would," he says.

The men march through a dust storm to a prefabricated building and halt. Mr Wilkins turns to the two Iraqi officers, the fat man with the stars and a thin, stooped youth with a tiny moustache, and asks them to board the truck to the airport. The man with the stars says he wants to go to the building where the soldiers are. "Get on the truck," says Mr Wilkins. The man with the stars repeats that he wants to go to the building. "Please get on the truck," Mr Wilkins says kindly and he gently wafts his clipboard towards them. "Get on the truck." He is obeyed, slowly. Then he turns to look at me. "And these," he says meaningfully, "are the officers."

I come across a Nepalese with a rifle over his shoulder, one of the armies of mercenaries now employed by the Americans - let us not call them sandbags - to secure the airport perimeter. He sleeps at the airport and has been here for five months. Does he like it, I ask? "Boring but not much sleep," he smiles. "Too many mortars and too much gunfire."

Overhead, a four-engined military transport aircraft is groaning into the sky, turning tight 1,000-metre circles to keep outside missile range. Go over the 1,000 metres and you can be hit. It streams four dirty fuel trails behind its engines as they fight to gain height.

At the terminal stands an American officer in his forties, a lieutenant colonel in civvies but with a flak jacket covered with camouflage cloth. And how does he like the airport? "We`re leaving here soon. We`re leaving the airport. The Iraqis are taking over." In other words, I suggest, the Americans are going to let the Iraqi army or the Iraqi "Civil Defence" or any of the other fancy Iraqi outfits being trained by the Americans, take the nightly fire of the resistance here? "That`s pretty much it," he said.

I don`t entirely believe this. The US occupation forces fly their transports into Baghdad airport and won`t leave their security to Iraqis. But they could let the new Iraqi army do the dirty work, hunting and patrolling in the grass and muck outside the 1,000 metre perimeter at night, guarding the perimeter wire, withdrawing the massive US presence to save American lives.

And then I remember that most famous of dates - 30 June - when Iraq`s "sovereignty" will be handed over by the Americans to the American-appointed Iraqi "Governing Council", and it begins to make sense. The Americans aren`t leaving on 30 June, of course; they are retreating to secure barracks. The airport will become an Iraqi responsibility. Iraqis will risk their lives to defend it from the "resistance".

And it dawns on me that this will happen in a thousand other areas of Iraq. The dams on the Euphrates west of Fallujah, the walls of the old RAF Habbaniya airbase which is now home to the 82nd Airborne, the street patrols in Baghdad. Even now, you see fewer US patrols in the old Caliphate capital. No bad thing for a people who don`t want to be occupied.

But the Americans are not leaving Iraq and the Iraqis know this. On my way back to Baghdad, I see two of the new recruits in the middle sandswept parade ground. They are taking their military trousers down and pulling on jeans, right there in front of the Americans. Time to go home for the night, the war over for another 12 hours. Until the Americans leave. Why does this remind me of Afghanistan?

© 2004 The Independent

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Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

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Published on Monday, March 15, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
"War on Terrorism" Makes Us All Less Safe
by Rahul Mahajan

Last Thursday`s attacks in Spain, in which 200 people were killed and nearly 1500 wounded, were likely carried out by al-Qaeda, not by the Basque separatist ETA. In any case, they make one thing very clear: terrorism cannot be fought by purely military means.

After the first Gulf War, and particularly after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, U.S. military analysts concerned themselves extensively with the question of terrorism. An early conclusion was that it is precisely the extreme dominance of the U.S. military that makes potential opponents turn to what is sometimes called "asymmetric warfare" -- i.e., attacks in which the other side also has a chance of inflicting damage. For example, Presidential Decision Directive 62, issued in 1998, says, "America`s unrivaled military superiority means that potential enemies (whether nations or terrorist groups) that choose to attack us will be more likely to resort to terror instead of conventional military assault."

The Bush administration`s response, involving a tremendous new wave of militarism, new weapons systems, and a newly aggressive posture in the world could not have done more to exacerbate the threat of terrorist attacks if it had been planned that way.

Worse, there has been a shift in the modality of attacks after 9/11. The 9/11 attacks and previous ones by al-Qaeda, like that on the U.S.S. Cole or those on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, were attacks on hard targets, requiring suicide bombers and, in the case of 9/11, a highly sophisticated operation. Furthermore, the targets were ones of obvious political significance; there was hardly a more potent symbol of American economic might and world domination than the World Trade Center. Contrary to popular depictions, at the time al-Qaeda was not simply ravening to kill any American anywhere.

That changed after the Afghanistan war, with a decision made by elders of Al-Qaeda in Thailand in January 2002 to turn more toward soft targets. The first major such attack was the November 2002 Bali nightclub bombing which killed nearly 200. The Madrid attack is just the most recent example of this evolving dynamic.

And thus we are led to the reductio ad absurdum -- more military prowess leads to more terrorist attacks, more defense of hard or politically significant targets leads to more indiscriminate attacks on soft targets, and it is simply impossible to defend all soft targets. Today the trains of Madrid. Tomorrow the New York subway?

The progression of events in Iraq under the occupation mirrors this logic.

Initially, one saw mainly attacks on the U.S. Military It quickly responded by increasing the level of alert, and so August of last year saw numerous terrorist attacks. The U.N. humanitarian headquarters was attacked and Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim was assassinated at the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf. These were still aimed at very specific persons or organizations and involved targets with some level of protection.

As Iraq began to fill up with concrete barricades and razor wire, the targets changed. Attackers who had earlier concentrated on the Iraqi police as collaborators with the occupation took to bombing lines of people waiting to interview for jobs as police. Cleaning women who worked on a CPA base were gunned down. Attacks against random targets of opportunity proliferated. The culmination was on Ashura, the holiest day of the year for the Shi`a a dozen suicide bombers attacked processions in Baghdad and Kerbala (and tried to in Basra and Najaf), killing likely over 200 people.

In the unlikely event that al-Qaeda didn`t do this, whoever did it was inspired by al-Qaeda. The attack involves the same modus operandi, the same abandonment of any idea of winning support for body count as the sole criterion of effectiveness. If non-Islamist organizations come to adopt the same methods, the danger is only increased.

In fact, the dominant theme of the U.S. "war on terrorism" has also been abandonment of political effectiveness for body count. Just look at pronouncements by Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush, and others that the war on Afghanistan was and is a success because we have killed hundreds of Taliban in recent months. The military calculus implicit in such judgments simply doesn`t apply to the political situation that we have to deal with.

What is needed is a rational calculus, which allows us to judge how to genuinely weaken al-Qaeda, et al., instead of posturing and pretending that cruise missiles weaken them. Such considerations will immediately lead us to the conclusion that what is necessary is taking away the political ground on which they stand. That ground is not the virtually nihilistic domestic political programs of these groups. It is their opposition to U.S. imperial control of the Islamic world, a grievance that most Muslims share.

Some stab at dealing with these problems in particular, the beginning of an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and to the U.S. occupation of Iraq is necessary in order to create an environment in which other steps against al-Qaeda will genuinely weaken it. What`s relevant is not the political aspirations of Osama bin Laden, but rather the political grievances of the people of the Islamic, especially the Arab, world. The fact that the Middle Eastern and North African countries with the most "pro-American" regimes have the most anti-American populaces is clear evidence that the problem is not, as the neoconservatives would have us think, an absence of American influence and control but rather an excess.

No sensible person thinks that moves on these issues will dissuade al-Qaeda from its fight. The point is to isolate it so that international police actions are easier to set up and carry out, on the one hand, and so that they don`t lead to more proliferating terrorism on the other hand.

Spaniards turned out in unexpectedly high numbers and, in a reversal of all recent poll results, voted Aznar`s party out of power on Sunday. Although al-Qaeda and the American right wing will see this as appeasement, it is to be hoped that it is rather a recognition that dealing with al-Qaeda-style terrorism requires rational measures.

At this point, it shouldn`t matter whether you`re whether you`re a dove or a hawk, left or right, concerned with the suffering of others or concerned merely with your own skin. Bush`s "war on terrorism" is a "cure" that increases the spread of the disease.

Rahul Mahajan is publisher of Empire Notes. Some of this material is excerpted from his book, "Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond". He can be reached at [e-mail]

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Lt. Gallup Umfragen stimmen mehr Männer als Frauen für
Bush.


"President Bush`s campaign is spending $100 million in negative TV ads against John Kerry. Isn`t that a bit much? I mean, he only offered like $25 million to get Saddam Hussein." —Jay Leno

"It is starting to look more and more like the terrorist attack in Spain was the work of al Qaeda and today President Bush called the Prime Minister of Spain to offer his condolences and said `If it makes you feel any better we will be happy to attack a country that had nothing to do with it.`" —Bill Maher

Bill Maher: "For some reason, the two words this president just can`t seem to say are "sorry` and "nuclear.` "

David Letterman: "On Meet the Press, President Bush said that Iraq could`ve had nuculer weapons. Or even worse, nuclear weapons."

"Secretary of Commerce Don Evans said that we are trying to get other countries to adopt our economic policy. That`s a great idea, maybe we can convince them to ship some of their jobs over here, too." —Jay Leno

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DEPLETED URANIUM SHELLS DECRIED
Citizens find Bush guilty of Afghan war crimes

By NAO SHIMOYACHI
Staff writer

A citizens` tribunal Saturday in Tokyo found U.S. President George W. Bush guilty of war crimes for attacking civilians with indiscriminate weapons and other arms during the U.S.-led antiterrorism operations in Afghanistan in 2001.
The tribunal also issued recommendations for banning depleted uranium shells and other weapons that could indiscriminately harm people, compensating the victims in Afghanistan and reforming the United Nations in light of its failure to stop the U.S.-led operation there.

The tribunal participants spent two years examining Bush`s role as the top commander in the war, making eight field trips to Afghanistan and holding nearly 20 public hearings.

"Bush said that military presence in Afghanistan is self-defense," said Robert Akroyd, a British lawyer who served as one of the five judges.

"But under international law," he said, "a defendant must pay great care to discriminate (between) legitimate objects and civilians" in claiming that one`s act is self-defense, said Akroyd, former head of legal studies at Aston University in Britain.

Bush failed to do so with the U.S. military`s use of "indiscriminate weapons such as the Daisy Cutter (a huge conventional bomb), cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells," he said.

Civilians and experts who have supported the tribunal movement agreed to work for creation of an international treaty that would prohibit the production, stockpile and use of depleted uranium rounds, like the Ottawa process that succeeded in 1997 in outlawing antipersonnel land mines.

Organizers said the tribunal on Afghanistan was the latest attempt to try a head of state by the efforts of citizens.

The history of citizens` tribunals dates back to the 1960s, when the British philosopher Bertrand Russell and others tried to examine the acts of the U.S. government during the Vietnam War.

The Japan Times: March 14, 2004
(C) All rights reserved
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Ein Artikel des deutschen Essayisten Peter Schneider aus der New York Times, der den gemeinsamen philosophischen Hintergrund der Europäer und Amerikaner beleuchtet , der aber auch aufzeigt wie sich die beiden Gesellschaften auseinanderdividiert haben und die Ursachen dafür erläutert. Leider habe ich den Artikel nicht in Deutsch gefunden.

------------------------------------------

Across a Great Divide
By PETER SCHNEIDER

Published: March 13, 2004

BERLIN, March 12 — The war in Iraq has made the Atlantic seem wider. But really it has had the effect of a magnifying glass, bringing older and more fundamental differences between Europe and the United States into focus.

These growing divisions — over war, peace, religion, sex, life and death — amount to a philosophical dispute about the common origins of European and American civilization. Both children of the Enlightenment, the United States and Europe clearly differ about the nature of this inheritance and about who is its better custodian.

Start with religion. The United States is experiencing a revival of the Christian faith in many areas of civic and political life, while in Europe the process of secularization continues unabated. Today the United States is the most religious-minded society of the Western democracies. In a 2003 Harris poll 79 percent of Americans said they believed in God, and more than a third said they attended a religious service once a month or more. Numerous polls have shown that these figures are much lower in Western Europe. In the United States a majority of respondents in recent years told pollsters that they believed in angels, while in Europe the issue was apparently considered so preposterous that no one even asked the question.

When American commentators warn about a new fundamentalism, they generally mention only the Islamic one. European intellectuals include two other kinds: the Jewish and Christian variants.

Terms that President Bush has used, like "crusade" and "axis of evil," and Manichaean exclusions like his observation that anyone who is not on our side is on the side of the terrorists, reveal the assumption of a religious mantle by a secular power, which in Europe has become unthinkable. Was it not, perhaps, this same sense of religious infallibility that seduced senior members of the Bush administration into leading their country into a war with Iraq on the basis of information that has turned out to be false?

Another reason for Europe`s alienation from the United States is harder to define, but for want of a better term, I call it American narcissism.

When American troops in Iraq mistakenly shoot an Arab journalist or reduce half of a village to rubble in response to the explosion of a roadside bomb, there will inevitably be a backlash. Only a fool would maintain that an occupying power could afford many such mistakes, even if it is under constant threat of suicide attacks. The success of an occupation policy — however temporary it is meant to be — depends on the occupier`s ability to convince the population, by means of symbolic and material gestures, that it is prepared to admit to mistakes.

In its use of the language of power the Bush administration has created the opposite impression, and not just in Iraq. The United States apparently cannot be wrong about anything, nor does it have to apologize to anybody. In many parts of the world people have come to believe, fairly or not, that Americans regard the life of their countrymen as infinitely more valuable than the lives of any other of the earth`s inhabitants.

Of course, even in Europe only a pacifist minority denies the existence of necessary, unavoidable, justified wars. The interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan were supported by many European nations, even if some took a long time to make up their minds. European soldiers took part in those wars and continue to play a part in the peacekeeping aftermath.

What arouses European suspicion, though, is the doctrine of just, preemptive wars President Bush has outlined. Anyone who claims to be waging a preventive war in the cause of justice is confusing either a particular or a partisan interest with the interests of humanity. A president who makes such a claim would be arrogating the right to be the ultimate arbiter of war and peace and to stand in judgment over the world. From there it is but a short step to dismissing a basic insight of the Enlightenment, namely that human judgment and decisions are fallible by their very nature. This fallibility cannot be annulled or ameliorated by any political, legal or religious authority. The same argument goes for the death penalty.

Animosity isn`t the only feature of the trans-Atlantic relationship. Europe is rightly envious of America`s multicultural society. There can be no doubt that the United States has produced the world`s most varied and integrative culture, and it is no accident that it is the only one to have a worldwide appeal.

But the American multicultural model also generates an illusion. Since Americans really have come from all over the world, in the United States it is easy to believe that you can know and understand the world without ever leaving the country. Those who were born and brought up in America forget that these people "from all over the world" first had to become Americans — a condition that new immigrants generally accept with enthusiasm — before they could celebrate their cultural otherness.

This is why it is always an American version of otherness that is encountered in the United States. You will not necessarily learn anything about the culture and history of Vietnam by working alongside a Vietnamese doctor in the teaching hospital at Stanford. You can sit next to an Indian in the same dot.com company in Los Angeles for years without learning much about the manners and customs of India. And going to a French restaurant in Atlanta is no guarantee that you will be served French cuisine.

Foreign films account for less than 1 percent of the American film market, and the figures are similarly low for books and news from abroad.

The impressive integrative power of American society seems to generate a kind of obliviousness to the world, a multicultural unilateralism. The result is a paradox: a fantastically tolerant and flexible society that has absorbed the whole world, yet has difficulty comprehending the world beyond its borders.

These differences and irritations add up to a substantial disagreement on the joint origins of American and European civilization. Europeans think that Americans are on their way to betraying some of the elementary tenets of the Enlightenment, establishing a new principle in which they are "first among unequals."

And Washington accuses Europe of shirking its international responsibilities, and thus its own human rights inheritance.

After all, what is the point of international law if it prevents intervening in the affairs of a brutal regime to stay the hand of a tyrant? Who is the true advocate of human rights: the one who cites international law to justify standing by while genocide is being committed or the one who puts an end to the genocide, even if it means violating international law?

Unfortunately, we cannot expect the news media in the United States or Europe to present a nuanced view of this dispute. In 20 years of traveling back and forth between Germany and America I have become convinced that news broadcasts usually confirm their audiences` views: in Europe, about America, the "cowboy nation," and in the United States, about Europe, the "axis of weasels."

These disagreements will be influenced but cannot be resolved by the the American presidential election in November. The divisions are too deep, and Europe cannot meet the United States halfway on too many issues — the separation between church and state, the separation of powers, respect for international law, the abolition of the death penalty — without surrendering its version of its Enlightenment inheritance.

On other contentious issues the United States feels as strongly: the universality of human rights and the need to intervene — if the United Nations is unable to act — when there is genocide or ethnic cleansing, or when states are failing.

So are we standing on the threshold of a new understanding or a new historic divide, comparable to the evolutionary split that occurred when a group of pioneer hominids thousands of years ago turned their backs forever on their African homeland?

So far it has usually been the Americans who have had to remind the Europeans of these common origins, which the Europeans, in turn, have so often betrayed. Maybe this time it is up to the Europeans to remind the Americans of the promises of the Enlightenment that the United States seems to have forgotten.

Peter Schneider is a German novelist and essayist. This article was translated from the German by Victor Homola of The New York Times.

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March 16, 2004
Greenspan Shifts View on Deficits
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, March 15 — Consumer debt is hitting record levels. The federal budget deficit is yawning ever larger. The trade gap? Don`t even ask.

Many mainstream economists are worried about these trends, but Alan Greenspan, arguably the most powerful and influential economist in the land, is not as concerned.

In speeches and testimony, Mr. Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, is piecing together a theory about debt that departs from traditional views and even from fears he has himself expressed in the past.

In the 1990`s, Mr. Greenspan implored President Bill Clinton to lower the budget deficit and tacitly condoned tax increases in doing so. Today, with the deficit heading toward a record of $500 billion, he warns more emphatically about the risks of raising taxes than about shortfalls over the next few years.

On Monday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office published new calculations showing that the budget deficit now stems almost entirely from tax cuts and spending increases rather than from lingering effects of the economic slowdown.

Mr. Greenspan`s thesis, which is not accepted by all traditional economists, is that increases in personal wealth and the growing sophistication of financial markets have allowed Americans — individually and as a nation — to borrow much more today than might have seemed manageable 20 years ago.

This view is good news for President Bush`s re-election prospects. It increases the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will keep short-term interest rates low. And it could defuse Democratic criticism that the White House has added greatly to the nation`s record indebtedness.

Adjusted for inflation, the average family`s debt, including a mortgage, has climbed from $54,000 in 1990 to $79,000 last year. Mortgage foreclosures, credit card delinquencies and personal bankruptcies are all at near record levels.

Mr. Greenspan`s view is that household balance sheets are "in good shape," and perhaps stronger than ever, because the value of people`s homes and stock portfolios have risen faster than their debts.

The Fed chairman is equally sanguine about the nation`s overall borrowing from foreigners, which has soared to more than $500 billion a year and has contributed to a sharp drop in the value of the dollar. And he has also made it clear he will not try to torpedo the president`s tax-cutting agenda, which could add another $2 trillion to federal borrowing over the next decade.

"History suggests that the odds are favorable that current imbalances will be defused with little disruption," he declared in a speech two weeks ago.

But a growing number of experts are worried that Mr. Greenspan is too casual. Though most economists agree that American`s indebtedness is not a problem at the moment, many worry that the country has become too dependent on extraordinarily low interest rates that will inevitably creep higher in years to come.

"The fear I have is that the world is leveraged on low-interest borrowing," said Allen Sinai, chief executive of Decision Economics, an economic forecasting firm. "It`s like a drug, and you get hooked on it."

According to the Federal Reserve`s most recent data, household wealth bounced back after the economic slowdown and hit a record at the end of 2003.

But the main reason for that new wealth has been rising prices for real estate and stock, and those prices have climbed in large measure because interest rates are at their lowest level in more than 40 years.

If inflation rises and the Fed feels forced to raise interest rates, many economists worry that monthly debt burdens would rise at the very moment that housing prices start to decline.

"The day of reckoning is not now, but maybe five years from now," said James W. Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management. "To go down Greenspan`s route is like saying there is a free lunch. The fallacy is that net worth has gone up because debt went up. And that doesn`t give me a good feeling."

Other analysts have begun to dispute Mr. Greenspan`s benign view of rising household debt. Mark Zandi, economist at Economy.com, said many other indicators suggest that financial stress has risen significantly in the last two years.

Mortgage foreclosure rates, personal bankruptcies and credit card delinquencies have been rising steadily and are at record levels. Most of that stress has taken place in lower-income families, which is why it has not made a big impact on aggregate data about national wealth.

"These people who have heavy debt don`t have stable incomes," Mr. Zandi said. "They`re the ones who are getting pummeled by the loss of call-center jobs. These are the folks who rely on two incomes, the ones who don`t have any assets."

Though Mr. Greenspan has not articulated a sweeping new view, his public comments on particular topics provide a mosaic of his thinking and suggest that he is groping toward his next big idea.

Mr. Greenspan`s last big idea came 10 years ago, when he correctly perceived that American productivity was growing much faster than official statistics suggested and that the country could grow much more rapidly without inflation than most experts believed at the time.

But after having reduced the federal funds rate on overnight loans to just 1 percent, the lowest level in 46 years, Mr. Greenspan has presided over an explosion in home buying, mortgage refinancing and consumer spending fed by cheap money.

Mortgage debt soared by more than one-third from $4.9 trillion in 2000 to $6.8 trillion in 2003. And though many people borrowed against their houses to pay down more expensive debt from credit cards, nonmortgage consumer credit climbed by $300 billion, or about 15 percent.

In a Feb. 23 speech to the Credit Union National Association, Mr. Greenspan made it clear that consumer borrowing cannot keep that pace indefinitely. But he said the rise in debt had been matched by a rise in real estate values and stock portfolios.

"The surge in mortgage refinancings likely improved rather than worsened the financial condition of the average homeowner," he said. Though bankruptcy rates had climbed sharply, he continued, these were "not a reliable measure" of household financial health.

Mr. Greenspan went on to note that household debt burdens had been rising for the last half-century as banks and other lenders extended credit to wider segments of the population.

That leads to Mr. Greenspan`s broader idea: that financial institutions have steadily expanded credit by developing complex new instruments like credit swaps to hedge their risks.

Back in June 2001, the Fed chairman praised the use of new risk-scoring techniques to expand "subprime" lending to people with poor credit histories.

"Such lending is favorable both to borrowers and lenders," he said in a speech to bankers that year. People with poor credit gained access to loans that would otherwise be unavailable, he said, while lenders obtained "the opportunity for higher returns."

In numerous speeches, Mr. Greenspan has argued that advanced new hedging techniques helped financial institutions survive huge loan losses to telecommunications companies after the stock market bubble collapsed.

Telecommunications companies raised $1 trillion between 1998 and 2001, only to lose hundreds of billions when technology spending collapsed.

"Unlike in previous periods of large financial distress, no major financial institution defaulted," Mr. Greenspan told a conference sponsored by the British Treasury in January. Novel tools for hedging risk, he concluded, had created a "far more flexible, efficient, and hence resilient financial system than existed just a quarter-century ago."

Mr. Greenspan has voiced similar thoughts about the United States` huge current account deficit, which reached a record $541 billion in 2003.

Like many economists, Mr. Greenspan has described the deficit as unsustainably high and said it would have to come down. The most common way for that to happen is for the dollar to drop in value, which would make imports more expensive and exports cheaper.

But he has also suggested that the country may be able to borrow more because investors have become far less wedded to their home countries. This declining "home bias," Mr. Greenspan said in a speech this month, "has enabled the United States to incur and finance a much larger current account deficit than would have been feasible in earlier decades."

Many economists say Mr. Greenspan is correct about basic changes in the world.

"There is really nothing unusual in what he is saying, and I happen to agree with him," said Janet L. Yellin, a former Fed governor who teaches economics at the University of California at Berkeley.

But others say they are increasingly uneasy. If foreign lenders lose their appetite for American securities, the dollar will fall and interest rates are likely to rise. If interest rates rise, and Fed officials have made it clear today`s rates are unsustainably low, household debt payments are likely to rise and real estate values could decline.

"It really strains the imagination to believe that household balances are in that great shape," said David Rosenberg, a senior economist at Merrill Lynch. "If you look at debt on a cash-flow basis, servicing the debt is not a great problem. But under a different interest rate scenario, the servicing costs become less manageable."

But J. Bradford DeLong, a longtime Fed watcher at the University of California at Berkeley, cautioned that Mr. Greenspan had been right at times when many others were wrong.

"I think he`s wrong, but he`s got a better track record than I have," Mr. DeLong said.



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March 16, 2004
Deficit Study Disputes Role of Economy
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, March 15 — When President Bush and his advisers talk about the widening federal budget deficit, they usually place part of the blame on economic shocks ranging from the recession of 2001 to the terrorist attacks that year.

But a report released on Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that economic weakness would account for only 6 percent of a budget shortfall that could reach a record $500 billion this year.

Next year, the agency predicted, faster economic growth will actually increase tax revenues even as the deficit remains at a relatively high level of $374 billion.

The new numbers confirm what many analysts have predicted for some time: that budget deficits in the decade ahead will stem less from the lingering effects of the downturn and much more from rising government spending and progressively deeper tax cuts.

Administration officials do not dispute the basic thrust of the agency`s estimate, but they still say that faster growth and spending restraints can reduce the deficit in five years.

Though the economy is growing at more than 4 percent a year, administration officials continue to attribute much of the budget deficit to economic problems beyond their control. "Large and unwelcome as they are, the deficits are understandable," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said in a speech last week. "They are understandable in the sense that the president inherited a recession and an economy greatly weakened by the excesses of the late 90`s."

President Bush and his advisers almost routinely cite a list of shocks to the economy, from a recession that began as Mr. Bush took office to the terrorist attacks and the loss of investor confidence after a series of corporate scandals.

Joshua B. Bolten, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, summed up the burdens when he presented Mr. Bush`s latest budget proposal and predicted a deficit of $521 billion for this year. "Like America itself, the federal budget has faced extraordinary challenges in recent years," he said, citing "a stock market collapse that began in early 2000; a recession that was fully under way in early 2001; revelation of corporate scandals years in the making; and, of course, the Sept. 11 attacks and ensuing war on terror."

The Congressional report, though, concludes that the "cyclical" problems of slower growth are a tiny part of the overall budget problem. The Congressional agency estimated that slower growth reduced tax revenues by $53 billion in 2002, accounting for a third of the budget deficit that year. In 2003, the agency estimated that subpar growth cut tax revenues by $68 billion. The overall budget deficit in 2002 swelled to $375 billion as a result of spending on the Iraq war and Mr. Bush`s tax cuts.

But this year, with the economy expanding, the Congressional agency predicted that lingering weakness would drain only $30 billion in tax revenues while the deficit hits $477 billion, less than the White House had forecast, but still a record.

Critics of the Bush administration said the new report meant that budget problems were increasingly the result of legislative changes, from higher military spending to deeper tax cuts, rather than temporary economic distress.

"What the Bush administration has tried over and over again to do is blame deficits on events outside their control," said Thomas S. Kahn, chief of staff for Democrats on the House Budget Committee. "The C.B.O. report is confirmation that the Bush administration has locked us into long-term structural deficits that will take some very tough decisions to wipe out."

But J. T. Young, a spokesman for the White House budget office, said the administration was confident it could reduce the annual budget deficit by half over the next five years.

Mr. Young cautioned that increases in tax revenues often lagged behind increased economic growth, and he noted that the budget was still being affected by higher costs for the military and domestic security.

"The economic downturn was only one of the shocks," Mr. Young said. "Even though the recession is over, we still have to spend what is necessary in the war on terrorism."

Brian M. Reidl, a senior budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group, said control over government spending would be crucial. He said the agency report projected a 42 percent rise in spending from 1999 through 2005, but a tax revenue increase of only 19 percent. "Economic booms are not forever, but government programs are," Mr. Reidl said. "In the absence of real spending reform, the deficits are not going to go down."



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March 16, 2004
Partisan Debate Only Escalates as Kerry Quotation Is Corrected
By JODI WILGOREN

WASHINGTON, March 15 — The White House stepped up its attack on Monday over Senator John Kerry`s recent claim to have international support for his presidential campaign, as Mr. Kerry deployed high-profile Democrats to defend him.

The escalating argument came amid revelations that the weeklong controversy was based on an inaccurate transcript provided by a reporter covering the Florida fund-raiser where Mr. Kerry made a similar remark. As Vice President Dick Cheney and Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, continued to criticize Mr. Kerry on the issue, the reporter — one of two allowed to attend the event on behalf of the press corps — said Monday that he had made a mistake when transcribing his recording of the session.

The inaccurate quotation was widely reported, including on several occasions in The New York Times.

Patrick Healy, the Boston Globe reporter who covered the fund-raiser, had quoted Mr. Kerry as saying: "I`ve met foreign leaders who can`t go out and say this publicly, but, boy, they look at you and say, `You have got to win this; you have got to beat this guy; we need a new policy.` Things like that."

Mr. Kerry said on Sunday that he had used the word "heard," not "met," prompting Mr. Healy to revisit the recording. On Monday, he sent out a corrected transcript, clarifying that the quotation actually began, "I`ve met more leaders who can`t go out and say it all publicly."

The remark was part of Mr. Kerry`s response to an observation by his Florida finance chairman that when traveling abroad, he had met people who "hate Bush, but they know we`re going to get rid of him."

Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Kerry`s spokeswoman, said the campaign did not raise questions about the accuracy of the quotation amid days of criticism because there was a problem with its tape recorder, making the word inaudible.

Mr. Healy also said it was difficult to hear the word on his recorder, particularly when he was transcribing between campaign events aboard a bus and an airplane. Over reporters` objections, campaigns frequently limit access to events, requiring the press corps to rely on one or two journalists` versions.

Senator Kerry never denied making the statement, but he refused repeated calls — including one from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Fox News Sunday — to identify the foreign leaders.

On Monday, before Mr. Healy`s mea culpa, Mr. McClellan said that if Mr. Kerry did not identify the leaders, "the only conclusion one can draw is that he is making it up to attack the president." Separately, at a fund-raiser in Arizona, Mr. Cheney said, "At the very least, we have a right to know what he is saying to foreign leaders that makes them so supportive of his candidacy."

Even after the quotation had been corrected, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Richard C. Holbrooke, President Bill Clinton`s delegate to the United Nations, called reporters to offer their response.

"It`s so obviously the truth what Kerry said, and the Republicans are just having fun with it — everybody knows it`s true," Mr. Holbrooke said, adding that he called after speaking to Ms. Cutter. "In the last six or seven months, I`ve been in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe. I`ve met with leaders in all of those regions, and they have overwhelmingly — not unanimously but overwhelmingly — said that they hope that there`s a change in leadership."



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March 16, 2004
Ex-U.N. Inspector Has Harsh Words for Bush
By WARREN HOGE

UNITED NATIONS, March 15 — Hans Blix, the former chief United Nations weapons inspector, said Monday that the Bush administration convinced itself of the existence of banned weapons based on dubious findings before invading Iraq and was not interested in hearing evidence to the contrary.

"I think they had a set mind," Mr. Blix said on the NBC News program "Today" as he began a ten-day American book tour in the week marking the first anniversary of the United States-led invasion of Iraq.

"They wanted to come to the conclusion that there were weapons," he said. "Like the former days of the witch hunt, they are convinced that they exist, and if you see a black cat, well, that`s evidence of the witch."

In a talk to a crowd of 1,200 people on Monday night at New York University, Mr. Blix said he did not share the Bush administrations` view that the war had made the world a safer place.

"Sorry to say it doesn`t look that way," he said. "If the aim was to send a signal to terrorists that we are determined to take you on, that has not succeeded. In Iraq, it has bred a lot of terrorism and a lot of hatred to the Western world."

Speaking more assertively on "Today" about the Iraq war than he does in "Disarming Iraq," his new book, Mr. Blix charged the Bush administration with invading Iraq as retaliation for the terrorism strikes on the United States, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attackers.

"So in a way, you could say that Iraq was perhaps as much punitive as it was pre-emptive," he said. "It was a reaction to 9/11 that we have to strike some theoretical, hypothetical links between Saddam Hussein and the terrorists. That was wrong. There wasn`t anything."

Mr. Blix said the Americans and British depended too much on defectors and exercised too little critical judgment in assessing their information. "The C.I.A. certainly is very used to debriefing defectors, so they must have had a critical mind," he said, "but they also knew what they wanted to hear at the top."

Mr. Blix, 75, a Swedish constitutional lawyer and the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981 to 1997, came out of retirement three years ago to head up the United Nations inspection team in Iraq.

In the book, written in the same judicious and patient style that Bush administration officials disparaged when they criticized his approach to inspections, Mr. Blix concedes that as late as a month before the war, he still thought the Iraqis were concealing banned weapons.

He limits his judgment on whether the Americans and British manipulated intelligence to saying only that it was "probable that the governments were conscious that they were exaggerating the risks they saw in order to get the political support they would not otherwise have had."

Speaking of Mr. Bush and his principal ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, he writes, "I am not suggesting that Blair and Bush spoke in bad faith, but I am suggesting that it would not have taken much critical thinking on their own part or the part of their close advisers to prevent statements that misled the public."

In more pointed passages, he identifies Vice President Dick Cheney as his chief tormentor in the White House, saying he was "disdainful" of the inspection process.

In a meeting with Mr. Cheney in October 2002, Mr. Blix writes, "He stated his position that inspections, if they do not give results, cannot go on forever and said the U.S. was `ready to discredit inspections in favor of disarmament.`

"A pretty straight way, I thought, of saying that if we did not soon find the weapons of mass destruction that the U.S. was convinced Iraq possessed (though they did not know where), the U.S. would be ready to say that the inspectors were useless and embark on disarmament by other means."



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March 16, 2004
Ambivalence From Iraqis in Poll on War
By THOMAS J. LUECK


A nationwide public opinion poll of Iraqis a year after the American-led invasion found deep ambivalence about the invasion and occupation, but an upbeat sense among most that their lives were better than before the war.

Among the results was that more Iraqis polled said the United States was right to lead the invasion than said it was wrong - 48 percent to 39 percent, with 13 percent expressing no opinion. The poll was sponsored by ABC News and broadcasting networks in England, Germany and Japan.

Other questions about the invasion provoked more negative reactions, with 42 percent of the respondents saying it had liberated Iraq, and a nearly equal 41 percent saying their country had been humiliated. Fifty-one percent said they opposed the presence of the occupying forces, compared with 39 percent who said they supported the forces` presence.

The poll indicated that there was a more negative feeling toward the United States among Arab Iraqis, who account for 79 percent of the population, than among the far smaller Kurdish minority. Only 40 percent of the Arabs, compared with 87 percent of the Kurds, said it was right for the United States to invade.

Still, when it asked about people`s personal lives, the poll revealed a sense of optimism.

Seventy-one percent of the respondents said they believed that they would be better off a year from now, compared with 7 percent who said conditions would be worse and 9 percent who said they would stay the same. When asked if things were going better today than a year ago, before the war, 56 percent said conditions were better, 19 percent said worse, and 23 percent said they remained the same.

The poll was based on a random, representative sample of 2,737 Iraqis ages 15 and older and carried out in face-to-face interviews across their country from Feb. 9 through Feb. 28. The other network sponsors were the BBC, ARD of Germany and the NHK in Japan. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.

When asked about the political priorities for Iraq, the largest share of respondents - 47 percent - said what their country needed most in 12 months was a "single, strong Iraqi leader."

Twenty-eight percent said an Iraqi democracy was most important, and 10 percent said the priority should be "a government made up mainly of religious leaders."

But when a similar question was posed without any specified time frame, 49 percent said an Iraqi democracy was the most important goal. In response to the same question, 28 percent said they favored a strong leader "for life," and 21 percent said they favored an Islamic state.



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March 16, 2004
Change in Spain

The terrorist bombings in Madrid last week were undoubtedly the main factor in Sunday`s upset of the incumbent Popular Party, which supported the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. The victorious Socialists, like most Spaniards, did not. If Al Qaeda organized the bombings, as now seems to be the case, the outcome may be seen by some as a win for the terrorists. We disagree.

Certainly, the events in Madrid have been a major blow to the Bush administration`s strategy of inducing democratic governments to endorse its military operations even in the teeth of overwhelming opposition from their own people. But the war on terror will go on, perhaps stronger than ever.

The Popular Party expected that its impressive economic achievements would cause the Spanish people to overlook Prime Minister José María Aznar`s unpopular decision to support the invasion of Iraq and send a symbolic detachment of Spanish troops to aid in the effort. Thursday`s terrorist strike — Western Europe`s worst in more than half a century, with 200 dead and 1,500 wounded — scrambled the political calculus. Sunday`s vote became an expression of national pride and mourning. Spaniards who might not otherwise have voted turned out in large numbers and voted against a government that they opposed before the bombs went off. Others may have turned against the government over its early emphatic insistence that the bombings had been the work of Basque, rather than Islamic, terrorists. Either way, it was an exercise in healthy democracy, in which a change of government is simply that, and not a change of national character.

It is possible to support the battle against terrorism wholeheartedly and still oppose a political party that embraces the same cause. The Spanish people, who have suffered under the violence of Basque terrorists for years, undoubtedly feel a redoubled commitment to fight on and avenge the innocents who died in Madrid. That did not make them obliged to keep Prime Minister Aznar`s party in power. Here in the United States, as much as the White House would like the elections to be about fear and national insecurity, they are a choice between two men and two political philosophies — not a referendum on terrorism.

The Socialists, under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, ran on a platform of withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq unless a United Nations-led force takes charge after June 30. Mr. Zapatero now has an opportunity to use his new mandate to pressure Washington to seek U.N. help. The Bush administration has already learned it needs the United Nations. That, like the defeat of Mr. Bush`s allies in Spain, should help the president to realize what it really takes to win a permanent international war against violent outlaws like Al Qaeda. The peaceful nations of the world are all in this together, and they must work as partners.

Mr. Zapatero, for his part, cannot view his victory as a mandate for isolationism, an option that is simply not available to any member of the European Union. It is instead a summons to join Europe and the United States in the kind of intense and broadly based cooperation that can provide the most sustained and effective answer to the tragedy of Madrid.



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March 16, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
A Leaner, Meaner Jihad
By SCOTT ATRAN

ANN ARBOR, Mich.
The coordinated train bombings in Madrid have altered Europe`s political structure, shaken global financial markets and unsettled the American-led coalition in Iraq. Although we still do not know for sure who committed the atrocity, the only groups to have claimed responsibility so far say they represent Al Qaeda.

In any event, the attacks are clearly consistent with jihadist doctrine and aims. Osama bin Laden, specifically mentioning the loss of southern Spain to Christianity in 1492, has made it clear that any land once in Muslim hands was fair game for global jihad.

For the last year the Israeli historian Reuven Paz has monitored jihadist writings about Spain, which focused on the Spanish government`s participation in Iraq. "In order to force the Spanish government to withdraw from Iraq," one online tract read, "it is a must to exploit the coming general elections in Spain." It added that two to three attacks would ensure "the victory of the Socialist Party and the withdrawal of Spanish forces," the first domino in the collapse of the American-led coalition.

No matter who is responsible for the Madrid attacks, they remind us that America faces a task reminiscent of Hercules` fight against the Hydra, the monster who sprouted new heads for each one severed. From the bombings in Morocco, Indonesia and Turkey last year, to the more recent suicide attacks in Iraq and Pakistan on the Shiite holy day of Ashura, it is clear that since 9/11 we have misunderstood the nature of global jihad.

While most Westerners have imagined a tightly coordinated transnational terrorist network headed by Al Qaeda, it seems more likely we face a set of largely autonomous groups and cells pursuing their own regional aims. Yes, some groups — from Ansar al-Islam in Iraq to Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia to Pakistan`s Jaish-e-Muhammed — seem to be coordinating strategy and perhaps tactical operations among themselves. But for the most part the factions are swarming on their own initiative — homing in from scattered locations on various targets and then dispersing, only to form new swarms.

While these groups share the motivations and methods of Al Qaeda, it is likely they have had only distant relations with Osama bin Laden and the Sunni salafists around him. In fact, Mr. bin Laden and the Qaeda hardcore should perhaps be viewed as they were in the 1990`s, as just one hub of a loosely knit global network of mujahedeen leaders left over from the Soviet-Afghan war. It was only after the F.B.I. began investigating the 1998 American Embassy bombings in Africa that American prosecutors — and the rest of the world — began referring to Al Qaeda as a global terrorist organization. We may be overestimating Mr. bin Laden`s reach.

The suicide bombings last November in Istanbul are a case in point. Turkish officials immediately attributed the bombings to Al Qaeda, although it quickly became clear that the explosives were probably made and detonated by Turkish groups claiming to represent Al Qaeda`s aims. In fact, Osama bin Laden`s greatest threat may be that simply by claiming to act in his name, regional groups are better able to recruit and coordinate operations.

United States special forces have recently stepped up their pursuit of Mr. bin Laden in the no man`s land between Pakistan and Afghanistan. While it would of course be a triumph to capture or kill him, his demise is unlikely to prove decisive. The war in Iraq has energized so many disparate groups that global terrorism is better prepared than ever to carry on without Mr. bin Laden. Even with many top Qaeda leaders now dead or in custody, the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London is reporting that global recruitment for anti-American jihad is rising and that many small, decentralized groups have sprung up that are harder for governments to identify and neutralize than was the case before the invasion.

Last year, there were 98 suicide attacks around the world, more than any year in contemporary history. Suicide terrorism plagues Iraq for the first time since the 13th-century assassins. A distinct pattern in this litany of atrocities has been pointed out by Robert Axelrod, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. Charting terrorist attacks by organization and lethality, he has noted an increasing interest in well-planned attacks intended to produce high numbers of civilian casualties — a pattern into which the Madrid bombings, on commuter train stations at the morning rush, fit neatly. This trend also seems to point to an eventual suicide attack using chemical or nuclear weapons.

So what can we do? Traditional top-heavy approaches — strategic bombardment, invasion and other large-scale forms of coercion — will not be any use against border-hopping jihadist swarms, and they would only add to their popular support.

Surprisingly, however, pinpoint responses may not be the answer either. Kathleen Carley, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has used intelligence data and computer modeling to monitor changes in jihadist networks, including the cell responsible for the suicide bombing of the American Embassy in Tanzania. She found that eliminating the "central actors" — that is, cell members who have the most ties to other cell members and to other groups — has actually spurred terrorists to adapt more quickly, and has been less effective in the long run than eliminating less-central foot soldiers. Thus assassinations of leaders (a favorite Israeli tactic) may be counterproductive, in addition to causing public revulsion.

Rather, destroying terrorist networks requires what David Ronfeldt, a RAND analyst, calls "netwar." This is, in effect, mimicking the swarming tactics of the enemy. It involves long missions by smallish, mobile military units that can quickly descend on terrorist groups.

This approach also requires a sort of global spider web — a set of international and interfaith alliances bonded by mutual trust and purpose. Such a true coalition of the willing would have the collective intelligence and resourcefulness needed to stop the swarms. While Spain`s incoming prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, intends to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq, he has said he would back efforts in Iraq and elsewhere as part of a United Nations enterprise. So would much of the world. Just as Hercules needed the help of his nephew Iolaus to kill the Hydra, the United States will not conquer the Islamic terror without the popular support of its allies. The jihadists are betting America will try to go it alone.


Scott Atran, a research scientist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris and the University of Michigan, is author of "In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion."



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March 16, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Weak on Terror
By PAUL KRUGMAN

My most immediate priority," Spain`s new leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, declared yesterday, "will be to fight terrorism." But he and the voters who gave his party a stunning upset victory last Sunday don`t believe the war in Iraq is part of that fight. And the Spanish public was also outraged by what it perceived as the Aznar government`s attempt to spin last week`s terrorist attack for political purposes.

The Bush administration, which baffled the world when it used an attack by Islamic fundamentalists to justify the overthrow of a brutal but secular regime, and which has been utterly ruthless in its political exploitation of 9/11, must be very, very afraid.

Polls suggest that a reputation for being tough on terror is just about the only remaining political strength George Bush has. Yet this reputation is based on image, not reality. The truth is that Mr. Bush, while eager to invoke 9/11 on behalf of an unrelated war, has shown consistent reluctance to focus on the terrorists who actually attacked America, or their backers in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

This reluctance dates back to Mr. Bush`s first months in office. Why, after all, has his inner circle tried so hard to prevent a serious investigation of what happened on 9/11? There has been much speculation about whether officials ignored specific intelligence warnings, but what we know for sure is that the administration disregarded urgent pleas by departing Clinton officials to focus on the threat from Al Qaeda.

After 9/11, terrorism could no longer be ignored, and the military conducted a successful campaign against Al Qaeda`s Taliban hosts. But the failure to commit sufficient U.S. forces allowed Osama bin Laden to escape. After that, the administration appeared to lose interest in Al Qaeda; by the summer of 2002, bin Laden`s name had disappeared from Mr. Bush`s speeches. It was all Saddam, all the time.

This wasn`t just a rhetorical switch; crucial resources were pulled off the hunt for Al Qaeda, which had attacked America, to prepare for the overthrow of Saddam, who hadn`t. If you want confirmation that this seriously impeded the fight against terror, just look at reports about the all-out effort to capture Osama that started, finally, just a few days ago. Why didn`t this happen last year, or the year before? According to The New York Times, last year many of the needed forces were tied up in Iraq.

It`s now clear that by shifting his focus to Iraq, Mr. Bush did Al Qaeda a huge favor. The terrorists and their Taliban allies were given time to regroup; the resurgent Taliban once again control almost a third of Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda has regained the ability to carry out large-scale atrocities.

But Mr. Bush`s lapses in the struggle against terrorism extend beyond his decision to give Al Qaeda a breather. His administration has also run interference for Saudi Arabia — the home of most of the 9/11 hijackers, and the main financier of Islamic extremism — and Pakistan, which created the Taliban and has actively engaged in nuclear proliferation.

Some of the administration`s actions have been so strange that those who reported them were initially accused of being nutty conspiracy theorists. For example, what are we to make of the post-9/11 Saudi airlift? Just days after the attack, at a time when private air travel was banned, the administration gave special clearance to flights that gathered up Saudi nationals, including a number of members of the bin Laden family, who were in the U.S. at the time. These Saudis were then allowed to leave the country, after at best cursory interviews with the F.B.I.

And the administration is still covering up for Pakistan, whose government recently made the absurd claim that large-scale shipments of nuclear technology and material to rogue states — including North Korea, according to a new C.I.A. report — were the work of one man, who was promptly pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf. Mr. Bush has allowed this farce to go unquestioned.

So when the Bush campaign boasts of the president`s record in fighting terrorism and accuses John Kerry of being weak on the issue, when Republican congressmen suggest that a vote for Mr. Kerry is a vote for Osama, remember this: the administration`s actual record is one of indulgence toward regimes that are strongly implicated in terrorism, and of focusing on actual terrorist threats only when forced to by events.


E-mail: [e-mail]



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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[Joerver]

Ziemlich klare Worte und die richtigen Worte.
Der Irakkrieg hat von Anfang an den Kampf gegen den Terror beschädigt und von wesendlichen Punkten abgelenkt.
Jetzt stehen wir vor dem Debakel Irak unde binden dort die Kräfte nicht nur militärisch und das Netzwerk des Terrorismus breitet sich immer weiter aus.
Diese Wahl wird hoffentlich auch Bush weiter in die Enge treiben.

washingtonpost.com
New Leader In Spain Calls Iraq `Disaster`
Incoming Premier Affirms Vow on Troop Withdrawal

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 16, 2004; Page A01


MADRID, March 15 -- Spain`s incoming prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, offered sharp criticism Monday of the Iraq war and the U.S. occupation and reaffirmed a campaign pledge to withdraw Spanish peacekeeping troops unless the United Nations takes control of the operation by the end of June.

In comments a day after the surprise victory of his Socialist Workers` Party, Zapatero made clear that he would pursue a "cordial" but decidedly more distant relationship with the United States than did his predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar, one of President Bush`s closest allies in Europe.

"The war has been a disaster; the occupation continues to be a disaster," Zapatero told a radio interviewer. At a news conference later, he called the Iraq war "an error." He added, "It divided more than it united, there were no reasons for it, time has shown that the arguments for it lacked credibility, and the occupation has been poorly managed."

He pledged to continue to combat international terrorism, but said the fight should be conducted with "a grand alliance" of democracies and not through "unilateral wars," a clear reference to Iraq.

Initially, the Iraq war was deeply unpopular in Spain, and last Thursday`s train attacks in Madrid`s morning rush hour, which killed 200 people and wounded more than 1,400, returned the war to the forefront of the election campaign. The government first blamed the Basque separatist group ETA for the attacks, the worst in Spanish history, but as evidence pointed to the al Qaeda network, Spaniards accused the government of withholding information to avoid a backlash at the ballot box.

Investigators arrested three Moroccans and two Indian-born Spanish nationals on Saturday, and they continued to search for clues that could definitively link the suspects or the bombings to al Qaeda. Investigators were increasingly focused on the al Qaeda ties of one of the arrested Moroccans, 30-year-old Jamal Zougam, who had been under suspicion for involvement in multiple suicide bombing attacks in Casablanca last May that killed 33 civilians.

Spain`s interior minister, Angel Acebes, said on Sunday that forensics tests on the victims of the Madrid bombings indicated that none was a suicide bomber, previously a hallmark of al Qaeda attacks. But on Monday, the newspaper El Pais reported that forensics experts were reexamining one unidentified corpse to determine whether that person`s injuries were consistent with those of a suicide bomber.

Investigators here and from intelligence agencies around the rest of Europe have not identified the speaker on a videotape found after the blasts, who identified himself in Moroccan-accented Arabic as Abu Dujan al Afgani, head of al Qaeda`s military wing in Europe. In a transcript released by the government, Afgani asserted that al Qaeda staged the Madrid attacks in retaliation for Spain`s role as an ally and military partner of the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Zapatero, a largely untested 43-year-old lawyer and longtime Socialist member of parliament, said one consequence of the Iraq war was his surprise victory Sunday over Aznar`s ruling Popular Party. He also attributed the victory to his promise that "Spanish troops will come back."

Although he reiterated his intention to withdraw Spain`s 1,300 troops from Iraq, he left open the possibility that the soldiers could remain if a new U.N. resolution were passed giving the world body control over Iraq`s political reconstruction. He said the United Nations would have to be in control by June 30, the date when the current Spanish military mission there is scheduled to end.

"Unless there is a change, in that the United Nations takes control and the occupiers give up political control, the Spanish troops will come back, and the limit to their presence is June 30," he said.

The Spanish contingent represents about 1 percent of the total foreign troop presence in Iraq. In the wake of Zapatero`s victory, and his repeated statements on Monday, leaders of other countries in the military coalition were quick to say they had no intention of withdrawing their contingents.

Zapatero addressed criticism directly at Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, another steadfast supporter of the United States in Iraq. "Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush must do some reflection and self-criticism. You can`t organize a war with lies," he said.

Nevertheless, Zapatero said he wanted to have cordial relations with Washington. "That`s the beauty and greatness of democracy," he said. "It allows you to disagree while maintaining good relations."

On Monday, he accepted a telephone call from Bush that the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, described as "congratulatory." McClellan said that the issue of Iraq was not discussed in the brief conversation, but that the two discussed "the importance of working together and advancing the strong relations that we have."

Although the Socialists fell short of an absolute majority in parliament, Zapatero, who is expected to take office in about a month, said he would try to govern without a permanent coalition. Instead, he will try to form alliances with smaller political parties representing Spain`s 19 autonomous regions. Those parties did particularly well in Sunday`s voting.

And although he has yet to name his choice as foreign minister, one name frequently mentioned here is Miguel Angel Moritanos, a veteran Spanish diplomat and Middle East expert who worked in Spain`s embassies in Morocco and Israel and who is now the European Union`s special envoy to the Middle East peace process.

Zapatero said that improving relations with Spain`s North African neighbors would be among the "three pillars" of the incoming government`s foreign policy. The others, he said, were improving on Spain`s historic ties with Latin America and its relations with the rest of Europe. He pointedly did not mention the United States when discussing the outlines of his emerging policy.

Meanwhile in Lavapies, the ethnically mixed, blue-collar Madrid neighborhood where the three arrested Moroccan suspects lived and worked, some residents who knew the men expressed strong doubts about their involvement in the attacks.

A Moroccan man who spoke on condition of anonymity said he worked for several years in a clothing shop on Trivuleta Street next to the small cell phone shop operated by Zougam and Mohamed Chaoui, 34. He said the two men "were very hard-working people, decent people. So when they were arrested, everybody was surprised and stunned."

The man said the two men were half brothers and had run a vegetable stand before getting involved in the cell phone business. He said they were well-known for supplying cell phone chips that could be used in both Spain and Morocco, and that police might have suspected they were involved in illegal business involving cell phone sales.

Another local resident who would not allow his name to be used said the third detainee, Mohamed Bekkali, 31, was a fun-loving bachelor at odds with the image of an Islamic militant. "This was a disco-type guy, a suit-and-a-tie kind of guy," he said. "Nothing to do with religious fanatics. I know that."

Police have said Chaoui and Bekkali have no police records, while Zougam has been named as a possible participant in al Qaeda-related activities in Spain and Morocco, including the Casablanca bombings. But residents said they believed the men had been arrested because police needed to show they were taking action. The residents said they feared Muslims could be unfairly targeted for suspicion and arrest because of last week`s bombings.

Special correspondents Robert Scarcia and Pamela Rolfe contributed to this report.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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__ Foreign Forces in Iraq __

There are 34 countries in addition to the United States with personnel stationed in Iraq. Here is a breakdown of each member of the coalition, what region or city where the operate, and the number of personnel stationed in Iraq.
Country City or Region Personnel
U.K. Basra, Southeast Iraq 11,000
Italy Southeast 2,700
Ukraine South Central 2,000
Spain South Central 1,300
Poland South Central 1,300
Netherlands Southeast 1,100
Australia Southeast 1,000
South Korea Southeast 700
Romania Southeast, South Central 700
Denmark Southeast 496
Bulgaria South Central 470
Thailand South Central 460
Honduras South Central 370
El Salvador South Central 360
Hungary South Central 300
Dominican Republic South Central 300
Nicaragua South Central 230
Singapore Arabian Gulf, Baghdad 192
Mongolia South Central 180
Azerbaijan Mosul, Kirkuk, Karbala 151
Norway Southeast 150
Portugal Southeast 128
Latvia South Central 121
Lithuania Southeast & South Central 105
Slovakia South Central 105
Philippines South Central 96
Czech Republic Southeast 80
Japan Al Samawa 75
Albania Mosul 70
Georgia Southeast 70
New Zealand Southeast 61
Estonia Baghdad 55
Kazakhstan South Central 29
Macedonia Taji 28
Moldova Baghdad 24

Source: Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Iraqi Freedom; Coalition Provisional Authority; GlobalSecurity.org

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Hier noch die Meinung des Spiegel.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 16. März 2004, 9:38
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,290789,00.html
Schock im Weißen Haus

Spaniens Rückzug torpediert Bushs Wahlkampf

Von Marc Pitzke, New York

Die Schockwellen der Bomben von Madrid vibrieren nicht nur durch Europa, sondern auch durch den US-Wahlkampf. Präsident George W. Bush hat plötzlich Probleme, sein Image vom siegreichen Feldherrn im Terror-Krieg aufrecht zu erhalten.
New York - Der Oberbefehlshaber vergnügte sich prächtig. Herausgeputzt im Smoking, saß George W. Bush in der Präsidentenloge des Ford`s Theatres und wippte rhythmisch mit dem Kopf. Ein patriotisches Marschmedley füllte den Saal in Washington, darunter "Yankee Doodle Dandy", der Gassenhauer des US-Unabhängigkeitskrieges. Sechs alternde Schlachtveteranen wackelten auf die Bühne, Verdienstorden an der Brust, und salutierten ihrem Commander-in-Chief zackig. "Jeder dieser Gentlemen", lobte Bush darob, "hat unserer Nation großen Dienst geleistet - weit über das hinaus, was man erwarten konnte."

Wie derzeit fast alle Bush-Termine geriet so auch die Benefiz-Gala zur Instandhaltung des Theaters, in dem einst Abraham Lincoln erschossen wurde, am Sonntagabend zum inszenierten Tableau der Vaterlandsliebe. Ein paar Dutzend Kinder von US-Soldaten, die im Irak und anderswo stationiert sind, trällerten von den "simplen Freuden" der Heimat, von "Maismehl-Klößchen" und "süßem Eistee". Und Country-Star Brad Paisley setzte noch einen drauf: "Es gibt nichts Besseres als zu wissen, dass Christus eines Tages zurückkehren wird."

Doch das fromm-erbauliche Idyll war schnell zu Ende, für Bush jedenfalls. Wenige Stunden später, am Montagvormittag, musste er im Oval Office zwei unangenehme Telefonate erledigen, die ihn wieder auf den Boden der Tatsachen holten. Der erste galt einem verlorenen Alliierten im Irak-Krieg, dem abgewählten spanischen Ministerpräsidenten José María Aznar. Das zweite - der obligatorische Wahl-Glückwunsch - einem neuen Polit-Widersacher von widriger Symbolik, Aznars designiertem Nachfolger José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

Bomben zum 2. November?

Das gequälte Wortgeplänkel zwischen dem konservativen Feldherrn und dem Sozialisten, der dessen Feldzug als "Desaster" bezeichnet hat, kann man sich nur vorstellen. Die offizielle Sprachregelung des Weißen Hauses: Bush habe Zapatero gratuliert und seine Hoffnung auf "gute Zusammenarbeit im Krieg gegen den Terror" geäußert. Die Frage des von Zapatero angedrohten spanischen Truppenabzugs aus dem Irak sei nicht zur Sprache gekommen.

So schnell geht das. Ursprünglich wollte das Bush-Team diese Woche, in der sich der Irak-Krieg jährt, zur Bühne für seine Wahlkampf-Propaganda machen. Beim Essenfassen mit Soldaten in Fort Campbell, am Krankenbett von verstümmelten GIs im Walter-Reed-Armeehospital und auf einer Feier mit den Botschaftern der treuen Kriegsalliierten soll der Präsident in den kommenden Tagen das Mantra seiner Wiederwahl verkünden, das hier auch längst schon im Viertelstunden-Rhythmus den Äther füllt, als teuerste TV-Politwerbung aller Zeiten: "Amerika und die Welt sind durch Bushs Führungskraft sicherer geworden."

Dann kamen das Grauen und der Machtwechsel von Madrid: Ein "Schlag für Bush", titelte die "New York Times" kühl. Bushs Durchhaltetournee für diese Woche bleibt zwar unverändert. Die "Message" aber ist plötzlich eine andere - eine, die den Strategen im Weißen Haus gar nicht ins Konzept passt und die den Präsidenten nun zu allerlei rhetorischen Rückwärtssalti zwingt: Die Welt ist offenbar doch nicht unbedingt sicherer geworden, und Bush drohen die Felle davonzuschwimmen. Obendrein drängt sich den Amerikanern eine düstere Frage auf: Wenn Terroristen Wahlen mit Bomben beeinflussen können - was lässt das hier für den 2. November befürchten?

"Kette krasser Fehltritte"

"Dies ist nicht gut für die Bush-Regierung", ahnt Politexperte Ken Pollack von der Brookings Institution, einst selbst ein Kriegs-Befürworter. "Schlechte Nachrichten für die Administration", sagt auch TV-Kommentator Bill Plante. Das penibel konstruierte Wahlkampf-Image Bushs droht zu bröckeln: gütiger Volkströster nach dem 11. September 2001, siegreicher Krieger gegen den Terror. Schon nutzte Bushs demokratischer Widersacher John Kerry die Chance gestern zum Gegenschlag, in typisch verquaster Kerry-Metaphorik: "Die Regierung pfuscht herum, während die Uhr der Inneren Sicherheit tickt."

Kerry sprach diese Worte in Washington, vor der Kulisse aufgereihter Feuerwehrleute der International Association of Firefighters. Denn natürlich beherrschen auch die Demokraten die Kunst der inszenierten "Photo Op" perfekt: Sie konterkarierten so ein ähnliches TV-Bild, das Bush in seinem Wahlkampf-Arsenal bereit hält - seinen berühmten Megaphon-Auftritt vor den Trümmermännern des World Trade Centers.

Bush und sein Zirkel, so ist zu hören, seien über den Gang der Dinge "enttäuscht". Ein mildes Understatement. So hatten sie sich den Wahlkampfauftakt schließlich kaum vorgestellt. Bushs Plan war doch so einfach und narrensicher gewesen: Finger weg von den Themen Konjunktur und Soziales, da gibt`s angesichts der zwiespältigen Lage keine Stimmen zu gewinnen, im Gegenteil. Das Wirtschaftsteam des Weißen Hauses, stöhnte jetzt selbst die "Washington Post", habe sich in einer "Kette krasser Fehltritte" verheddert.

Bushs Mutation vom Onkel zum Krieger

Stattdessen setzten Bushs Spin Doctors ganz aufs Zwitter-Image des Kriegers und Staatsmanns. Mit sorgfältig choreografierten "Medien-Events" bastelt Bush-Chefberater Karl Rove seit Monaten daran, angefangen im vorigen Mai mit Bushs pompöser Landung auf dem Flugzeugträger "U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln".

Auch Bushs Thanksgiving-Überraschungsbesuch bei den Truppen in Bagdad diente schon demselben Zweck, ebenso wie jetzt eine Reihe koordinierter Interviews, in denen diverse Minister ihren Chef als tollen Kriegshecht preisen durften. "Diese Message ist zentral für Bushs Wiederwahl", weiß ein Wahlkampfhelfer. "Er muss die Aufmerksamkeit von seinen Schwachpunkten wie der Wirtschaft auf seine größte Umfragestärke in den USA lenken, also seine verteidigungspolitische Kompetenz."

Das ist aber ohnehin ein Spiel mit dem Feuer. Bushs Mutation vom guten Onkel, als der er noch vor vier Jahren lässig durch den Wahlkampf tingelte, zum "Kriegspräsidenten" ist eine stilistische Kehrtwende, die den skeptischen Wechselwählern der "Softie-Mitte" (so ein Bush-Stratege) erst mal glaubhaft gemacht werden muss. Doch der unerwartete Schatten des Terrors über Bushs Amtszeit und jetzt die ebenso unerwartet lebhafte Demokraten-Konkurrenz lassen ihm keine Wahl als die Offensive. "Er ist nicht in der Position, positiv zu sein", klagt Fred Meyer, der Ex-Vorsitzende der texanischen Republikaner.

Missliche Zahlen für Bush wie Kerry

"Am Ende laufen Wahlen darauf hinaus, wem man am meisten zutraut, das Land zu führen", sagte die frühere Bush-Chefsprecherin Karen Hughes, der "Washington Post". "In diesem Fall wird es darauf hinauslaufen, wem man am meisten zutraut, das Land zu verteidigen."

Und da hat Bush die Nase vorn - noch. Trotz des internationalen PR-Debakels um den Irak-Kriegsgrund ist Kompetenz im Kampf gegen den Terror in den jüngsten Meinungsumfragen das einzige Themenfeld, in dem er Kerry schlägt. Doch auch hier ist Bushs Vorsprung mittlerweile geschmolzen, von 51 Punkten vor einem Jahr auf zuletzt 21 Punkte - und das war vor den Anschlägen von Madrid. In allen anderen Bereichen, besonders der Wirtschaft, liegt Kerry vorn. In der generellen Wählergunst führt so mal der eine, mal der andere knapp, je nachdem, ob man den Joker-Kandidaten Ralph Nader mit in die bunte Mischung wirft.

54 Prozent der Amerikaner, so heute früh die aktuellste Befragung der "New York Times", sind jedenfalls mit der "Richtung des Landes" unzufrieden. Und zwei Drittel halten es für "nicht akzeptabel", mit der Erinnerung an den 11. September 2001 Wahlwerbung zu machen. Das sind missliche Zahlen, für Bush wie Kerry: Kerry kämpft weiter mit unscharfem Profil und Zweifeln an seinem Wort; für Bush dagegen ist der Bonus des Amtsinhabers so gut wie futsch, und seine TV-Spots mit den rauchenden Ruinen des World Trade Centers dürften wohl auch schnell in der Versenkung verschwinden.

Schweigend ins Nichts gewinkt

In diese offene Wunde rieselt nun der Fallout der Bomben von Madrid. Deren Schockwellen vibrieren nicht nur durch Europa, sondern auch durch den US-Wahlkampf. Das Weiße Haus, die politische Gefahr sofort witternd, verlor keine Zeit, Außenminister Colin Powell, Pentagon-Chef Donald Rumsfeld und Sicherheitsberaterin Condi Rice an die Talk-Front zu schicken, um die Anschläge zu Bushs strategischen Gunsten zu "spinnen". "Ich hoffe, die Europäer erkennen jetzt, dass keiner immun ist", sagte Powell, Bush als Kriegspräsidenten lobend, ganz wie es das Wahl-Drehbuch vorschreibt.

Wenig von alldem will natürlich etwas heißen, acht lange Monate vor der Entscheidung. Das weiß auch Bush, und überlässt nichts dem Zufall. Gestern reiste er nach Philadelphia und besichtigte dort ein Neubauviertel für Niedrigverdiener, um dieses als Errungenschaft seines Wirtschaftsprogramm darzustellen - Teil des neuen Drehbuchs. Auf dem Weg zum Helikopter riefen ihm die Reporter ein paar Fragen zum Krieg gegen den Terror zu. Doch Bush winkte nur schweigend ins Nichts.


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© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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Die Methode Haiti und jetzt kommt auch noch Spanien dazu.
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Spiegel-Online hat sich heute ric htig Mühr gegeben. Eigene Meinung und nicht nur Agenturmeldungen verramscht.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 16. März 2004, 9:09
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,290793,00.html
Spanischer Rückzug aus Irak

"Hasta la vista, Baby"

Aus Bagdad berichtet Markus Deggerich

Die Anschläge in Madrid schockierten die Terror gewohnten Menschen in Bagdad nicht. "Jetzt sind wir Brüder", sagen sie und hoffen auf mehr Verständnis im Westen. Der angekündigte Rückzug spanischer Soldaten indes trifft das Land zum ungünstigsten Zeitpunkt - sollten mehr Regierungen dem Beispiel folgen, droht Anarchie.

Bagdad - "Hasta la vista, baby". Irakische Jugendliche markieren gerne den starken Mann und zitieren dabei vorzugsweise Actionhelden, bekannt aus Funk und Fernsehen und Raubkopien. Der markige Abschiedsgruß auf Spanisch von Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger hat aber in Bagdad eine neue Bedeutung bekommen. Die Ankündigung nach dem Machtwechsel in Spanien, die iberischen Soldaten aus dem Irak abzuziehen, trifft am Tigris auf ein geteiltes Echo - je nachdem, mit wem man spricht: Bürgern oder politisch und militärisch Verantwortlichen.

Viele Iraker verstehen die Aufregung nicht, die nun in Europa herrscht. Das Attentat in Spanien rutschte in den irakischen Medien schnell wieder in den Hintergrund. Aus Spanien beschäftigte hingegen noch Tage später das Spiel von Real Madrid gegen Bayern München die Gazetten in dem fußballverrückten Land: Beckham statt Bin Laden.

In einer Stadt, in der der Terror allgegenwärtig ist, lösen Bomben in Madrid andere Gefühle aus als in Westeuropa. "Madrid ist nicht Bagdad", sagt Karim Manoura, der in der belebten Sadoun-Einkaufsstraße eine Teestube betreibt. Das meint er wertend, so als gebe es im Leid ein Relativ. Auf einer imaginären Liste der unsichersten Städte der Welt sehen sich die Bagdadis an der Spitze - mit einer seltsamen Mischung aus Furcht und Stolz. Allein am Montag explodierten in der irakischen Innenstadt fünf Bomben, die Zahl der Opfer ist unklar und mancher will sie auch schon nicht mehr zählen. Man hört die Explosion, zuckt kurz zusammen und sucht dann schnell den Blick eines anderen, um sich anzulächeln und mit den Schultern zu zucken. "Vielleicht denken die Menschen jetzt wieder anders über uns", sagt Manoura. Die Nachrichten aus dem Irak über Tote und Attentate hatten bereits einen ähnlichen Gewöhnungseffekt wie die Terror-Pegelstandsmeldungen aus Israel.

Da man auch im Irak zunehmend terrormüde ist und verstärkt glaubt, dass neben den ethnischen, religiösen, kriminellen und Saddam-freundlichen Guerilleros überwiegend al-Qaida-Terroristen das Chaos nähren, hoffen viele nun wieder auf mehr Hilfe und Verständnis durch den Westen. "Jetzt sind wir Brüder", sagt Ali Kohamm, der in Manouras Stube seinen Tee trinkt.

Iraker denken nicht darüber nach, was es bedeuten könnte, wenn Spanien nun aus der Koalition der Willigen ausschert. Die spanischen Soldaten sind im Zweistromland nicht sehr präsent. Sie sind im Osten und Zentralirak stationiert und Schlagzeilen machte Spanien hauptsächlich, als es mit vier Agenten auf einen Schlag in einem Hinterhalt seine komplette geheime "Intelligence" verlor.

Doch Spanien ist aus ganz anderen Gründen unersetzbar. Weil Polen die Amerikaner gegen Saddam Hussein unterstützt und sogar ein militärisch aktives Kontingent in den Golf entsandt hatte, waren die Osteuropäer von den USA im September 2003 für diese Haltung mit dem Kommando über den mittleren Verwaltungsbereich belohnt worden. In diesem zwischen Iran und Saudi-Arabien gelegenen Gebiet, das so groß ist wie ein Drittel Polens, befehligt General Andrzej Tyszkiewicz eine Friedens- und Überwachungstruppe, die sich aus 23 Nationen zusammensetzt.

Spanien war als Nachfolger Polens vorgesehen

Dazu gehören auch die rund 1300 Spanier, die nach den Polen zusammen mit der Ukraine dort die größte Truppe stellen. Für das Kommando multinationaler Truppen gilt in der Regel ein Rotationsprinzip. Als natürlicher Nachfolger Polens wurde bisher allgemein Spanien betrachtet. Die Spanier hatten zur Freude Washingtons mehrere lateinamerikanische Länder dazu gebracht, sich in der multinationalen Truppe zu engagieren und sollten dafür auch beim Wiederaufbau gebührend berücksichtigt und belohnt werden.

1300 Soldaten weniger sind nominell noch kein Beinbruch. Aber die Amerikaner und die irakischen Offiziellen macht die Wende in Spanien dennoch sehr nervös: Sie kommt zum denkbar schlechtesten Zeitpunkt. Die Amerikaner sind als Reizfiguren und Zielscheiben zunehmend bemüht, sich aus dem öffentlichen Leben zurück zu ziehen. Sie verbarrikadieren sich in den Kasernen, wollen ihre Truppenstärke schrittweise reduzieren und die Aufgaben zunehmend in multilaterale Hände legen. Sie fürchten nun, die spanische Entscheidung könnte als Präzedenzfall einen Dominoeffekt auslösen - denn Spanien ist keineswegs das einzige Land, indem es große Unterschiede gab und gibt zwischen Regierungshandeln und Bürgerwillen in der Irak-Frage. So mancher Regierungschef in der Koalition der Willigen wird sich fragen, ob das Beispiel des in der Wahl unterlegenen José María Aznar Schule machen wird.

Who`s next?

Verlassen können sich die USA weiterhin auf Großbritannien und Italien. Aber das nächste Problemkind war schon absehbar - und spürt durch die spanische Wende erhöhten Druck. Es geht um Polen. Der Irak-Einsatz sei auch nach den Anschlägen von Madrid nicht in Frage gestellt, betont Ministerpräsident Leszek Miller eilig. Die multinationalen Truppen müssten bis zur Stabilisierung der Situation in Irak bleiben. Doch der polnische Nato-Botschafter Jerzy Nowak erklärte bereits, ein spanischer Truppenabzug bereite ihm "ernste Sorgen". Es werde schwierig sein, das spanische Kontingent zu ersetzen. In jedem Fall sei Polen bereit, das Kommando über die multinationalen Truppen im südlichen Zentrum Iraks weiter auszuüben.

Daran haben auch die USA größtes Interesse. In dem Nationenmix der Besatzungstruppen rund um Babylon herrscht großes (Sprachen-)Wirrwarr und Kompetenzgerangel. Dienstsprache ist meist russisch, weil viele osteuropäische Staaten dabei sind. Schon deshalb wäre es den USA lieb und teuer, wenn Polen bliebe.

Aber die polnischen Treueschwüre könnten sich als Lippenbekenntnisse entpuppen. Denn Polen hatte sich bereits darauf eingerichtet, seine Truppen schrittweise zu reduzieren - auch weil der Unmut in der Heimat immer weiter wächst. Denn bisher hatte sich die US-Treue für die Polen kaum ausgezahlt. Im Gegenteil: Der verschärfte Visa-Zwang bei Reisen in die USA, wo viele Polen arbeiten, sorgte für blanke Wut. Und Umfragen zufolge fürchteten schon vor den Terroranschlägen von Madrid 74 Prozent der Polen, auch ihr Land könne ins Visier islamischer Terroristen geraten.

Unmut in Polen

Zwar beruhigte Spionagechef Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, in Polen hätten islamische Terroristen kein Rückzugsgebiet und könnten im Gegensatz zu Spanien, Frankreich oder anderen Ländern mit einer großen Zahl arabischer Immigranten nicht unauffällig untertauchen. Doch Polen im Irak erzählen, dass bereits vor Weihnachten mehrere Verdächtige an den Grenzen der Heimat festgenommen worden sein, die aus "Hochrisikoländern" stammten. Inzwischen bestätigte Miller, dass diese Festnahmen in Zusammenhang mit Terror-Warnungen standen.

Polnische Offizielle im Irak wollen sich nicht öffentlich zu den weiteren Plänen äußern. Auch der Sprecher des irakischen Nationalkongresses, Entifadh K. Qanbar, verweigerte gegenüber SPIEGEL ONLINE eine Stellungnahme zu den Folgen der spanischen Rochade. Aber vielleicht fragen sich irakische Jugendliche schon bald: Was heißt "Hasta la vista, Baby" auf Polnisch.


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A demonstrator in Ardmore, Pa., links President Bush and defeated Spanish leader Jose Maria Aznar.

washingtonpost.com
Bush Seeks to Stem Damage From Spain
President Aims to Reinforce War on Terror

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 16, 2004; Page A17


President Bush telephoned congratulations to Spain`s incoming prime minister yesterday as the White House worked to mitigate the diplomatic and political damage from the Socialists` upset victory after a terrorist attack on a crucial ally.

Bush`s aides said he began talking to other world leaders about his determination to remain on the offensive in the war on terrorism. The party of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was ousted on Sunday, three days after bombings that killed 200 people and are being blamed by investigators on al Qaeda loyalists.

A White House official, insisting on anonymity to speak more bluntly than diplomacy might dictate, said Bush would work to be sure it is "clear to all around the world that nations cannot make a separate peace with terrorists."

"Unless we stand together in a resolved way to fight terrorists, in all likelihood, a given nation will be susceptible to an act of terror," the official said. "If terrorists are able to attack those who are fighting them the hardest and have an effect, then that sends a terrible message."

Administration officials said they plan consultations on a possible new U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq after the incoming prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, reiterated his campaign pledge to withdraw Spain`s 1,300 troops from the U.S.-led occupation in the absence of a specific international mandate.

Simon Serfaty, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called Spain "one of the most willing in the coalition of the willing," and said the election results make it difficult for the administration "to claim that the coalition is not weakened, as a matter of fact as well as a matter of perception."

In public, Bush`s aides stuck to measured comments that warned against over-interpreting the election results and sought to put the best face on them. Bush and Vice President Cheney, both of whom gave speeches yesterday, remained publicly silent on the outcome and issued no written statement.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, "The right response to these kinds of brutal terrorist attacks is for all countries . . . to redouble our efforts and go after those terrorists, before they can strike."

"Terrorists seek to attack that which they view as most threatening," McClellan said. "That`s why they are enemies of freedom and democracy."

At the same time, McClellan said twice that terrorists "are indiscriminate in who they attack -- they want to spread fear and chaos."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, asked by reporters while traveling to New Delhi if the voting in Spain was a victory for the terrorists, called it "a victory for the Socialists."

"Terrorism has to be defeated and I don`t think the Spanish people are any more inclined to give any encouragement to terrorists," Powell said.

Zapatero said yesterday that the war in Iraq, and the occupation that followed, had been a disaster. Administration aides, while refusing to speculate about the possible impact on any future U.S. efforts to put together an international coalition, contended that the U.S.-led mission in Iraq would continue unimpaired through the scheduled handoff on June 30.

Powell said that the administration has "always had under consideration another U.N. resolution as we got closer to the first of July," when the United States is to transfer political authority to an interim Iraqi government.

In Washington, State Department spokesman J. Adam Ereli said administration officials "believe there is such a mandate" from a U.S.-backed resolution passed in October, but have "also said that in the context of a transfer of sovereignty on June 30th, a new resolution is possible."

McClellan said Bush and Zapatero spoke for 10 minutes, including translation. Bush called about 9:45 a.m. Eastern time, about 15 minutes after calling Aznar.

"The president reiterated our solidarity with the Spanish people and said they`re in our prayers during this difficult period," McClellan said. "The two leaders both said they look forward to working together, particularly on our shared commitment to combating terrorism. And [prime minister-elect] Zapatero thanked the president for the phone call."



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Bison traveling on a snow-covered road near Madison Junction in Yellowstone National Park share the road with snowmobiles, whose season ended last night.
Eins meiner Lieblingsthemen.
Die großartige Landschaft der USA.
An sich habe ich für dieses Jahr wieder einen Abstecher in die USA geplant. Und dabei sollte dann auch der Yellowstone, der grandiose Rocky Montains National Park und das südliche Colorado sein.
Im Yellowstone gab es diesen Winter einigen Ärger mit den Snowmobiles. Nachdem Bush diese zuerst für den Park zugelassen hatte, hatte dann erst ein Gericht sie verboten, dann die nächste Instanz wieder erlaubt.

washingtonpost.com
For Snowmobiles, An Uncertain Fate
Future in Parks May Hinge on Election

By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 15, 2004; Page A23


The last snowmobiles of the season snarled out the gates of Yellowstone National Park last night, as the park ended its winter tourism season. But will they ever return?

The right to traverse the winter wonders of the world`s oldest national park in a snowmobile has become one of the nation`s most complicated environmental issues. One U.S. district judge has ordered the National Park Service to keep the machines out, and another has ordered the park to let them in.

While court challenges continue, the question is likely to be decided by whoever wins the presidential election in November -- which means the fate of snowmobiling in Yellowstone is as uncertain as the nation`s political future.

"We can say for sure that we will welcome winter visitors to Yellowstone next December," said Cheryl Matthews, a spokeswoman for the park. "What vehicles they will come in is something we don`t know. It would be a great injustice to speculate on what may happen."

"We`re totally confused, and we`re the people who are supposed to know all about this," said Bill Dart of the BlueRibbon Coalition, a pro-snowmobile group. "So you can imagine that the general public is really without clue. The thing changes all the time. It`s on. It`s off. We`re in the park. We`re out."

Winter tourism in Yellowstone and nearby Grand Teton National Park has been increasing steadily for three decades, reaching 140,000 visitors in the 2002-2003 season. About three-quarters of them entered on snowmobiles, traveling the parks` unplowed roads to see the rare spectacles of frozen waterfalls, geysers bursting through a blanket of snow, and herds of wild animals that tend to stay in the deepest forest areas during the busy summer season.

A vibrant snow-season industry sprung up in the gateway communities; the motel-and-restaurant town of West Yellowstone, Mont., came to call itself "the snowmobile capital of the world." But environmental groups said that the noise and air pollution caused by all those snowmobiles was harming not only the flora and fauna, but also the parks` human staff.

The Park Service began issuing gas masks to rangers to counter the clouds of exhaust fumes rising from snowmobiles backed up at the entrance gates. In a clear victory for the environmental lobby, the Clinton administration ordered a phaseout of snowmobile traffic in Yellowstone and Grand Teton, with the numbers decreasing for three seasons and then a total ban beginning in December 2004.

If the Clinton rule prevails, the snowmobiles that left with the end of the season at 9 last night would be the last to have entered the parks.

When the Bush administration arrived in Washington in 2001, the snowmobile ban was one of the first Clinton-era rules to be reversed. Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton said the number of snowmobile trips could increase, to 980 entries a day. But Norton required riders to use a new model of snowmobile, known in the trade as "BAT" machines, or "Best Available Technology." These vehicles use a four-stroke gasoline engine, which is less noisy and less polluting than the two-stroke engines that had been standard fare on snowmobiles.

The Norton ruling was challenged by an environmental coalition. On Dec. 16, 2003, one day before the most recent winter season began, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington reinstated the Clinton rule. Sullivan wrote that the Bush administration decision was "completely politically driven and result oriented," and ordered that snowmobile visits must be restricted this season and eliminated thereafter.

Snowmobile groups and the gateway communities fought back with a lawsuit of their own. In February, U.S. District Judge Clarence A. Brimmer of Cheyenne, Wyo., issued a temporary restraining order, telling the parks to ignore Sullivan`s order and to follow the Bush regulations. Brimmer wrote that a judge in Washington couldn`t accurately gauge the impact of the ban on Wyoming.

"A single Eastern district judge shouldn`t have the unlimited power to impose the [Clinton-era] rule on the public and the business community," he wrote.

The Park Service complied with the Sullivan order for three months, and then switched back to the Bush administration plan after Brimmer`s ruling.

Meanwhile, the snowmobiling public has kept its distance. The winter visitor totals this season have been about half what they were a year ago, park data show, and snowmobile visits have dropped by about two-thirds from the 2002-03 tally.

"People don`t come, because they don`t know what they`ll be allowed to do when they get there," snowmobile supporter Dart said.

Environmental groups and park officials emphasize that it is possible to experience the splendor of winter in Yellowstone without riding a snowmobile. The park operates a fleet of "snow coaches" -- small buses equipped with skis on the front axle and a tank tread in the rear. A 47-mile road cutting across the park`s northeast corner is plowed and open all winter, providing auto visitors access to some thermal features and wildlife viewing.

Cross-country skiers and snowshoers are also admitted, though they can cover only a fraction of the terrain a motor vehicle can reach in a day.

But whether anybody will visit Yellowstone again on a snowmobile is a question that will probably turn on the November election. The Bush administration is determined to permit the vehicles in the two parks. The likely Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), was among the critics of the administration`s position.

"At the moment, both judicial orders are in effect," said Blain Rethmeier, a spokesman for the Justice Department. "And both are being appealed. There`s just no way to say definitively what the rule will be when the next winter season opens out there."



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washingtonpost.com
Similar Tactics, Different Names
Al Qaeda-Like Groups Scrutinized

By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 16, 2004; Page A16


U.S. and European counterterrorism officials have seen a growing number of clues in the Madrid bombings that point to terrorists from any one of dozens of Islamic jihadist groups that use tactics similar to al Qaeda`s but conduct operations and choose targets independently, the officials said yesterday.

This evidence, although preliminary, includes the use of cell phones to trigger explosive devices, a tactic al Qaeda has employed, and a strong suspicion that part of the operation was planned outside the targeted country, also an al Qaeda signature, two U.S. counterterrorism officials said yesterday.

No evidence points directly to Osama bin Laden`s network, but counterterrorism officials believe they may be seeing proof of their worst fears: the carrying out of a spectacular, coordinated attack aimed at making a worldwide political statement by terrorists who might emulate al Qaeda but operate autonomously.

"It would be disheartening but not totally surprising if we were seeing shadow-type groups adopting [al Qaeda`s] methods throughout the world," one U.S. intelligence official said. Some officials hold out the possibility that ETA, the Basque separatist movement, may have helped facilitate the attack.

Meanwhile, intelligence officials have recorded an increase in intelligence reporting in recent days indicating possible terrorist strikes in Rome, France and Turkey, according to one European intelligence official. Such intelligence reports often surge after a terrorist attack. U.S. officials also point to a message bin Laden delivered in October warning of attacks in Spain, Britain, Australia, Poland, Japan and Italy, in response to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

CIA Director George J. Tenet and other intelligence officials have warned in recent months of the danger posed by largely autonomous terror groups that use al Qaeda`s tactics and have relatively loose ties to the network. Finding and destroying groups that are widely dispersed and only informally linked is even harder than eliminating bin Laden and his organization, officials caution.

"The steady spread of Osama bin Laden`s anti-American sentiments through the wider Sunni [Muslim] extremist movement, and through the broad dissemination of al Qaeda`s destructive expertise, ensures that a serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future, with or without al Qaeda in the picture," Tenet told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 9.

Tenet also identified as part of the new, growing threat outside al Qaeda "so-called foreign jihadists" -- religiously motivated individuals "ready to fight anywhere when they believe Muslim lands are under attack by those they see as infidel invaders."

Among the other bits of preliminary evidence in Madrid that point to an al Qaeda-like signature is that the bombs used in the attack were dispersed quickly and widely. Al Qaeda is believed to have adopted that tactic from the Japanese religious group Aum Shinrikyo, whose members punctured bags of deadly sarin inside Tokyo subway cars in March 1995.

Authorities have also discovered what they believe to be at least one safe house near the attacks that was used by terrorists. The use of close-in safe houses to rehearse operations and store equipment and supplies is an al Qaeda trademark seen in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, the 2003 bombing of a Saudi housing complex and other attacks.

Al Qaeda, unlike ETA or the Irish Liberation Army, frequently draws on members of nationalities whose countries are U.S. allies, most notably men from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The Spanish suspects include Moroccans and Indians.

U.S. officials stress that Spanish investigators do not have enough evidence to conclude who carried out the Madrid bombings, and no one appears to be in a hurry to do so. Spanish officials who blamed ETA immediately after the attack were embarrassed when their pronouncement turned out to be premature.

Similarly, the Oct. 12, 2002, bombing of a Bali nightclub that killed more than 200 was initially blamed on al Qaeda. Later, intelligence officials attributed it to Jemaah Islamiah, an Indonesian terrorist group with some links to al Qaeda.

Yesterday, U.S. officials took a similarly cautious position. "It could be something that`s not a card-carrying al Qaeda group," one senior U.S. intelligence official said. "Or ETA, or a splinter group from either one."



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`The Passion` ist die dritte Woche Nr.1.
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washingtonpost.com
The Spanish Response




Tuesday, March 16, 2004; Page A20


SPANISH VOTERS no doubt wished to rebuke the ruling Popular Party for its wrong-footed reaction to last week`s terrorist bombing in Madrid, and its support for the United States in Iraq. Fair enough -- but it`s hard not to be concerned about how the message was likely received outside the country, by the leaders of al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist organizations. Before the bombing, the Popular Party was favored to win comfortably; after the devastating attack, and an al Qaeda statement saying its intent was to punish Spain for its role in Iraq, the election was swept by the opposition -- and its leader immediately pledged to withdraw Spanish troops and cool relations with Washington. The rash response by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain`s prime minister-elect, will probably convince the extremists that their attempt to sway Spanish policy with mass murder succeeded brilliantly.

The outgoing prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, lived by entirely different principles. An ardent opponent of terrorism, he became one of President Bush`s most steadfast allies after Sept. 11, 2001, and courageously supported the Iraq war even when polls showed the Spanish public was overwhelmingly against it. Until last week, it appeared that Mr. Aznar`s toughness would prevail; even though he had decided to leave office, his chosen successor appeared likely to win. His government`s mistake may have been to blame the Basque terrorist organization ETA for last Thursday`s train bombings until evidence of involvement by al Qaeda or other Arab extremists seemed overwhelming. The miscue apparently angered some voters while confirming others in their belief that Mr. Aznar was wrong to send 1,300 Spanish troops to Iraq. The beneficiary was Mr. Zapatero, who had promised even before the bombing to withdraw the troops on June 30 unless the force was sanctioned by the United Nations.

Mr. Zapatero could not be expected to alter his view that the original decision to invade Iraq was wrong. But the reaction of Spain, and Europe, to this massive and shocking attack on its soil is crucial -- as is its response to the continuing challenge in Iraq. The two are inextricably linked: Whatever the prewar situation, al Qaeda`s tactics now have made explicit the connection between the continuing fight in Iraq and the overall war on terrorism. Mr. Zapatero said his first priority would be to fight terrorism. Yet rather than declare that the terrorists would not achieve their stated aim in slaughtering 200 Spanish civilians, he reiterated his intention to pull out from Iraq in less equivocal terms than before the election.

The incoming prime minister declared the Iraq occupation "a disaster" -- yet he didn`t explain how withdrawing troops would improve the situation. Spain`s participation on the ground in Iraq is small, but a Spanish withdrawal will make it harder for other nations, such as Poland and Italy, to stay the course. The danger is that Europe`s reaction to a war that has now reached its soil will be retreat and appeasement rather than strengthened resolve. "It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists," European Commission President Romano Prodi said yesterday. Should such sentiments prevail, the next U.S. administration -- whether led by President Bush or Sen. John F. Kerry -- may have no alternative to unilateralism.



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washingtonpost.com
Time to Save an Alliance
Über R.Kagan:
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Robert_Kagan

By Robert Kagan

Tuesday, March 16, 2004; Page A21


The terrorist attack in Madrid and its seismic impact on the Spanish elections this past week have brought the United States and Europe to the edge of the abyss. There`s no denying that al Qaeda has struck a strategic and not merely a tactical blow. To murder and terrorize people is one thing, but to unseat a pro-U.S. government in a nation that was a linchpin of America`s alliance with the so-called New Europe -- that is al Qaeda`s most significant geopolitical success since Sept. 11, 2001.

The unhappy reality is that a significant number of Spanish voters seem to have responded to the attacks in Madrid exactly as al Qaeda hoped they would. They believed their government`s close cooperation with the United States, and specifically with the Bush administration in Iraq, had brought the wrath of the terrorist organization on them, and that the way to avoid future attacks was to choose a government that would withdraw from Iraq and distance itself from the United States. Other European peoples and governments have quietly flirted with this kind of thinking in the past, and not just recently but throughout the 1990s. But Spaniards have now made this calculus public. If other European publics decide that the Spaniards are right, and conclude that the safer course in world affairs is to dissociate themselves from the United States, then the transatlantic partnership is no more.

Already there are statements by top European leaders that have the ring of dissociation. In a clear swipe at U.S. policy, European Commission President Romano Prodi commented in the wake of the Madrid attacks: "It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists." Terrorism, he said, "is infinitely more powerful than a year ago." So apparently Prodi accepts al Qaeda`s logic, too.

In the coming days and weeks, Europeans will close ranks with Spain and express common European solidarity against al Qaeda terrorism. But there is a real danger that many Europeans will not extend the solidarity across the Atlantic. Some may argue, at least implicitly, that separation from the United States is one effective, nonviolent defense against future terrorist attacks.

Needless to say, that would be a disaster for the United States. The Bush administration needs to recognize it has a crisis on its hands and start making up for lost time in mending transatlantic ties, and not just with chosen favorites. The comforting idea of a "New Europe" always rested on the shifting sands of a public opinion, in Spain and elsewhere, that was never as favorable to American policy as to the governments. The American task now is to address both governments and publics, in Old and New Europe, to move past disagreements over the Iraq war, and to seek transatlantic solidarity against al Qaeda.

John Kerry has an important role to play now, too. The temptation for Kerry and his surrogates to use events in Spain to bolster their arguments against President Bush`s foreign policy may be irresistible. But Kerry should think hard before he pushes the point too far. After all, he could be president next January. If Europeans respond to the attack in Spain by distancing themselves from the United States, a divided and dysfunctional West will be his inheritance. Like Bush, Kerry should move the transatlantic conversation beyond the Iraq war to the common war against al Qaeda.

But the problem is not all on the American side, and neither is the solution. Responsible heads in Europe must understand that anything that smacks of retreat in the aftermath of this latest attack could raise the likelihood of further attacks. Al Qaeda`s list of demands doesn`t end with Iraq. The attack in Madrid was not just punishment for Spain`s involvement in Iraq but for involvement with the United States in the war on terrorism. Al Qaeda`s statement taking credit for the bombings in Madrid condemned Spain`s role in Afghanistan, too. Al Qaeda seeks to divide Europe and the United States not just in Iraq but in the overall struggle. It seeks to convince Europeans not only that the use of force in Iraq was mistaken but that the use of force against terrorism in general is mistaken and futile -- just as Prodi is arguing. Are Europeans prepared to grant all of al Qaeda`s conditions in exchange for a promise of security? Thoughts of Munich and 1938 come to mind.

The incoming Spanish government has declared its intention to move away from the United States and back to the "core of Europe," meaning France and Germany. Presumably Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder will welcome their new ally in Old Europe. But presumably they also know that dissociation from the United States in the wake of the Madrid bombings will be a disaster for Europe. If the United States cannot fight al Qaeda without Europe`s help, it is equally true that Europe can`t fight al Qaeda without the United States. If Europe`s leaders understand this, then they and Bush should recognize the urgency of making common cause now, before the already damaged edifice of the transatlantic community collapses.

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is the author of "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order." He writes a monthly column for The Post.



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They Can Already Taste blood and They are Ready to Kill... Our America

Becky Burgwin

03/15/04 "OpEdNews.Com" Who are they? Well, here’s the short list. John Ashcroft, Tom Delay, Dick Cheney, Rick Santorum, Antonin Scalia, George W. Bush, Pat Robertson, Don Rumsfeld and they taste blood. Why? Because they are just inches away from accomplishing their objective…the take over of our country by their radical, extremist, right wing, Christian agenda. What will they do when they have accomplished that? Take over the world. Think I’m kidding?

John Ashcroft, who, as we all know, lost to a dead guy in his home state, before being appointed by our first appointed president to the attorney general spot, was anointed with oil by Clarence Thomas, the supreme court justice whose wife was on Bush’s transition team when he halted the Florida recount and appointed Bush president. Let me repeat that…John Ashcroft was anointed with oil by Clarence Thomas after his attorney general appointment. This custom was started by King David sometime during the Old Testament.

Here’s what John Ashcroft is against: abortion, homosexuality, Christians making friends with non-Christians, “mixed gender” dancing, (so he’s OK with same gender dancing??? I’m confused), sexually explicit anything…books, movies, statues. Let’s just say he’s exactly the kind of guy who would have chiseled all the penises off of every work of art in the Vatican and put tacky, expensive fig leaves over them if it hadn’t already been done.

Here’s what John Ashcroft is for: speaking in tongues, being anointed with oil, government laws that reflect the teachings of Jesus Christ, abolishing attorney/client privilege, loosening restrictions on secret government surveillance of citizens, including phones, e-mail, libraries and bank accounts, a "deport at will" option to avoid all those tiresome immigration laws, increasing the list of federal death-penalty crimes, the ability to open the graves of deceased victims of terrorism without permission, restricting access to information about corporate pollution and environmental crimes, and keeping an eye on lenient judges so he can oust them when he puts himself in charge of appointing judges.

Here’s what John Ashcroft has accomplished: ALL OF THE ABOVE.

Tom Delay, the ex-exterminator who never met a toxic chemical he didn’t like, would like to: dismantle the EPA, pass the flag burning amendment, outlaw abortion, pass the anti-gay marriage amendment, do away with any pretense of separation of church and state, shut down the federal government, change the words to “I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag”, put the ten commandments on the wall of every classroom, turn the entire world into a Christo-American paradise, teach nothing but creationism in schools, (Tom blames the Columbine shootings on the teachings of evolution, not the fact that two seriously disturbed young men had access to guns and explosives), ban contraceptives, abolish day care, give everyone in the country the weapon of their choice. How long do you think it’s going to take before Tom gets all of his wishes? About as long as it takes to say John Ashcroft.

Rick Santorum is a whimsical kind of fellow. Rick thinks that homosexual sex between consenting adult humans is no different than bestiality, incest, bigamy, and adultery. Rick needs to learn the definitions of the words consenting, adult and human. Rick doesn’t believe the constitution guarantees Americans the right to privacy, so he would like to see that fictitious right revoked. John Ashcroft has taken care of that for Sen. Santorum. (George Orwell was exactly 20 years off.)

Rick would rather see a woman die rather than terminate her life-threatening pregnancy. This has also been accomplished. He would also like to see: doctors incarcerated for trying to save a pregnant patient’s life, non-procreative sex outlawed, birth control outlawed, day care outlawed and homosexuals jailed. It’s just a matter of time before Rick accomplishes his goals.

Justice Antonin Scalia is a member of Opus Dei. (So, by the way, is Clarence Thomas.) To have a real feeling for exactly how scary that is, look it up at http://www.mond.at/opus.dei or read The DaVinci Code. A small taste of what you will find out about them is their church’s attitude towards women: “Woman are so sinful…that they have been dislodged from the Garden of Eden. And the only possibility for them to lessen their guilt is by subordinating themselves... ‘You should be like a carpet where people can step onto.’” (Heard by a lot of people at an information evening of the Opus Dei in Dornbirn Austria. Easter 1994. from the book "Gottes Rechte Kirche" by T.M. Hofer.)

Mr. Scalia makes no bones about his disdain for any modern interpretation of the constitution. In his view the constitution is a “dead document”. In other words it means what it meant when it was written, and nothing more. This makes things very easy for Mr. Scalia in that he doesn’t have to spend precious time agonizing about the 21st century application of any law or guideline that was written into the constitution in the 18th century, thus giving him more time to shoot birds with Dick Cheney.

Some of Justice Scalia’s beliefs include: abortion is murder because it is the act of an individual. The death penalty is not murder because it is the act of the government. He, in fact, says, and I quote from his manifesto entitled, God’s Justice and Ours, “…the more Christian a country is the LESS likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral.” He feels that Christians are “MORE likely to regard punishment in general as deserved.” Could this be the kind of thinking he applies to his decisions on the bench?

If so, do you think he and Dick Cheney have had any discussions in the duck blind about the treatment of terrorists, the deposing of tyrants, the justification for war? Cheney’s push for a “for a new and long-term war and spreading the military into new areas of the globe,” in his speech to the World Affairs Council in January, smacks of imperialism and fascism. (“Aggressive militarism even to the extent of glorifying war as good for the national or individual spirit” is the definition of fascism by an old college dorm-mate of mine, Chip Berlet. Chip has spent 25 years studying the political right all over the world.)

In her article entitled The New Pentagon Papers; March 10, 2000 in Salon.com, Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force, reports on what she saw after being assigned to the newly created Office of Special Plans, which was, according to her account, “Secretary of defense-sponsored insanity.” “I saw a dead philosophy—Cold War anti-communism and neo-imperialism—walking the corridors of the Pentagon. It wore the clothing of counter terrorism and spoke the language of a holy war between good and evil. The evil was recognized by the leadership to be resident mainly in the Middle East….But there were other enemies within, anyone who dared voice any skepticism about their grand plans, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Gen. Anthony Zinni.” She goes on to say, “Before the Iraq invasion, many of these same players labored together for literally decades to push a radical defense strategy that favored military intervention and confrontation with enemies, secret and unconstitutional if need be… [which] is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to the Congress and to the American people for this one were inaccurate and misleading…false by design.”

Dick finally got his war. He’s been working on it for decades.

The bombing in Spain would seem to lend credence to Cheney’s dark vision that, “Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives as a result of a single attack, or a set of coordinated attacks.” However, the fact that this horrific act may have been perpetrated upon the people of Spain as punishment for supporting the Americans in their invasion of Iraq, belies that fact and leads us to the conclusion that it wouldn’t have happened had the US not invaded Iraq. And had the US not been distracted in Iraq, we quite possibly could have been paying more attention on an intelligence level and perhaps prevented it from happening at all. But we’ll never know what might have been had we not rushed into Iraq under false pretenses. This, however, will not stop Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle and company from using it as an excuse for further aggression in the Middle East.

Did anyone else notice that on the same day as the bombings in Spain they were also making a lot of noise in the media about Uday and Qusay being granted asylum in Syria at the start of the war? Why they came back is beyond me. But you don’t have to be psychic to know who’s next on their list.

George W. Bush was quoted by Bob Woodward in his book, Bush at War, as promising, during a meeting at the governor’s mansion in 1999, “to export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great country and rid the world of evil.” Keep in mind; this was before he was even appointed president and way before 9/11.

Stay tuned for news of Bush & Co. ignoring repeated warnings by Richard Clarke, Sandy Berger and others from Clinton’s team about Bin Laden and threats to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings…the last of these warnings coming on Sept. 6th, 2001.

Pat Robertson declared on The 700 Club, “The Lord has blessed George Bush. …He could make terrible mistakes and come out of it. It doesn’t make any difference what he does, good or bad. God picks him up because he’s a man of prayer and God’s blessing him.” Oh, also, God told Pat that George was going to win in a landslide. Does God work for Diebold?

There you have it. The short list of men who are within a hair’s breadth of achieving their new world order, and believe me, that is no joke. Although, I’ll bet they got a good laugh when we capitulated and allowed them to stop the Florida recount because they suckered us with lies about GW being a “uniter not a divider” and a “compassionate conservative.” I’ll be they still get a chuckle over how easy it was to fool us. To quote one of my favorite writers, William Rivers Pitt, “Fish, Barrel, Boom.” We can’t afford to waste another minute in our quest to destroy these guys…not another second.

I saw Bill Clinton on the news last night defending John Kerry and I felt like I was seeing the Cavalry rushing to the rescue. I am now officially sending all my money to John Kerry, the DLC, the DNC, the Congressional Black Caucus, Michael Moore, Nancy Pelosi, Sidney Blumenthal, Barbara Boxer, Molly Yard, Chip Berlet, Diane Feinstein, Jesse Jackson, Howard Stern, Al Franken, Max Cleland, Harvey Fierstein, Tom Daschel, Jeanine Garofolo, Ted Kennedy, Jay Rockefeller, Sophie Masloff, Larry Flynt, Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Graham, Dick Gephart, Aaron McGruder, George Soros, Sean Penn, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, Tom Hayden, John Edwards, Bob Woodward, Dennis Kucinich, Hillary Clinton, Barney Frank, Patti Smith, Barbra Streisand, Martin Sheen, Carol Moseley Braun, Arianna Huffington, Lou Dobbs, Ben Bradley, Tom Robbins, Rob Reiner, Tom Harkin, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, Gen. Wesley Clark, Col. Anthony Zinni, Robin Williams, Whoopie Goldberg, Jim Hightower, Williams Rivers Pitt, Peter Coyote, Molly Ivans, Wayne Madsen, Rob Kall, Hunter Thompson, Ira S. Levine, Patrick Johnston, Michael Allen, Paul Krugman, Walter Cronkite, Madonna, Mrs. and Mrs. Rosie O’Donnell, John Dean, Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson, Gloria Steinham, Cheri Huber, Joe Trippi, Susan Saranden, Tim Robbins, Robert Kennedy, Jr., the Paul Wellstone Foundation, MoveOn.org and anyone else who will promise me that for the rest of their lives they will spend every waking minute trying to defeat these lunatics.

It’s going to be a long and brutal fight and you MUST REMEMBER… these guys have already seen the whites of our eyes…now they can taste our blood and, just like sharks, they attack the wounded and they fight to the death.

Ms. Burgwin’s writing has appeared in Newsweek, Time, New York Magazine, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Tribune Review as well as several online Op Ed sites. She is also involved in gay rights, women’s issues and the environment. She lives in Pittsburgh with her family.

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http://www.latimes.com/features/outdoors/la-os031504-canyon-…

In diesem Link sind einige herrliche Photos von einem Canyon, absolut unbekannt, im Navajo Land in Arizona an der Grenze zu Utah entlang des Colorados, der hinter Page(Übergang über den Staudamm nach Utah) zum Lake Powell aufgestaut ist.
Nicht zu verwechselnen mit dem Navajo National Park Monument Valley der weiter östlich liegt.
Es gibt in dem Bereich nur Schotterstraßen. Die einzige Verbindung ist die Straße vom Monument Valley nach Page(an dieser Straße, Route 98, liegt das im Artikel erwähnte Kaibito) und die Eisenbahn mit der die Navajos die im Tagebau in der Mesa abgebaute Steinkohle nach Page zu dem dortigen Kohlekraftwerk transportieren. Dieses Kraftwerk soll eine Dreckschleuder sein, das auch daran Schuld ist, dass über den Gran Canyon oft ein Dunstschleier liegt.
In dieser Region gibt es auch, wie weiter im Süden von Arizona, sehr viele Zeugnisse der indianischen Ureinwohner, der Anasazis, die vor über eintausend Jahren in der Gegend gesiedelt haben, aber um 1300 plötzlich verschwanden. Von ihnen stammen in der Gegend die Wohnungen in den Felsen. Man braucht einige Zeit um diese Zeugnisse in der Gegend zu besichtigen.

http://www.latimes.com/features/outdoors/la-os-slots16mar16.…
A tight squeeze
Raging torrents left Navajoland stocked with some of the world`s most dramatic but off-limits art galleries -- known as slot canyons. Now, as Katie Showalter reports, a guide wants to open them up, a
Katie Showalter

March 16, 2004

It`s a beautiful trap, this crack through which Harley Klemme shoehorns himself.

If the skies opened in a booming storm, escape could be problematic — as a dozen hikers learned when a flash flood thundered through nearby Antelope Canyon seven years ago.

Then there`s the matter of the trolls.

And yet, like all good traps, these sculpted fantasias of sandstone are powerfully seductive, seemingly throbbing with temptation. They draw people from around the world to Navajoland, senses primed for awe.

Klemme, who is part Navajo, knows this. Now in his mid-30s, with a broad face and midsection, he grew up in Page, Ariz. He worked as a plumber until the day he visited a guide at the rock monoliths in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park due east of town. The man was running a fleet of 20 tourist-filled trucks, Klemme recalls.

"It just tripped me right there. I says, `I`m in the wrong business.` "

After a six-month battle to win a coveted permit, he began leading paying customers into the popular Antelope Canyon. Eventually, he decided to push into new terrain — onto an entrepreneurial path with its own obstacles, including the paradox of encroaching on secret, some would say sacred, places to sell people the solitude they covet.

*

Carving a reputation

The Navajo phrase for slot canyon is Tse neh gi too na aah dis zjaa: "where water has painted a picture of itself." Water`s medium in these slots is sand, and the region around Page has sand in abundance. Ancient seas and rivers left a palette of grains, most in red and yellow hues, over the course of eons. The sand was compressed and cemented together over millions of years to form sandstone. Then trickles and torrents of water moved over the sandstone surface after rainstorms and during snowmelts.

At weak spots, the sandstone gives way, and soon the water begins painting again, carving its likeness into the walls: violence as artist.

Courtney Milne, a photographer and author of "Sacred Places in North America," understands the fissures` allure, understands why, for instance, flocks of German photographers descend on Antelope Canyon every year in an ecstatic whir of shutters.

"The combination of being down there so far beneath the surface and feeling like you`re in the womb of the Earth and the way the light plays off the shapes of the sandstone — you feel like … nature has created something magnificent [and] you`re part of the creative experience that formed it."

The Bureau of Indian Affairs holds most of the Navajo Nation`s 27,000 square miles, an area about a sixth the size of California, in trust, meaning the Navajo own it but the federal government manages it. The people were given home-site leases and grazing permits.

Parts of it, including the region surrounding Lake Powell, are riddled with slot canyons, and the northwestern corner of the Navajo Nation near the lake contains "some of the most beautiful in the world," says Richard Fisher, a Tucson-based photojournalist and explorer who has traversed canyons on every continent for 25 years.

Fisher, the author of "Earth`s Mystical Grand Canyons," says the Navajo Nation didn`t pay much attention to the slots in the `70s and early `80s. Locals who herded livestock in the region knew of them, he says, but tribal agencies weren`t concerned — until the photographers started showing up.

Now photos of Antelope Canyon are ubiquitous, and people are responding.

For some, the challenge of negotiating these secret passages is itself a lure. In canyoneering, a sport with roots in the `70s, adventurers equipped with ropes, life vests and wetsuits, go beyond mere scrambling to swim shallow puddles and deep pools or rappel down waterfalls.

"When you go climbing, at the end of the day, you`re climbing," says Rich Carlson, who has been roving canyons for 25 years and now heads the American Canyoneering Assn. in Cedar City, Utah "When you go out for a day of canyoneering, you`ve been hiking, climbing, swimming, rappelling."

Whatever their motives, however, some who enter the canyons cause problems. They get lost or injured or worse. When a flash flood swept through the canyon in 1997, 12 French, Swedish, British and American hikers and their guide had nowhere to go. Some tried to scramble above the rising waters and wedge themselves in the rock. The moving water was too quick and powerful. Only the guide survived.

By then there were signs of backlash. The remote Kaibeto community southeast of Page had issued a resolution in 1996 closing its slot canyons after a bout of accidents. That resolution still stands. "We don`t have any rangers on hand, no clinic or hospital that will tend to any hikers, no rescuers, and it`s 50 miles to the nearest facility with a helicopter," says an employee at the Kaibeto Chapter House, the seat of this Navajo district`s government, who would give only the name Janell.

Adds Carlson, who has trained rangers from the Navajo Department of Environmental Resource Protection in canyon rescue skills: "There`s a feeling of, `Why should we let someone come on our land for $5 or $7 and let them incur $30,000 in rescue expenses?` "

Another matter that makes some Navajo reluctant to bring in outsiders is that wild lands can be sacred.

"The Holy People emerged from the ancient caves and underworld caverns that we interpret as `canyons,` " says Adam Teller, a medicine man in training and a guide in the grander canyons of Canyon de Chelly National Monument. "The Spirits of the Holy Ones carved out those slot canyons to enable mother earth to grow."

Many Navajos believe Wind People, also called the Spirits of the Holy Ones, occupy slot canyons. They are places you go to make an offering, says Effie Yazzie of Antelope Canyon Tribal Park.

An offering is like a pact with a spiritual entity. A specific object is left in a particular way in exchange for a service from the entity, such as healing someone who is sick. "It`s not a place to hang out. You go there for a purpose and then come back out."

Then there are the trolls. Tales of these creatures and other wicked spirits and ghosts haunting slot recesses make some locals reluctant to find lost hikers, says Janell.

For others, however, the rewards of guiding outsiders through these canyons outweigh all risks.

Antelope Canyon, which flows north into Lake Powell just east of Page, is a lucrative venture for both the Navajo nation and the seven tour operators granted permits by the Navajo Parks and Recreation Department. Navajoland`s most famous slot, it attracts — at $28 per head — 50,000 people a year. That`s not many compared with the 5 million who invade the Grand Canyon each year. But the slot is considerably cozier than the 10-mile-wide Grand Canyon. In some places you can reach out and touch both walls.

*

Inside the rock

Working his way past the obstacles, Klemme`s thin brown ponytail waves above his camouflage hydration pack. We encounter puddles of slush and ice reaching from wall to wall in a passageway not much wider than our feet. In places, he props his elbows on each wall and scoots his whole body forward on his forearms, feet dangling. Whatever works.

We are exploring Cardiac Canyon, one of the new places he hopes to open to paying clients. Cardiac Canyon is located on Klemme`s aunt`s grazing lands, which have been in the family for about 100 years. Klemme`s aunt, Rita Tsinigie, hiked in the slots as a child. "Grandpa grazed sheep down in the canyon in winters," Tsinigie says. So did her father. The family took their sheep to lamb in the canyons. "There`re still rock corrals down there."

Klemme spent summers on this land tending to his grandfather`s cows and riding horses. The experience was "kinda like being in the West back in time," he says. "We didn`t have running water, no electricity." He and his friends ate a lot of potatoes and canned food. "My buddy got to where he could make the fry bread. He was a white dude," chuckles Klemme. "He was the fry bread maker, that guy." They four-wheeled and rode dirt bikes in their spare time. "Just getting anywhere, that`s how we learned a lot of areas."

For many of the older people, the old life hasn`t changed. "They`re still doing the traditional ways of getting up, herding sheep all day and bringing them back in," Klemme says. Others raise cattle because cattle don`t need to be supervised so much.

Klemme`s family treasures were kept secret for a long time. "When my dad was living," says Tsinigie, who now lives in Las Vegas, "he just didn`t want too many people out there, so we want to keep it that way."

And yet she too tried doing her own slot tours. But finding an accessible hiking route to the canyons proved too difficult, so she quit.

When Klemme began his tour company, leading clients at $85 a pop through his family`s grazing land into Canyon X, Tsinigie told him it would be OK just so long as he keeps groups small, so that their slots don`t become like Antelope. "It`s too crowded," she says. "People get frustrated."

Deep in the canyon, Klemme leans over to pick up sand and rounded stones. "It`s 100-something grit," he says of the sandpaper-like coarseness. "When you get this running through water carving stuff, it doesn`t take much. Force of the water is a big thing."

The walls sweep inward then outward 100 feet up. Sacred or not, it is hauntingly beautiful. And tranquil.

At one spot, Klemme has put in a homemade ladder — a 2-by-4 with chunks of wood nailed on as stairs. We climb and then walk and then pause to take in the stillness. The only sign of wildlife we`ll see the whole day is coyote scat on the rim.

Although flash floods are a real danger, common sense is a reasonably good defense. Klemme put our canyon scramble off five days because of sketchy weather. "The most valuable skill in canyoneering is your judgment and ability to evaluate the safety and the reality of a situation," says Jeff Haflett, a Phoenix-based guide who plans to offer rappelling expertise on Klemme`s future Cardiac hikes. "The best thing to do is get back in the car sometimes."

Klemme`s initial plan for this slot, named for the steep hill at the entrance, is to introduce it as a five-hour hike. Clients would journey down-canyon to where it meets another slot in which he offers tours, where a jeep will pick them up. Arriving at the top of the canyon now, we walk around saltbush, cliff rose, Mormon tea, yucca and gnarled junipers. Following a worn cattle trail, we find a wash and come upon a crack in the earth where water began its carving project, slicing an opening where dark and light, Wind People and ghosts, beauty and destruction all belong, part of the ongoing exhibition in Earth`s well-concealed art gallery.

For his part, Klemme doesn`t need to poeticize to explain why, despite the obstacles, he wants to bring people into new canyons. He relishes the look on people`s faces as they stand, dwarfed by nature`s creativity. Besides, he adds, "It`s more money. And people are more happy, I think, when they come out and don`t have anybody around them."

*


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Katie Showalter is a freelance writer based in Torrey, Utah.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer1…
COMMENTARY
Dear W, Your Father Knew Best
Robert Scheer

March 16, 2004

So now that the Spanish people have spoken, voting out of office the party that led them to war in Iraq, will President Bush give the back of the hand to Spain, as he did last year to our democratic allies in Germany and France? Since Spaniards have decided that invading Iraq under an Anglo-American banner has made them tragically less safe and voted to break with American diktat, will right-wing radio screamers now call for a boycott of Spanish olives?

The Spanish people, like most of the world, knew all along that the Bush policy of preemptive war against Iraq, which had nothing to do with the terrorist attack of 9/11, was all wrong, but their craven leaders were browbeaten by Bush to ignore their own constituents and instead join the farcically named "coalition of the willing."

Upward of 90% of the Spanish public had told pollsters that the invasion of Iraq was an irrational response to 9/11, but their good sense was betrayed by the ruling party. In his first statement as the prime minister-elect of Spain, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero declared his intention to extract Spanish troops from Iraq, stating the obvious: "The war in Iraq was a disaster, the occupation of Iraq is a disaster."

Before reflexive Europe-bashers rush to toss Spain into their bulging "coward" bin, they should remember that the Spanish, like our German and French critics, did not come to this position because they lacked a will to fight terrorism. In fact, they speak from much raw and painful experience as colonial powers. As Rodriguez Zapatero put it, "Wars such as those which have occurred in Iraq only allow hatred, violence and terror to proliferate."

That is the most serious charge that can be leveled at the Bush foreign policy, which has weakened our security as well as that of the rest of the world. Instead of facing up to the threat posed by Islamic extremists and their sponsors and apologists in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. sent 200,000 young Americans to overthrow an already defanged dictator in Iraq — a secular nationalist who was himself high on Osama bin Laden`s hit list — leaving the United States bogged down in a state of near-total disarray and chaos.

What Bush has never grasped is that when it comes to fighting terrorists, the United States` democratic allies are in an excellent position to be mentors. They have a much better understanding of the Muslim world, for example, and have better intelligence assets there. Yet the hawks in the administration continue to belittle democracies when they dare to disagree with us while embracing military dictators who pretend to do our bidding.

To give just one egregious example of the lack of logic, clarity of goals or consistent methodology in Bush`s version of the war on terror: Before 9/11, the United States had wisely imposed sanctions on Pakistan for being an active proliferator of nuclear weapons technology. Yet, after the attacks, Bush lifted those sanctions to buy Pakistan`s nominal support for coming wars. In recent weeks, however, we have learned that Pakistan`s role in nuclear proliferation was our nation`s worst nightmare: It was selling kits for making uranium-based bombs to such rogue nations as North Korea, Iran and Libya.

Throughout the three years of this Bush administration, foreign policy has degenerated into a deadly incoherence of purpose. The U.S. undermined the democratically elected leaders of Haiti and Venezuela while continuing to reward any dictator who paid homage to Bush`s lies.

Enough! It is high time for the president to return to the wisdom of his father and rid his administration of the unilateralist adventurers who have left this nation isolated from world opinion, ensnared in the foreign entanglements that George Washington warned us about.

Failing such a sharp reversal, even the elder Bush`s top advisors and other moderate Republicans might find it difficult, in the privacy of the polling booth, to not vote for John Kerry.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Published on Tuesday, March 16, 2004 by the Boston Globe
The Bushes` New World Disorder
by James Carroll

"IT MUST BE considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things." This warning is from Niccolo Machiavelli, yet it has never had sharper resonance.

More than a decade ago, after Saddam Hussein`s invasion of Kuwait, President George H. W. Bush explicitly sought to initiate, as he put it to Congress, a "new world order." He made that momentous declaration on Sept. 11, 1990. Eleven years later, the suddenly mystical date of 9/11 motivated his son to finish what the father began. A year ago this week, Bush the younger launched a war against the man who tried to kill his dad, initiating the opposite of order.

The situation hardly needs rehearsing. In Iraq, many thousands are dead, including 564 Americans. Civil war threatens. Afghanistan, meanwhile, is choked by drug-running warlords. Islamic jihadists have been empowered. The nuclear profiteering of Pakistan has been exposed but not necessarily stopped. Al Qaeda`s elusiveness has reinforced its mythic malevolence. The Atlantic Alliance is in ruins. The United States has never been more isolated. A pattern of deception has destroyed its credibility abroad and at home. Disorder spreads from Washington to Israel to Haiti to Spain. Whether the concern is subduing resistance fighters far away or making Americans feel safer, the Pentagon`s unprecedented military dominance, the costs of which stifle the US economy, is shown to be essentially impotent.

In America, the new order of things is defined mainly by the sour taste of moral hangover, how the emotional intensity of the 9/11 trauma -- anguished but pure -- dissolved into a feeling of being trapped in a cage of our own making. As the carnage in Madrid makes clear, the threats in the world are real and dangerous to handle, but one US initiative after another has escalated rather than diffused such threats. Instead of replacing chaos with new order, our nation`s responses inflict new wounds that increase the chaos. We strike at those whom we perceive as aiming to do us harm but without actually defending ourselves. And most unsettling of all, in our attempt to get the bad people to stop threatening us, we have begun to imitate them.

The most important revelation of the Iraq war has been of the Bush administration`s blatant contempt for fact. Whether defined as "lying" or not, the clear manipulation of intelligence ahead of last year`s invasion has been completely exposed. The phrase "weapons of mass destruction" has been transformed. Where once it evoked the grave danger of a repeat of the 9/11 trauma, now it evokes an apparently calculated American fear. The government laid out explicit evidence defining a threat that required the launching of preventive war, and the US media trumpeted that evidence without hesitation. The result, since there were no weapons of mass destruction, as the government and a pliant press had ample reason to know, was an institutionalized deceit maintained to this day. At the United Nations, the United States misled the world. In speech after speech, President Bush misled Congress and the nation. And note that the word "misled" means both to have falsified and to have failed in leadership. To mislead, as the tautological George Bush might put it, is to mislead.

The repetition of falsehoods tied to the war on terrorism and the war against Iraq has eroded the American capacity, if not to tell the difference between what is true and what is a lie, then to think the difference matters much. The administration distorted fact ahead of the invasion, when the American people could not refute what had not happened yet. And the administration distorts fact now, when the American people do not remember clearly what we were told a year ago. That Bush retains the confidence of a sizable proportion of the electorate suggests that Americans don`t particularly worry anymore about truth as a guiding principle of their government.

In that lies the irony. The Bush dynasty has in fact initiated a new order of things. The United States of America has become its own opposite, a nation of triumphant freedom that claims the right to restrain the freedom of others; a nation of a structured balance of power that destroys the balance of power abroad; a nation of creative enterprise that exports a smothering banality; and above all, a nation of forcefully direct expression that disrespects the truth. Whatever happens from this week forward in Iraq, the main outcome of the war for the United States is clear. We have defeated ourselves.

Note to my readers: I am taking a temporary leave from this column to concentrate on other work, including a television documentary based on my book "Constantine`s Sword." I will return to this page regularly beginning the Tuesday after Labor Day. Until then, Peace.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

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"John Kerry says that foreign leaders want him to be president, but that he can`t name the foreign leaders. That`s all right, President Bush can`t name them either." David Letterman

"The presidential campaign is really heating up. George Bush, his campaign is really doing much, much better, and he`s shot right up in the polls since he captured Martha Stewart." -David Letterman

"President Bush was out touting his economic record in Ohio last week. Now this is a state that lost 225,000 jobs since Bush took office. If Bush wants to tout his record he should do it somewhere where the Bush economy has actually created jobs, like India or Thailand or China." -Jay Leno


"John Kerry said today he wants to debate President Bush once a month. Hey good luck, if Bush couldn`t make it to the National Guard once a month, he`s not going to show up for this." -Jay Leno


``I did not understand the interim constitution. Most
people don`t. It was America who wrote the constitution. It was America who nominated those to write it.`` - Amir Ali, a university official in Baghdad commenting Tuesday on Iraq`s new interim constitution.


Bushisms: Das beste vom letzten Monat:
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms.htm

[Joerver]

Tuesday, March 16, 2004
War News for March 16, 2004
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
Bring ‘em on: Four US missionaries killed, one wounded near Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi translator assassinated, her father wounded in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Assassination attempt against Turkmen leader wounds two near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: CPA reports Iraqi secretary of labor and social affairs and his driver killed in ambush near Mosul.

Bring `em on: Two German workers, two Iraqi policemen killed in shooting near Mussayab.

IGC wants to retain power. “In interviews in the council`s chamber yesterday, members admitted that the 25-member council was stymied over how to piece together a transitional government to rule Iraq, once the American-dominated authority dissolves in three months. Racing against time, with little consensus among them, most members appear to be moving toward the quickest option -- simply expanding their numbers.”

Bush-league liberation. “But for those outside the political spectrum, such as 26-year-old IT instructor Dina from Baghdad, it’s a very different story. From her point of view, the Iraq of today is a country that offers no future… Being told by US soldiers that they should not make such a fuss, that the crime rate in their cities is no worse that of Los Angeles or Chicago only stokes their anger.”

Bulgaria will replace Spanish troops.

US media says Chalabi scammed them, too. “Feeding the information to the news media, as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq`s illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden. In fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, weren`t confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed by intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department. Nevertheless, U.S. officials and others who supported a pre-emptive invasion quoted the allegations in statements and interviews without running afoul of restrictions on classified information or doubts about the defectors` reliability.”

Commentary

Opinion: “On Wednesday, March 17th, 2004, ‘An Iraqi Economic Forum’ will be held in Beirut where foreign economists and investors will gather to lecture or be lectured on what is obviously a pressing subject in the minds of many. More than the topics to be discussed, however, I could not help but be struck by the role which American big businesses will invariably play. With their rights in the Iraqi cut reserved by the current US occupation, it’s not surprising. However, it also brought to my mind similar events that happened decades ago during the British Mandate over Iraq.”

Opinion: “National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sunday acknowledged what the Bush administration has, up to now, argued only by implication -- that the war in Iraq was a direct response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attack by Al-Qaida on New York and Washington. Confronted with intelligence reports that have repudiated every single rationale President Bush had used to justify the war, Rice argued that the conquering of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein were designed to shrink the areas from which Al-Qaida can operate.”

Editorial: “Saddam Hussein`s was the first government to be ousted by the American-led war on Iraq. Jose Maria Aznar`s was the second. And British Prime Minister Tony Blair, like Aznar a rare European supporter of President Bush, must be nervously reading the election returns from Spain. So should anyone else who cares about making the world safer from terrorists.”

Opinion: "Polls suggest that a reputation for being tough on terror is just about the only remaining political strength George Bush has. Yet this reputation is based on image, not reality. The truth is that Mr. Bush, while eager to invoke 9/11 on behalf of an unrelated war, has shown consistent reluctance to focus on the terrorists who actually attacked America, or their backers in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan."

Editorial: "The victory of incoming Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero thus is a clear rebuff to President Bush, who cherished the backing he received from Madrid as many other Western allies disowned the U.S.-British invasion to oust Saddam Hussein."

Opinion: "In America, the new order of things is defined mainly by the sour taste of moral hangover, how the emotional intensity of the 9/11 trauma -- anguished but pure -- dissolved into a feeling of being trapped in a cage of our own making. As the carnage in Madrid makes clear, the threats in the world are real and dangerous to handle, but one US initiative after another has escalated rather than diffused such threats. Instead of replacing chaos with new order, our nation`s responses inflict new wounds that increase the chaos. We strike at those whom we perceive as aiming to do us harm but without actually defending ourselves. And most unsettling of all, in our attempt to get the bad people to stop threatening us, we have begun to imitate them."

Casualty Reports

Local story: Ohio soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: North Carolina soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: California missionary killed in Iraq.

Local story: North Carolina missionaries killed in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.





# posted by yankeedoodle : 3:54 AM
Comments (3)

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Noam Chomsky: Bring Them to Justice!

Noam Chomsky

Tuesday March 16, 2004 "The Guardian" - There`s a lot of focus on the American death toll but personally I think that`s partly propaganda exaggeration. Polls have demonstrated time and time again that Americans are willing to accept a high death toll - although they don`t like it, they`re willing to accept it - if they think it`s a just cause.

There`s never been anything like the so-called Vietnam Syndrome: it`s mostly a fabrication. And in this case too if they thought it was a just cause, the 500 or so deaths would be mourned, but not considered a dominant reason for not continuing. No, the problem is the justice of the cause.

Right after the war, by April, polls demonstrated pretty clearly that Americans thought the United Nations, not the United States, ought to have prime responsibility for reconstruction, political and economic, in the post-war period. There`s little support for the government`s efforts to maintain what amounts to a powerful, permanent, military and diplomatic presence in Iraq.

In fact, it is little discussed, probably for that reason. Not very many people are aware of the fact that the US is planning to construct what will be the world`s largest embassy in Iraq, with maybe 3,000 people. The military plans to maintain permanent bases and a substantial US military presence as long as they want it. The facts are reported, but marginally. Most people don`t know about it. The orders to open the Iraqi economy up to foreign takeover are again known to people who pay close attention, but not to the general population.

The general population offers little support for the long-term effort to ensure that Iraq remains a client state with only nominal sovereignty and a base for other US actions in the region. Those commitments have only a very shallow popular support and that`s more of a reason for the objections, the uneasiness about policy, than the number of casualties.

The trial [of Saddam Hussein] ought to be under some kind of international auspices that have some degree of credibility, so not something which is obviously victor`s justice, which, no matter how much of a monster one is, doesn`t carry credibility.

So first of all there`s a matter of form, but also there`s a matter of content. The trial should bring to the bar of justice his associates, those who gave decisive and substantial support for him right through his worst atrocities, long after the war with Iran. Again in 1991 when he crushed the rebellions viciously - the rebellions that might well have overthrown him. All of those people should be brought to justice. They`re not all equally culpable but they were all critically involved - that includes European countries right through the 80s, including Russia and France, Germany and others, it includes, crucially, the United States and Britain all the way through, including 1991.

They should also bring to justice those who were responsible for the murderous sanction regime which surely led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and devastated the society so completely that they could not carry out what has happened elsewhere, where the US and Britain supported comparable monsters - namely, they were overthrown from within.

It seems not unlikely that the same might have happened in Iraq had the society not been devastated and had people not been compelled by the sanctions to rely on the tyrant for mere survival. Actually there`s even more evidence of that coming out today as it`s been revealed in the Kay investigation and others how fragile the hold on power was at the end.

So anyone who contributed to Saddam Hussein`s atrocities to whatever they degree they did, they`re culpable as well and in some fashion an honest trial should deal with that.

© 2004 The Guardian. UK.

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Iraqi civilians targeted for `collaborating` with the US
By Robert Fisk in Baghdad - 12 March 2004


On the long highways out of Baghdad - on the notorious Highway 8 to Hilla and further south - a dark and fearful tactic is being resurrected from the terrible years of Algerian butchery just a decade ago: the false police checkpoint.

Tens of thousands of civilians were stopped at Algeria`s faux barrages in the Nineties, in trucks, buses and civilian cars. Routinely, they would stop, only to be machine-gunned or knifed to death; even today the "false" policemen exist in the foothills above Algiers. But this week, they arrived in Iraq, just as ruthless, and just as deadly.

Among the first victims were an American woman, an Iraqi woman and a former male US Marine, who were working on a women`s democracy project in central Iraq. In the words of one of their fellow aid workers, "they were stopped by men in Iraqi police uniforms, then machine-gunned". They were on their way to visit a new women`s centre in Karbala that Paul Bremer, the US proconsul, opened last month.

Then came the killing of two Americans and their Iraqi translator outside Hilla on Highway 8 late on Tuesday night. The Polish army, which patrols this sector of Iraq, has confirmed that their car, too, was stopped by men in police uniform at a checkpoint on the main road north of the city. A Polish officer said his troops later found the car in the possession of five Iraqis, the bodies still inside. No one knows if the Americans had a security escort, or protection. The occupation authorities don`t intend to tell us.

A day later, the night gunmen of Iraq turned their attention to two young Iraqi sisters who worked in a laundry of Kellogg, Brown and Root, a multibillion-dollar American conglomerate which, amid much controversy, won a massive contract for logistical support to the occupation armies in Iraq.

Lika`a and Shamima`a Abdulkareem were returning home in a taxi late at night in the southern city of Basra, which is under the control of British forces, when gunmen stopped the vehicle and opened fire, killing both of the young women. Whether their attackers were also wearing police uniforms is unknown, but Basra has seen many other killings in recent months that received no such publicity. At least 40 former Baath party officials have been murdered around the city and a number of Christians attempting to sell alcohol have also been shot dead.

As usual, the American-led occupation authorities insist they keep no tally of Iraqi civilian dead, and since civilians have died in their thousands since their "liberation" last April, it is easy to see why.

But the latest killings may force a change in this policy. False police checkpoints are likely to prove a nightmare for Mr Bremer and his staff since the increase in Iraqi policing is supposed to give Iraqis more security, not less.

So it may be necessary to recall what happened in Algeria. For months there, we asked how the Islamic groups in the country could obtain so many police uniforms, so many vehicles, so many checkpoint barriers. And it was more than a year before we realised that the "false" checkpoints were often real checkpoints, that many of the gunmen were real policemen who changed their allegiance at night from government loyalist to insurgent.

So let us ask a sinister question. Where did the "false" Iraqi policemen get their uniforms this week? Did they steal them? Or were they wearing the uniforms with which they had been issued by the occupation authorities?

© 2004 The Independent

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Tony Blair will not be forgiven
The stakes for the prime minister have now increased dramatically

Peter Kilfoyle
Tuesday March 16, 2004
The Guardian

Even Hieronymus Bosch would have been hard pressed to convey the carnage of last week`s Madrid bombings. Yet it seems that we must become accustomed to such slaughter.

In Britain, we have our own experience of terrorism. But regardless of what the foreign secretary has said, we are more at risk from international terrorism than ever. The reason can be summed up in one word: Iraq.

That does not mean that we were risk-free before we joined the American-led war on Saddam. But it is undeniable that the war itself, and the circumstances in which we went to war, raised Britain`s profile as a target. This was not only predictable, but was repeatedly predicted before the war.

Of course, terrorism should not only be confronted, but defeated. The question is how the west goes about that task. The first requirement is to dispose of the myths surrounding what has been hopelessly mislabelled "the war on terrorism". After all, 9/11 was not the beginning of terrorism. What was different was the scale of the attacks, the location on the American mainland and the fact that they were committed by foreigners. The first attack on the World Trade Centre claimed few lives, and Oklahoma City was devastated by right-wing Americans. But 9/11 occurred on the watch of George Bush.

He and his administration had a far more aggressive mindset than their predecessors. They also had an ideological bent that demanded an enemy. The coincidence of the attacks and this newly hostile approach was a recipe for disaster.

None of the myths fabricated about Iraq is more relevant to recent events than the linkage claimed with al-Qaida. The idea that the loathsome, but secular, Saddam would entertain the fundamentalist Osama bin Laden was ludicrous, yet repeatedly made.

When dissident voices argued that a war on Iraq would actually make it a hotbed for terrorism, they were dismissed. In America, a majority still link Saddam with 9/11.

Similarly, when it was argued that an attack on Iraq would inflame Muslim opinion and increase the support for terrorism, that was also dismissed. It is clear that a strand of fundamentalism flourishing in the souks and refugee camps of the Muslim world will view such terrorists as heroes.

We see the Palestinian suicide bomber as a terrorist - but not Sharon, the overseer of the massacres of Shatila and Sabra. We abhor the killers of Omagh, but not yet those of Bloody Sunday. We rightly condemn the killing fields of Pol Pot, but not the murderous attacks of Nixon and Kissinger. To many in the third world, the hypocrisy of the west is beyond belief.

This leads to the final myth - that Islamist terrorism is mindless and unpredictable. It is certainly true that it is not fired by the misplaced ideology or perverted patriotism of other brands of terrorism. It is, however, idealistic, bred from a distorted fundamentalist perspective on Islam. Remember that al-Qaida`s original "mission" was to expel the communist-atheists from Afghanistan; get the Americans out of Saudi Arabia; and return the Palestinians to what is now Israel. We have now added the cause of Iraq to its prospectus.

Where does that leave the British government? Tony Blair must look at the Spanish election result and wonder. The Madrid atrocities appear to have aroused the deep reservations that Spaniards had about the war in Iraq. Their doubts were overlaid with a distrust of a government that precipitately sought to lay blame for the bombing at the door of Eta, for political advantage.

God forbid that such crimes should be visited on our shores, but we must be prepared for what the security services deem a probability rather than a possibility. We are renowned as a phlegmatic people, but we are not forgiving to those who let the side down, whether at home or abroad. If such an attack were to take place here, the question would inevitably be whether our support for America`s war against Iraq had made it more likely.

The prime minister in particular will now ruminate on this. If ever there was a case of an individual driving the nation into a war then it was him. People will inevitably link his personal crusade to any failure to forestall terrorist outrages. Thus the stakes for him have increased alarmingly.

The danger is that, in order to pre-empt the kind of hellish scenes witnessed in Madrid, the prime minister and his cabinet will crack down even harder on civil liberties than they have already. That creates political perils of its own, without any guarantee of achieving the desired end. A case of heads the prime minister loses, and tails his opponents win.

· Peter Kilfoyle is Labour MP for Liverpool Walton and a former defence minister.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Front Page

THE ROVING EYE
The emergence of hyperterrorism
By Pepe Escobar

"If you don`t stop your injustices, more blood will flow and these attacks are very little compared with what may happen with what you call terrorism."
- Abu Dujan al-Afghani, purported military spokesman for al-Qaeda in Europe, claiming responsibility on video for the Madrid bombings.

The "al-Qaedization" of terrorism in Europe is a political "big bang". According to intelligence estimates in Brussels, there may be an invisible army of up to 30,000 holy warriors spread around the world, which begs the question: how will Western democracies be able to fight them?

The Madrid bombings have already produced the terrorists` desired effect: fear. Cities all across Europe fear they may be targeted for the next massacre of the innocents. On his October 18, 2003 tape, Osama bin Laden warned that Italy, Britain and Poland, as well as Spain - all staunch Washington allies in the invasion and occupation of Iraq - would be struck. Sheikh Omar Bakri, spiritual leader of the Islamist group al-Mouhajiroun, said in London he "wouldn`t be surprised if Italy is the next target".

Social paranoia inevitably will be on the rise - and the main victims are bound to be millions of European Muslims. Racist political parties like Jean Marie le Pen`s National Front in France and Umberto Bossi`s Northern League in Italy will pump up the volume of their extremely vicious anti-Islamic xenophobia. For scores of moderate European politicians, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain their support for a solution to the Palestinian tragedy - as the Sharon government in Israel spins the line that both Israel and Europe are "victims of terrorism".

This Wednesday, the European Union`s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, will ask the EU to name an expert to be in charge of "coordinating" the action of the 15 countries (soon to be 25). Belgium`s Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has proposed the creation of a European Intelligence Center to combat terrorism. Currently, each national intelligence service acts on its own, not always connected with Europol, the continent`s police body in The Hague. A special cell in Brussels, for instance, conducts its own, separate investigations.

The new al-Qaeda virus
The special cell in Brussels considers that the Madrid bombings required "minute preparations, money, experience and cohesion". This has led European specialists on Islamist movements, like Antoine Basbus, director of the Observatory of Arab Countries, and Olivier Roy, a research director at the French Center of Scientific Research, to agree that al-Qaeda is now operating on three layers: the originals, or Arab-Afghans who were part of the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s; the franchised local groups; and the recent "converts" who provide the crucial link between the "base" and the local outfits.

The anti-terrorist experts in Brussels tell Asia Times Online they had known for some time that the original "base" of the al-Qaeda was greatly depleted. After all, Mohammed Atta, the leading military planner, and Mahfouz Ould, one of the leading ideologues, have been killed. Abu Zubaida, in charge of recruiting, and Ibn Sheikh Al-Libi, in charge of training, are in jail. But unlike the Americans roughly a year ago, the experts in Brussels did not assume that al-Qaeda was broken. They stress that al-Qaeda`s real danger is "their persistent capacity to incite and collaborate with local groups" - they estimate there may be around 40 of these - to act in their own countries. "But we are even more concerned about groups that we don`t know anything about."

The Moroccan arm of al-Qaeda, for instance, is the little-known Moroccan Islamic Combatants Group. The experts in Brussels now confirm that Saudis and Moroccans came to Madrid to plan the bombings alongside Islamist residents of Spain. But al-Qaeda is not only active in the Maghreb: it is very well connected in sub-Saharan Africa, in places not yet fully investigated like the Ivory Coast and the Central African Republic.

For months now, ever since the Istanbul bombings in November 2003, different European intelligence services have been afraid they would have to confront a mutated enemy. Most services were in fact sure that Istanbul represented the first attack on Europe. The possibility of further use of chemical and bacteriological weapons, and even nuclear "dirty bombs", was not, and now more than ever is not, discarded.

Roy says that recruiting is now being conducted locally because "mobility is more difficult; there is not a place anymore where one goes to meet the chief or to get training". Recruiting campaigns continue all over the EU. For instance, one of the perpetrators of the bombing of the UN office in Baghdad in August 2003 was recruited in Italy. Other recruits in Spain, Germany and Norway ended up in Iraq via Syria. Global jihad, of which al-Qaeda is the leading exponent, is above all an idea. It thrives on spectacular terrorist attacks. Targets may have no strategic interest: what matters is terror as a spectacle - like bombing a nightclub in Bali. Madrid represented something much more sophisticated because in the Western collective consciousness it was the link between an American ally and the war on Iraq.

Spain may have become a new symbol of the clash between the jihadis` version of Islam and the "Jews and Crusaders". But as far as global jihad is concerned, it doesn`t matter whether a European democracy like Spain is governed by conservatives or socialists. Al-Qaeda is an apocalyptic sect betting on the clash of civilizations: Islamic jihadis against "Jews and Crusaders". It is the same with the Bush administration spinning a "war on terror": James Woolsey, a former Central Intelligence Agency head, believes this is the Fourth World War and conservative guru Samuel Huntington bets on, what else, a "clash of civilizations".

Al-Qaeda`s biggest problem is that it has no legitimacy in the Middle East as far as the key issues, Palestine and Iraq, are concerned. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda`s No 2, were never interested in the Palestinian struggle. In Roy`s formula, "Al-Qaeda represents the globalization of Islam, not of the Middle Eastern conflicts."

The Osama factor
Al-Qaeda is a nebula in total dispersion, locally and globally. Take Osama`s audio-video productions: they are always delivered to the world via Islamabad, but the distribution chain is so fragmented that no one can go back to the source. Tribal chiefs protect bin Laden all over the Pakistan-Afghan border for two reasons: because he is a Muslim and because he fought in the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s. This has nothing to do with September 11 - which for tribal leaders is something akin to a trip to the moon - and it goes beyond the US$25 million bounty on bin Laden`s head. Most Afghans don`t like Arabs and blame them for every disaster in the last 25 years. But every tomb of an Arab killed by an American bomb in 2001 is honored like a holy place.

The experts in Brussels consider that the possible capture of Osama in the upcoming spring offensive may not change anything, because in the current global jihad modus operandi the "base" retains all the initiative.

Roy insists military muscle simply does not work: "We are able to fight al-Qaeda with police operations, intelligence and justice. On a political level, one must make sure that they don`t have a social base: already they don`t have a political wing, sympathizers, intellectuals, newspapers or unions. They must be isolated. There`s only one way for this to happen: full integration of Muslims," That`s the exact opposite of the stigma privileged by conservative governments and racist, xenophobic parties.

Key conclusions
According to the experts in the Brussels anti-terrorist cell, proving al-Qaeda`s responsibility in the Madrid bombings will lead to three important conclusions:
1. Al-Qaeda is back in the spectacular attack business, even if the attack is perpetrated by affiliates.
2. Cells remain very much active around Europe, and the West as a whole remains a key target.
3. Global jihad has achieved one of its key objectives, which is to strike against one of Washington`s allies in Iraq.

The repercussions of all these conclusions are of course immense - from Washington to all major European capitals and spilling to the arc from the Middle East to Central and South Asia.

Brussels also alerts that this happens independently of other al-Qaeda objectives which remain very much in place: the departure of all American soldiers from Saudi soil; the fall of the House of Saud; and the expulsion of Jews from the Middle East. Al-Qaeda`s ultimate objective is a caliphate. As far as the absolute majority of Muslims in the world are concerned, the global jihad`s most seductive appeal undoubtedly remains its struggle to end the American imperial control of Islamic lands.

Romano Prodi, head of the European Commission, says that force is not working against terrorism: "Terrorism now is more powerful than before." Most European politicians and intellectuals - apart from Blair, Berlusconi, Aznar and their friends - consider that the Bush administration`s response to asymmetric warfare has only served to increase the threat. It`s a classic reductio ad absurdum. Increasingly lethal American military muscle deployed all over the Islamic world has led to more lethal terrorist attacks, in the Islamic world and also in the West. More muscled defense of hard targets, or strategic targets, has led to more indiscriminate attacks on so-called soft targets (like the Madrid trains). Madrid is a tragic mirror of Baghdad and Karbala: more than 200 innocent workers and students died in Madrid, more than 200 innocent pilgrims died in Iraq.

Not only in Brussels or the European Parliament in Strasbourg is there practically a consensus that the beginning of a solution for the terrorism problem is the end of both the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the American occupation of Iraq. Madrid once again proved that terrorism practices the ultimate in nihilist politics. There`s no possible diplomacy. No possible negotiation. It does not bend when attacked by military power. It has no territory and no population to defend, and no military or civil installations to protect. Al-Qaeda is not a Joint Chiefs of Staff: it is an idea. It commands faithful servants, not soldiers. It has nothing to do with war - as the Bush administration insists - and much less with a war on Iraq. One of the reasons invoked for the war on Iraq - the link between Saddam and al-Qaeda - was turned upside down: more al-Qaeda infiltration in the West is a consequence of the war, not less.

In the corridors of Brussels, and in the streets of Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Milan, London and Paris, Europe was given a rude awakening. All the evidence now screams that reshaping the Middle East from a base in occupied Iraq is not leading to less terrorism: it is leading to hyperterrorism.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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Will Holland raus aus dem Irak oder nicht und findet der MP, dass Kerry der bessere Präsident ist? Fragen über Fragen. Auf jeden Fall ist nun mal ein Holländer ins Oval Office gekommen.

March 16, 2004
Bush Urges Dutch Leader Not to Follow Spaniards Out of Iraq
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, March 16 — With the prime minister of the Netherlands beside him, President Bush said today that it was essential that Dutch troops remain in Iraq, both to ensure peace there and to press the campaign against terrorism.

Asked what he would say to Dutch people who want their nation`s soldiers out of Iraq, Mr. Bush replied, "I would ask them to think about the Iraqi citizens who don`t want people to withdraw because they want to be free," adding, "It`s essential that we remain side by side with the Iraqi people as they begin the process of self-government."

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende was cautious in his remarks, about troop commitments and other issues, as he and Mr. Bush spoke to reporters in the Oval Office.

"It is important that the world society, the international community stands shoulder to shoulder and shows its solidarity to fight against these terrible attacks," the prime minister said in an apparent allusion to last week`s deadly bombings in Madrid.

Mr. Bush, after being asked specifically if he had convinced the Dutch leader to leave his country`s troops in Iraq, replied indirectly. "The prime minister will make the appropriate decision," he said. "It`s his decision to make. We both agree that a free Iraq is essential to a peaceful world."

The Netherlands said earlier that it would withdraw its troops from Iraq at midyear, when the United States is to transfer sovereignty to a new Iraqi government that is to begin running the country. Mr. Balkenende emphasized today that he and President Bush had not discussed what happens after mid-year.

"That is the responsibility of the Dutch government and the Dutch Parliament, and we`ll talk about it," the prime minister said. Opinion polls have indicated that many people in the Netherlands want the troops withdrawn.

Spain`s newly elected Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has already signaled his desire to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. A move by the Netherlands to withdraw its troops ahead of schedule would be a severe disappointment to the Bush administration. Spain and the Netherlands each have about 1,300 soldiers in Iraq.

Mr. Bush described the campaign against terrorism as one in which many nations have a stake. "We will work with our friends to bring justice to the terrorists," he said. "They have not only killed in Spain, they`ve killed in the United States, they`ve killed in Turkey, they`ve killed in Saudi Arabia. They kill whenever they can."

The president also linked the campaign in Iraq, as he has before, to the struggle against Al Qaeda terrorists. "I would remind the Dutch citizens that Al Qaeda has an interest in Iraq for a reason," he said. "And that interest is, they realize this is a front in the war on terror and they fear the spread of freedom and democracy in places like the Greater Middle East."

Mr. Balkenende, while seeming to be wary on the issue of troop commitments, did promise moral and political support for the United States in combatting terrorism, especially later this year, when the Netherlands assumes the presidency of the European Union. "We will work together," he said.

The prime minister showed his caution when he was asked for a comment on recent foreign-policy remarks by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

"I won`t talk about this issue," the prime minister said. "It has to do with the election campaign here in the United States."

Hours later, the White House insisted that the American-led coalition in Iraq remains strong, Mr. Balkenende`s remarks notwithstanding.

The chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, was asked at an afternoon briefing to comment on Mr. Balkenende`s cautious stance, which the questioner said had hardly sounded like a "resounding endorsement" for American policy.

"Oh, I think he said we stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States, in the war on terrorism, with the civilized world," Mr. McClellan said. "Obviously, they`ve got some political processes that they have to follow back at home."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Ayad Bressem, an Iraqi boy, with family members. He said an American bomb blinded him in one eye.
March 17, 2004
For Iraqis in Harm`s Way, $5,000 and `I`m Sorry`
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

AGHDAD, Iraq, March 16 — Nearly a year ago, Ali Kadem Hashem watched his wife burn to death and his three children die after an American missile hit his house.

Last week, he got $5,000 from the United States government and an "I`m sorry" from a young captain.

Mr. Hashem sat for a few moments staring at the stack of bills, crisp $100`s.

"Part of me didn`t want to take it," he said. "It was an insult."

But the captain, Jonathan Tracy, insisted. "A few thousand dollars isn`t going to bring anybody back," he explained later. "But right now, it`s all we can do."

It has been nearly a year since the war in Iraq started but American military commanders are just now reckoning with the volume of civilian casualties streaming in for assistance. Twice a week, at a center in Baghdad, masses of grief-weary Iraqis line up, some on crutches, some disfigured, some clutching photographs of smashed houses and silenced children, all ready to file a claim for money or medical treatment. It is part of a compensation process devised for this war.

Outside the room where the captain was saying he was sorry, a long line of people waited. One was Ayad Bressem, a 12-year-old boy scorched by a cluster bomb. His face is covered by ugly blue freckles. Children call him "Mr. Gunpowder."

"I just want something," the burned boy said.

"Come back later," a guard told him. "You`ll get some money. But we`re busy."

Military officials say they do not have precise figures or even estimates of the number of noncombatant Iraqis killed and wounded by American-led forces in Iraq.

"We don`t keep a list," said a Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Cmdr. Jane Campbell. "It`s just not policy."

But nonprofit groups in Iraq and the United States say there were thousands of civilian casualties. According to Civic, a nonprofit organization that has surveyed Iraqi hospitals, burial societies and hundreds of families, more than 5,000 civilians were killed between March 20, when the war started, and May 1, when major combat operations ended. "It says a lot that the military doesn`t even keep track of these things," said Marla Ruzicka, Civic`s founder.

The Project on Defense Alternatives, a nonpartisan arms control think tank in Cambridge, Mass., tracked Iraqi civilian casualties through hospital surveys and demographic analysis. The group estimated that the number of innocents killed in heavy combat was between 3,200 and 4,300.

Whatever the true figures, the list is growing. Since May 1, many Iraqi civilians have been cut down by American forces in checkpoint shootings and crossfires, accidents and mishaps. Last week, a 14-year-old Kurdish girl was killed by an American mortar round near the northern city of Mosul. Army officials said soldiers fired the mortar at terrorists. It fell short. A few months ago, according to an official with the Iraqi Interior Ministry, American soldiers shot and killed a man driving in his car because he had a hole in his muffler and the sputtering exhaust sounded like gunfire.

"The Americas are so jumpy," said Jameel Ghani Hashim, manager of homicide statistics for the Interior Ministry. Mr. Hashim has a five-inch-thick stack of reports detailing civilian casualties. He said preliminary figures indicated that about 500 Iraqi civilians had been killed by American-led forces during the occupation. Mohammed al-Mosawi, deputy director of the Human Rights Organization of Iraq, said more than 400 families had filed reports of wrongful deaths at the hands of American soldiers.

American commanders declined to quantify how many Iraqi civilians had been killed by their forces during the occupation. "We do keep records of innocent civilians who are killed accidentally by coalition force soldiers," said Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, assistant commander for the First Armored Division, which patrols Baghdad. "And, in fact, in every one of those innocent death situations, we conduct internal investigations to determine what happened."

Nonprofit groups tracking civilian casualties said the military had learned some lessons from the conflict in Afghanistan, in which hundreds of civilians were killed after faulty intelligence steered bombs into the wrong villages. The groups credited the military with doing a better job in Iraq of selecting targets to minimize civilian casualties.

But many groups faulted the military for its continued use of cluster bombs, explosives within explosives that sprinkle hundreds of soda-can size "bomblets" over a wide area. Steve Goose, an arms expert at Human Rights Watch, an organization that published two reports on civilian casualties in Iraq, said that while the Air Force showed greater restraint using cluster bombs, the Army did not. "The Army is still using older weapons and firing them into heavily populated areas," Mr. Goose said.

A Pentagon spokesman defended the use of cluster bombs, saying, "Coalition forces used cluster munitions in very specific cases against valid military targets."

One of the problems with cluster bombs is that some bomblets do not explode right away. That is what disfigured Ayad, the boy whose face looks as if it was tattooed. Ayad said that on April 25, he was tending cows in the village of Kifil, south of Baghdad, when a bomblet in the grass burst open. It embedded bits of metal in his face, leaving him blind in one eye and coating his skin with dark dots that look like pencil stabs.

His mother, Nazar, rushed him to the village doctor. Ayad was in a coma for weeks. When he emerged, his mother looked down at a face she barely knew. "He used to be so beautiful," she said. His father, Ali, went to dozens of Army hospitals and bases. Army doctors said Ayad`s cornea was scarred and that rehabilitation would be difficult.

Ayad is a smiley boy but sometimes he flies into rage. "He beats me for no reason," his mother said. "He threatens to cut my throat. But I don`t care. I am his mother."

This week, Ayad and his father took a bus to Baghdad. Ayad wore sunglasses and a scarf over his face. He does that often, even when it is boiling hot. "The children tease him," his father explained.

When the two arrived at the center run by Captain Tracy, there was a crowd pressing against the doors. On Sundays and Thursdays, Captain Tracy sits in a room on the second floor of the convention center and doles out stacks of cash to civilian casualty victims. The Army calls them "sympathy payments."

Captain Tracy also helps process claims under the Foreign Claims Act, which covers damages and wrongful deaths but only in noncombat situations. Captain Tracy checks each claim a civilian files against a database of military incident reports. If they match, the military pays the civilians, but does not issue a formal apology or claim of responsibility. Of 540 claims filed, he said he had paid 261. While occasional payments were made to families wrongly bombed in Afghanistan, there was nothing this formalized before.

Captain Tracy, 27, said he had absorbed a lot of grief in that little room. "I`m getting pretty burned out," he said.

He is limited in what he can pay. Guidelines set the maximum sympathy payments at $1,000 per injury, $2,500 per life. With the daily patter of bombings, rocket attacks and inadvertent killings, life in Iraq may seem cheap. But many Iraqis say it is not that cheap.

"This war of yours cost billions," said Said Abbas Ahmed, who was given $6,000 after an American missile killed his brother, his sister, his wife and his six children. "Are we not worth more than a few thousand?"

In the cases of Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Hashem, whose wife and three children were killed, military officials acknowledged the victims` houses had been hit by allied missiles.

Ayad`s family say they need money to pay for eye surgery. But by the time Ayad and his father reached the front of the line, Captain Tracy was closing for the day. While Ayad pleaded with a guard, his father held up a small piece of paper to the glass doors. "I have a serious problem," it read. "I need help. I wish I have a translator."

Nobody responded. A few hours later, the two were back on the bus, headed home.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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March 17, 2004
Poll Finds Hostility Hardening Toward U.S. Policies
By SUSAN SACHS

During the first year of the United States occupation of Iraq, antagonism toward American foreign policy in some European and Muslim countries has hardened, with public opinion overseas swinging sharply in favor of charting a course independent of Washington, a new poll has found.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press conducted the survey before the terrorist attack last week in Madrid and the subsequent revolt by Spanish voters against the political party that had embraced American policy toward Iraq.

But the survey found that a majority of people interviewed in France and Germany, two other traditional American allies, already believed that the Iraq war had undermined the struggle against terrorists and doubted the Bush administration`s sincerity in trying to combat terror.

"The wounds have not healed among the allied publics since the end of the war and, in fact, things are a little worse," said Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Center. "And there are trends that speak to a more long-term and continuing disconnect between the old allies."

The poll was conducted in Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Turkey and the United States.

In some predominantly Muslim countries, where negative attitudes toward American policy have prevailed for years, disapproval of the United States persisted over the past year, although at a less intense level that Mr. Kohut described as anger rather than hatred.

Still, the survey found, people in Jordan, Pakistan and Morocco tended to view other outsiders with almost the same degree of ill will and distrust as they did the United States. Opinions about the European Union and the United Nations were generally unfavorable or ambivalent at best, a sharp contrast to opinion in Europe and Russia where attitudes toward those institutions were positive.

A clear majority of people polled in the three countries also said that the suicide bombings against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq were justified.

On most foreign policy questions, the Americans interviewed expressed far more positive attitudes toward the war on Iraq, the Bush administration`s approach to fighting terrorism and collaboration with Europe. While only 21 percent of French people surveyed wanted to maintain as close a relationship with the United States as in the past, 55 percent of Americans favored maintaining a partnership with Europe.

One question that was not asked by the Pew pollsters was whether foreigners considered it dangerous for their countries to be allied with the United States and its Iraq policy. After the Madrid bombings last week, many Spaniards expressed the belief that their government`s closeness to the Bush administration had made their country a terrorist target.

The pollsters did, however, look at whether the strong foreign opposition to the war on Iraq had dissipated in the year since major combat was declared over. The answer was a definitive "no."

That hardening of views was echoed in the view held by a majority of foreigners that the Bush administration`s "war on terror" was actually an effort to control the Middle East`s oil wealth or to dominate the world.

Only in Britain and the United States did a majority of people believe that the American-led campaign against global terrorism was sincere.

"We do know that support has been flagging and more Germans and French think we`re exaggerating this thing," Mr. Kohut said. "I think this reflects a general disenchantment with America."

Similar surveys in 2002 and 2003 had shown that foreign empathy with the United States, relatively strong after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington began to evaporate fairly quickly.

Compared with results in May of 2003, more people in France and Germany believed their countries had made the right decision in not supporting the war. Slightly more also expressed an unfavorable view toward the United States, although the five-point increase fell within the poll`s margin of error. At the same time, public opinion in those countries mellowed toward Americans as a people.

Pew did not conduct interviews in Spain this year, but a survey it conducted there last May found that 62 percent disapproved of Spain`s decision to use military force in Iraq, while only 31 percent considered it the right decision.

The survey by the nonpartisan Pew Center was conducted between Feb. 19 and March 3 with about 1,000 adults each in the United States, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia and Turkey, and about 500 adults in Britain, France and Germany.

Interviews were conducted by telephone in the United States, Britain, France and Germany. In Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey, the interviews were conducted face-to-face. The surveys are based on nationwide samples, except in Pakistan, where the interviews were conducted in predominantly urban areas, and in Morocco, where the interviews were conducted only in urban areas.

The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 to 5 percentage points.

Good will toward the United States also slipped in Britain, the Bush administration`s closest wartime ally. Half of the Britons surveyed said the Iraq war hurt efforts to combat global terrorism. Only 41 percent said they have more confidence now that the United States wants to promote democracy around the world.

At the same time, 33 percent of Britons, compared to 20 percent two years ago, said the United States was overreacting to the threat of global terror.

The survey also found a growing dissatisfaction with the British-American alliance, with 56 percent of the respondents supporting a more independent approach by Western European countries to security and diplomacy. Last year, 48 percent of Britons said they favored a more disengaged relationship with the United States.

Turkish attitudes toward the United States improved during the past year, possibly a reflection of satisfaction that post-war Iraq has not descended into a civil war that might threaten or destabilize Turkey. This year, 30 percent of Turks rated the United States favorably, compared with 12 percent last year.

But in other mostly Muslim countries, the poll found that public opinion was generally and obstinately at odds with the views of people in the West.

The enduring popularity of Osama bin Laden — rated favorably by 55 percent of those surveyed in Jordan, 65 percent in Pakistan and 45 percent in Morocco — underscored the gulf between Muslim attitudes and those in the West.

"The Muslim publics come off feeling beleaguered in relation to the rest of the world," Mr. Kohut said. "It`s an in-your-face attitude and it reflects a real vein of discontent with us."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Kerry Declares Victory, Fires Back at Bush
Tue Mar 16, 2004 09:31 PM ET


By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (Reuters) - Democrat John Kerry, promising a "great debate," declared victory in the Democratic presidential race on Tuesday and formally opened the general election campaign with an assault on President Bush`s credibility.

With a win in Illinois, Kerry acknowledged he had enough delegates to July`s nominating convention to claim the right to challenge Bush in November -- a formality given that most delegate counters put him over the top last week.

"This night marks the opening of the general election and a great debate about the direction of our country," Kerry said at a victory rally in Charleston, West Virginia, a key battleground state in November.

"I believe we can do better," said Kerry, whose campaign was conservative in its delegate estimates and waited to claim victory until Illinois, another key state in November, could give him the win.

Kerry, accused by the White House in a new television ad airing in West Virginia of voting against funds for troops in Iraq, struck back by questioning Bush`s credibility and saying he was blaming others for his own administration`s failures.

At an earlier campaign event in Huntington, West Virginia, Kerry said Bush had squandered a budget surplus, misrepresented the cost of a Medicare bill and misled Americans about the threat from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq while pointing blame at former President Bill Clinton, Saddam Hussein or the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"The president is busy trying to blame everybody except his own administration," he said at a town hall meeting filled with veterans and many of his former Navy crewmates and colleagues. "He`s pushing it off on everybody else."

The Bush ad attacked the Massachusetts senator for voting against an $87 billion package to pay for the conflict in Iraq. The ad`s narrator lists body armor for troops, higher combat pay and better health care for reservists and their families as items the decorated Vietnam War veteran opposed.

Kerry said his vote had nothing to do with U.S. troops not having the proper equipment and body armor in Iraq.

"They didn`t have the state-of-the-art body armor at the moment they went in," Kerry said, adding he supported an amendment that would have paid for the $87 billion by repealing tax cuts for the most wealthy Americans.

BUSH WADES IN

Bush waded into the controversy over Kerry`s comments last week that foreign leaders were supporting his campaign against Bush. He told reporters at a White House photo opportunity that Kerry should back up his claims.

"If you`re going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you`ve got to back it up with facts," Bush told reporters.

Kerry has refused to reveal the names of any leaders who made the comments and said Republicans were trying to keep the controversy alive to divert attention from their record.

Kerry`s Illinois win put him past the 2,162 delegates needed to claim the nomination, although he effectively wrapped it up two weeks ago when his Super Tuesday showing knocked his last major rival, John Edwards, out of the race.

This was Kerry`s first campaign visit to West Virginia, once reliably Democratic in presidential elections but carried by Bush in 2000 by 6 percentage points despite a 2-to-1 Democratic advantage in voter registration.

He picked up help with the endorsement of West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, a state Democratic icon who said in a statement that Bush made promises to win West Virginia and then "walked away from those promises."

After his Huntington town hall meeting, Kerry greeted diners at a restaurant and sat in a booth where former President John F. Kennedy sat during his winning 1960 West

Virginia primary campaign.
Keine Ergebnisse heute morgen.

"We`re going to try to do justice to the example that he set over the years," Kerry told a well-wisher.
Illinois Democratic Presidential Primary

Illinois Politics

In 2002, first-term Democratic Senator Dick Durbin swamped little-known Republican Jim Durkin.


Rod Blagojevich was elected as the first Democratic governor in more than a quarter-century, helped by attacks tying Republican Jim Ryan to scandal-plagued Gov. George Ryan.


Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald will not seek a second term in the 2004 election.


Running to replace Fitzgerald is Republican Steve Rauschenberger, a veteran state senator from Elgin. John Cox, a millionaire Chicago-area attorney and accountant, withdrew after finding himself unable to build grass-roots support. He threw his support to Rauschenberger.


Cox had spent a chunk of his personal fortune on failed bids to win the GOP nomination for a congressional seat in 2000 and for a U.S. Senate race last year.


Besides Rauschenberger, other GOP candidates are businessmen John Borling, Chirinjeev Kathuria, Andy McKenna, James Oberweis and Jack Ryan. More than a half-dozen Democrats have also announced or said they would run, including state Comptroller Dan Hynes, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, state Sen. Barack Obama of Chicago, attorney Gery Chico and businessman Blair Hull.


Redistricting set up one hotly contested race between incumbents in the 2002 elections: Republican John Shimkus beat Democrat David Phelps. All other incumbents were re-elected.


Democrats from Chicago took over as governor, attorney general, secretary of state, comptroller, state House speaker, and state Senate majority leader.


"It`s kind of like being at a wake or a funeral," said Gary Mack, a Republican political consultant.


When Blagojevich took office, he faced a budget deficit of roughly $5 billion. He and lawmakers dealt with it by eliminating thousands of state jobs, raising some business taxes and fees, increasing casino taxes, dipping into special funds and borrowing billions of dollars to invest and use for state pensions.


Blagojevich`s administration said next year`s budget deficit could reach $2 billion. He hopes to protect education, health care and public safety programs but does expect to make cuts elsewhere, such as within the administration.


Business owners say they are fed up with the state tinkering with fees and tax loopholes and instead would prefer the stability of a temporary income tax increase. Blagojevich has promised not to raise sales or income taxes.


--The Associated Press






Previous Presidential Votes

2000 Primary Winners
Democrats: Gore with 84.3%
Republicans: Bush with 67.4%

2000 General Election
Gore (D): 54.6%
Bush (R): 42.6%

1996 General Election
Clinton (D): 54.3%
Dole (R): 36.8%








Election Dates
Presidential/state primary
March 16, 2004

Delegates/Electoral Votes
Democratic Delegates:
Pledged: 156
Unpledged: 30
Total: 186
Republican Delegates: 73
Electoral Votes: 21

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March 17, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Killing Iraq With Kindness
By IAN BURUMA

ne year later, most of the stated reasons for invading Iraq have been discredited. But advocates of the war still have one compelling argument: our troops are not there to impose American values or even Western values, but "universal" ones. The underlying assumption is that the United States itself represents these universal values, and that freedom to pursue happiness, to elect our own leaders and to trade in open markets, should be shared by all, regardless of creed, history, race or culture.

Some might question whether America is as shining an example of these good things as is often claimed. Nonetheless, spreading them around is certainly a more appealing policy than propping up "our" dictators in the name of realpolitik. Still, history shows that the forceful imposition of even decent ideas in the claim of universalism tends to backfire — creating not converts but enemies who will do anything to defend their blood and soil.

Such was the response two centuries ago of the German-speaking areas of Europe when Napoleon`s armies invaded them under the banner of universal freedom, equality and brotherhood. Napoleon was a despot and his Grande Armée could be brutal, to be sure, but his reforms were mostly beneficial. Religious freedom was established, government efficiency improved, and the Napoleonic legal code has served continental Europeans well for two centuries.

Yet France`s armed intervention was deeply resented. Some nativist reactions were relatively benign: romantic poetry celebrating the native soul, or a taste for folkloric roots. But in other cases the native soul, especially in Germany, turned sour and became anti-liberal, anti-cosmopolitan, and anti-Semitic. Some 19th-century nativists claimed that Napoleon was a Jew. This was not just because he liberated the Jews from their ghettoes and declared that France would be their homeland, but also because universal ideals, promising equality for all, have often been associated by nativists with rootless cosmopolitanism, which in their eyes is synonymous with Jewishness.

As soon as Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, the liberal laws he instituted in Prussia were annulled. And a century later, the resentments planted by Napoleon`s armed liberation sprouted their most bitter fruits in Nazi Germany.

Arab and Muslim extremism may never become as lethal or powerful as the 20th-century German strain, but it has already taken a terrible toll. Once again a nation with a universalist mission to liberate the world is creating dangerous enemies (and once again Jews are being blamed). This is not necessarily because the Islamic world hates democracy, but because the use of armed force — combined with the hypocrisy of going after one dictator while coddling others, the arrogant zealotry of some American ideologues and the failures of a ham-handed occupation — are giving America`s democratic mission a bad name.

One problem with American troops` liberating the Middle East is that it confirms the opinions of both Muslims and Westerners who see the Iraq war as part of a religious war, a "clash of civilizations" in the phrase of the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington. On the face of it, this would seem an unlikely proposition. Saddam Hussein did not rule over an Islamic state. Far from it; he killed large numbers of Muslims. Whatever his values are, it would be an insult to claim they represent Arab civilization. And although Tony Blair (also a fan of the phrase "universal values") and George W. Bush are Christians, religion does not appear to have played a major part in their war aims.

Yet to many Arab Muslims inside and outside Iraq, this does indeed look like a war unleashed by "Zionists and Crusaders" to keep the Muslims down, or worse, impose a foreign civilization on an Arab nation. This is certainly the way Islamist extemists see it. But then, they always were believers in Mr. Huntington`s thesis.

Islamists, however, do not represent Muslim or Arab civilization — any more than the Christian Coalition, let alone "Zionists," represents the West. Iraq is a perfect example of how ethnic, religious and cultural fault lines run inside national borders. The future of Iraq is not being forged out of a battle between West and East, or between Muslims and Christians, but between Shiites and Sunnis, Kurds and Arabs, Baathists and democrats. The main fault line crossing most Muslim societies isn`t even between secularists and religionists, but between Muslims with different ideas about the proper role of religion.

Islamists of the kind represented by Al Qaeda are religious revolutionaries. But it is perfectly possible for a practicing Muslim to be against United States intervention, free-market capitalism, sexual freedom and the importing of Hollywood movies without being a theocratic revolutionary. Such a person may be a moderate reformer who believes, as did many Europeans until just a few decades ago, that democratic politics is best organized along religious lines.

The real question for the Western universalists, then, is whether the cause of moderate Muslims is helped by the revolutionary war that has been set off by the American and British armies. For that is what the war in Iraq is: not a clash of civilizations, but a revolution unleashed through outside force.

There seems to be little doubt that most Iraqis were more than happy to see Saddam Hussein go. Most would have remained grateful to the United States and Britain, if only the coalition forces could have somehow gone home quickly, leaving Iraq with a functioning administration, electricity, running water and safestreets. This, of course, would not have been possible even if Britain and America had done everything right. The fact that the coalition got so much spectacularly wrong has made things far worse.

Iraq is so violent and chaotic now that it would be highly irresponsible to pull the troops out. As a result, we may be seeing more and more Huntingtonians. This is especially true of Arabs living outside Iraq, who never felt the lash of Saddam Hussein directly.

In the face of what is seen as continued Western aggression, it is harder for Muslims in any country to take a strong stand against fellow Muslims for fear of being branded as traitors. The Liberal Islamic Network, for example, has done a brave job of promoting a moderate form of Islam in Indonesia, where extremists bombed a Bali nightclub in 2002. These liberal Muslims advocate the separation of church and state, and a non-literal interpretation of the Koran. They were able to fight extremism without being seen as American stooges — until American troops invaded a Muslim country.

"When the Bali bombings occurred, I thought the fundamentalist groups would fade, because people would see that they were wrong," according to one member of the group, Nong Darol Mahmada. "But now the Iraq war becomes a new justification for the fundamentalist attitude toward America or the West. Everything we`ve been working for — democracy, freedom of thought — all seems in vain." She may be wrong. All might not be lost. But so far, in Iraq and beyond, the neoconservative mission is achieving the opposite of what it intended.


Ian Buruma, a professor at Bard College, is co-author of the forthcoming "Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Für die, die es genauer wissen wollen. Der ganze Pew Report.

A Year After Iraq War
Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher, Muslim Anger Persists

Released: March 16, 2004

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3? ReportID=206

Navigate this report
Summary of Findings
Additional Findings and Analyses
About this Survey

Summary of Findings

A year after the war in Iraq, discontent with America and its policies has intensified rather than diminished. Opinion of the United States in France and Germany is at least as negative now as at the war’s conclusion, and British views are decidedly more critical. Perceptions of American unilateralism remain widespread in European and Muslim nations, and the war in Iraq has undermined America’s credibility abroad. Doubts about the motives behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism abound, and a growing percentage of Europeans want foreign policy and security arrangements independent from the United States. Across Europe, there is considerable support for the European Union to become as powerful as the United States.

In the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed, anger toward the United States remains pervasive, although the level of hatred has eased somewhat and support for the war on terrorism has inched up. Osama bin Laden, however, is viewed favorably by large percentages in Pakistan (65%), Jordan (55%) and Morocco (45%). Even in Turkey, where bin Laden is highly unpopular, as many as 31% say that suicide attacks against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable. Majorities in all four Muslim nations surveyed doubt the sincerity of the war on terrorism. Instead, most say it is an effort to control Mideast oil and to dominate the world.

There has been little change in opinion about the war in Iraq – except in Great Britain, where support for the decision to go to war has plummeted from 61% last May to 43% in the current survey. In contrast, 60% of Americans continue to back the war. Among the coalition of the “unwilling,” large majorities in Germany, France and Russia still believe their countries made the right decision in not taking part in the war. Moreover, there is broad agreement in nearly all of the countries surveyed – the U.S. being a notable exception – that the war in Iraq hurt, rather than helped, the war on terrorism.

In the four predominantly Muslim countries surveyed, opposition to the war remains nearly universal. Moreover, while large majorities in Western European countries opposed to the war say Saddam Hussein’s ouster will improve the lot of the Iraqi people, those in Muslim countries are less confident. In Jordan, no less than 70% of survey respondents think the Iraqis will be worse off with Hussein gone.
Weiter:
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3? ReportID=206

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Was will Sistani wirklich?

washingtonpost.com
Shiite Leader in Iraq Wants Help of U.N., Envoy Says


By Colum Lynch and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A17


UNITED NATIONS, March 16 -- Iraq`s most influential Shiite religious leader has formally assured the United Nations that he wants the organization to help guide Iraq through its transition to self-rule, a senior U.N. official said Tuesday.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani told U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in a written message several days ago that there was no basis for recent news reports saying that Sistani opposed a continuing role for the United Nations, said Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations` special envoy for Iraq. Sistani told Annan that "he wants the U.N. to play a role, to continue to play a role in Iraq," Brahimi said.

Sistani appears to be distancing himself from the Shiites on the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council -- including Ahmed Chalabi, a former Iraqi exile -- who have objected to U.N. oversight of the political transition.

The split on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council over the proper U.N. role has prevented the body from issuing the formal invitation that the United Nations wants before it returns to Iraq to help with the transition and to plan for elections. At the request of the United States, the world body had earlier agreed to help broker an agreement over a caretaker government taking power when the U.S.-led occupation ends on June 30, and to organize national elections late this year or early next year.

But Brahimi has made it clear that he wants both the Governing Council and the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to send a formal invitation before he or a team of U.N. electoral experts heads to Iraq.

"The impression we have so far is a lot of Iraqis do want the United Nations back," Brahimi said. "We are now waiting for the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Governing Council to tell us if the United Nations is required to play a role, and we will take it from there. . . . We are waiting to hear from them."

A senior White House official, Robert Blackwill, traveled to Iraq over the weekend to try to break the political impasse on the Governing Council. With about three months until the end of the U.S. occupation, the Bush administration is anxious to see Brahimi return to Iraq within two to three weeks to provide momentum for the political transition.

Blackwill and L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, have been working to persuade the council to extend the invitation. The matter is expected to be taken up at a council meeting in Baghdad on Wednesday. "Blackwill is trying to break this logjam," a U.S. official said. "We`re trying to get the Governing Council to cough up a letter."

In Baghdad, a U.S. official voiced optimism that Sistani`s communication would prompt a change of position among the Shiite members of the Governing Council who have resisted issuing an invitation to Brahimi.

Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for Chalabi, who had opposed Brahimi`s return, suggested Tuesday night that Chalabi would be open to a limited U.N. role. "We think that the United Nations has the expertise and could be very helpful," Qanbar said. "We will benefit from their expertise, but we`re not going to accept a role where they control the process."

Brahimi, meanwhile, said Tuesday that there has been "no structured debate" in Iraq over the composition of a provisional government since Annan issued a report on Feb. 23 urging Iraq`s leaders to begin a national discussion of the matter. He said the Iraqis must reach agreement on an electoral law by the end of May if they want to hold elections by the end of the year.

Chandrasekaran reported from Baghdad.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Iraqi Cleric Is Wild Card for Washington


By KEN GUGGENHEIM
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; 5:58 AM


WASHINGTON - The United States is adamant it wants to hand over political control to Iraqis on July 1. Most Iraqi leaders are adamant they want to take control then. The big question is how committed Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani is to that day.

The U.S. insistence on the transition date has given the Iraqi cleric enormous leverage as the United States begins a final push toward Iraqi sovereignty.

The most powerful cleric for Iraq`s majority Shiite Muslims, al-Sistani has already stepped into Iraq`s political process at three key junctures. Each time, he forced the U.S.-led coalition now running Iraq to revise or delay its plans.

American officials appear leery of challenging him openly, but haven`t been able to talk to him directly, either.

The July 1 deadline could be the most critical moment yet. Any significant delay could raise doubts about the U.S. commitment to restoring Iraqi control, possibly fueling anti-American violence. The Bush administration also wants a peaceful transition well before the U.S. presidential election.

With al-Sistani`s support, the transition could go smoothly. But it could be derailed if he`s dissatisfied.

Al-Sistani may choose to use that leverage carefully. Iraqis want to regain control of their country and al-Sistani, who has proven to be pragmatic and politically astute, may not want to be seen as standing in the way.

U.S. officials say they are not worried about him impeding the handover. But they do recognize his importance.

"He needs to be consulted and that`s what we`re trying to do," said a State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "I wouldn`t really put it in the category of a problem. He`s one of the people that we know we need to work with."

But working with al-Sistani isn`t easy. He refuses to meet with U.S. officials. And he has frustrated Americans by not publicly expressing his views on key issues until after decisions have been made.

Marina Ottaway, a post-conflict reconstruction specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said al-Sistani "is increasing the uncertainty of a process that was uncertain to begin with."

U.S. officials "do not challenge him openly because they are afraid he will issue a fatwa (edict) telling Shiites to resist the occupation," she said.

Some Americans may find it unsettling to watch the United States nervously await the edicts of a reclusive Iranian-born Shiite cleric. It doesn`t help that al-Sistani, with his black eyebrows, white beard and black turban, bears a resemblance to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran`s late revolutionary leader.

But al-Sistani is no Khomeini. He shuns a direct involvement in politics. He has accepted a temporary U.S. occupation as a step toward building a democracy that would likely favor Shiites, who make up 60 percent of Iraq`s population.

Al-Sistani "might well be America`s biggest ally in Iraq," said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East project director of the International Crisis Group, a think tank based in Belgium.

"He has held the Shiites at bay," he said. "He has told them not to attack the Americans with arms, or go into violent opposition. He has restrained the Shiites whenever the Shiites were attacked in the suicide bombings.

"Very few Shiite cleric leaders could have done that," Hiltermann said.

Al-Sistani`s role in sidetracking U.S. plans has been difficult to characterize.

Danielle Pletka, a Middle East analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said, "Either he is a genuine, religious Iraqi patriot - of Iranian origin - or he is a very shrewd political operator. Or perhaps he`s both."

Every time al-Sistani has become involved, Pletka said, "You say to yourself, `Who is this pain?` And in every aftermath you look back and say he really didn`t play a pernicious role. It`s actually been interesting. He`s never pushed too far."

Al-Sistani has met with U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, and U.S. officials hope the United Nations will help form the interim government to run Iraq until elections are held.

Iraqis, though, have not invited Brahimi`s team to return. Some Shiites on the Iraqi Governing Council see the team as representing U.S. interests, but Brahimi said Tuesday that al-Sistani has informed the United Nations that he wants it to play a role.

---

EDITOR`s NOTE - Ken Guggenheim covers foreign affairs for The Associated Press in Washington.


© 2004 The Associated Press

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washingtonpost.com
U.S., Iraqi Forces Launch Massive Hunt


By JIM KRANE
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; 5:56 AM


BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi military forces launched a big operation in Baghdad to weed out insurgents and capture illegal weapons on Wednesday with troops, helicopters and armored vehicles raiding suspected rebel hideouts.

The campaign comes a day after gunmen killed two Europeans working on a water project. On Monday, assailants shot to death four American missionaries also working on a water project. The six killings suggest the insurgents are going after civilians as a means of undermining reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

The operation launched Wednesday is called "Iron Promise" and is expected to involve thousands of U.S. troops from the Fort Hood, Texas-based 1st Cavalry Division, which has recently arrived in Iraq, and the outgoing Germany-based 1st Armored Division. Scores of Iraqi Civil Defense Corps soldiers are also involved.

In the first raid, about 250 troops from the armored division`s 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment as well as 250 Iraqi soldiers fanned out across the sprawling 20th Street Market, in the city`s Al-Bayaa district, which sells everything from vegetables to used car parts.

Some of the stores are suspected of supplying weapons to the rebels, said the raid`s commander, Lt. Col. Chuck Williams, 40, from Sterling, V. He said the market assault was just the start of a citywide crackdown on the guerrillas.

"There is a lot of pressure everywhere. It is all over town. The big things we are looking for is people moving weapons, IED (improvised explosive device) materials and explosives and ammunition. Our soldiers are looking to deter or discover this activity. We want to shut it off," he said.

With helicopters hovering overhead, forces in Bradley fighting vehicles and Humvees circled the market to prevent rebels from escaping the area. Troops then went store to store searching for weapons and guerrilla suspects. Few residents expressed opposition to the search and the mood was relaxed.

"There are so many places to run and hide. That`s why we have to lock it down. We could easily spend a few days doing this. But we basically just want the bad guys to know that we are still here," said Maj. Gregg Softy, 38, from Hyde Park, N.Y.

U.S. officials say they have identified 14 rebel cells across Baghdad and while raids on them in the past few months have disrupted their operations, they are still active.

Unidentified assailants fired mortars late Tuesday that smashed into a house in south Baghdad, killing two Iraqi children, local residents said.

Mortars on Tuesday night also hit the U.S. Forward Operating Base Falcon, in south Baghdad, home to the troops involved in Wednesday`s raid on the market. There were no casualties, according to U.S. military officials.

A German and a Dutch national were killed in a drive-by shooting near the town of Mussayab, 45 miles south of Baghdad on Tuesday, officials said. Their Iraqi driver and a police officer also were killed, and two police were wounded.

Five Americans missionaries were shot in the northern city of Mosul a day earlier, leaving four dead and one wounded. The Virginia-based Southern Baptist International Mission Board identified the dead missionaries as Larry T. Elliott, 60, and Jean Dover Elliott, 58, of Cary, N.C.; Karen Denise Watson, 38, of Bakersfield, Calif.; and David E. McDonnall, 28, of Rowlett, Texas.

On Tuesday in Mosul, assailants in a car fired on a police vehicle, killing three officers and wounding a fourth, and separately gunmen killed an Iraqi woman working as a translator for the U.S. military.

Mosul was a prime recruiting ground for the officer corps of Saddam`s army, and U.S. military officials have described the city as a hotbed of guerrilla activity. The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have a unit in the city that is searching for so-called "high value" targets in northern Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said such attacks were an attempt to divide the 36-nation coalition.


© 2004 The Associated Press

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The Sweatshop Solution
_______________

UNION CITY, NJ (IWR News Parody) - President Bush today unveiled what he called his `bold new` jobs creation plan that will have American workers competing directly with China and India by having their wages lowered to third world standards.
"Good Afternoon.

You know, as I have always told the First Lady: ` If the mountain don`t come to Jesus then that Muhammad fellow will have to get it for him`, and you folks out there look just about as confused as Pickles does when I told her that saying the first twenty times.

But hear me out now, cause there is some good ole fashion Texas logic in these words, and no, that`s not one of your oxymoron thingies either. Thingies, now that`s a funny word, ain`t it? I heard that that one from Condi. You know, WMD thingies. She`s so funny!

Anyway, if jobs are being outsourced to India then maybe we just need to lower wages in this country. You know, supply and demand. It`s makes good horse sense, don`t it?

We just need more sweatshops in this country.

And as most of you folks already know, I have made a lot of progress in that direction already, but now I have to ask for your help if we are going to lick this thing.

All you patriotic American workers out there need to ask your management for 50% pay cut, effective immediately, but hey don`t stop there. At the same time, be a real loyal American and ask those pin headed bureaucrats to eliminate your health care benefits while their at it too!

Shoot, you can pay for your Blue Cross with all that left over money from my tax cuts, right?

Then, if you people could just start working 12 hours a day for 7 days a week and not get paid for any overtime, we`d be all set.

I mean, come on, if Chairman Mao had to pay overtime wages during that Long March, he never would made it Korea, would he?

Hell no. Man those Chinamen were lucky just to make it to the end of the trail alive for Christ`s sakes!

Now, if we do can just do something like that, I we can stop all that outsourcing problem right now," said President Bush

[Joerver]

Ich hatte mich gestern schon über die neue Qualität von Spiegel Online gewundert, hier die Lösung mit eigenem Reporter vor Ort:

Am 20. März jährt sich der Beginn des US-Feldzugs gegen Saddam Hussein zum ersten Mal. SPIEGEL ONLINE bringt aus diesem Anlass ein Irak-Spezial mit täglichen Hintergrund-Analysen und aktuellen Reportagen von SPIEGEL ONLINE-Reporter Markus Deggerich aus Bagdad.


SPIEGEL ONLINE - 17. März 2004, 9:38
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,290598,00.html
Alltag in Bagdad

"Fickificki, one dollar"

Aus Bagdad berichtet Markus Deggerich

The year after: Der kollabierende Verkehr scheint auf den ersten Blick das größte Problem in Bagdad zu sein. Ein Jahr nach Kriegsbeginn bahnt sich der Alltag im Spannungsfeld zwischen Irakern, al-Qaida und Amerikanern seinen Weg. Aber der Eindruck vom normalen Leben ist nach wie vor trügerisch.
Bagdad - Die Stadt wird wieder belagert. Der Gegner lauert an jeder Ecke und er nimmt keine Rücksicht. Er kämpft sich den Weg frei, Meter für Meter, weicht nie zurück und fühlt sich immer im Recht. Es gibt keine Regeln und keine Hemmungen. Und am Ende hat jeder verloren.

Rund eine Million Autos sollen offiziellen Schätzungen zufolge seit dem Ende des Krieges die Grenzen zum Irak überrollt haben. Neben Satellitenschüsseln, Fernsehern und Kühlschränken sind Autos - zoll- und steuerfrei - der Importschlager des neuen Irak. Nach den Jahren des Embargos gilt nun freie Fahrt für befreite Bürger - und die machen reichlich Gebrauch davon. Fünf Stunden dauert die Fahrt von der jordanischen Grenze durch die Wüste bis nach Bagdad - aber wer vom Stadtrand ins Herz der Metropole vordringen will kann noch mal bis zu zwei Stunden einplanen.

Bei der Rückkehr in die Stadt am Tigris knapp ein Jahr nach dem Beginn des Krieges scheint zunächst der Verkehr das größte Problem zu sein. In der Millionenmetropole herrscht die blanke Willkür: Egal ob Eselkarren oder der neueste BMW - alle drängen aus allen Richtungen zur gleichen Zeit auf Kreuzungen, Stadtautobahnen, Standstreifen, Gehwege, Brücken, Einbahnstraßen. Ampeln funktionieren nicht, Verkehrszeichen gibt es nicht, Polizisten interessieren nicht. Willkommen bei der Bagdad-Rallye, es geht um Leben und Tod.

Mahmud ist acht Jahre alt und geht heute mal wieder nicht zur Schule. Als kleiner Verkehrshelfer mit röchelnder Trillerpfeife verdient er mehr als sein Vater, der Elektriker. Haben sich mal wieder alle endgültig auf der Kreuzung zum Totalstillstand verkeilt, schüttelt er mit dem Kopf und fängt an zu entknoten. Hier zehn Zentimeter zurück, da zwei Meter vor, du bitte warten, hier bitte den Rückwärtsgang rein und ja, nach Mansur bitte links über die Brücke. Von den Trinkgeldern, die ihm durch die Fensterscheiben gereicht werden, und den Gebühren, die er kassiert, wenn er parkende Autos bewacht, kann Mahmud ziemlich gut leben - obwohl für ihn das Wort Staublunge nach einer neuen Definition schreit.

"Von mir aus kann das so bleiben", sagt der kleine Mann. Ärger droht nur, wenn die Amerikaner auftauchen, denn dann greift die einzige Verkehrsregel in Bagdad: US First. Die Amerikaner mögen es überhaupt nicht, wenn sie nicht vorwärts kommen. Stocken ihre Wagen oder gar ein ganzer Konvoi, steigt bei ihnen sofort der Adrenalinpegel. Stehend geben sie eine noch bessere Zielscheibe ab für Angriffe. Schon deshalb haben sie meist freie Fahrt, weil sich niemand gerne in ihrer Nähe als Kollateralschaden wiederfinden möchte. Und das ist auch der Moment, in dem man wieder weiß: Bagdad ist eben noch nicht die stinknormale Großstadt, deren größte Sorge Taschendiebe und Smog sind.

Das Leben ist auf die Straße zurückgekehrt

Es gibt tausend kleine Augenblicke, in denen man sich die Augen reibt, weil so vieles wieder oder erstmals funktioniert. Die Märkte und Geschäfte sind voller und besser sortiert als vor dem Krieg, das Leben ist auf die Straße zurückgekehrt, die Theater, Kinos, Galerien, Teestuben sind voll, das Leben vibriert, und die Sonne schickt freundliche 25 Grad in die Frühlingsluft. Die Ausgangssperre ist aufgehoben, es ist mehr irakische Polizei als US-Armee auf der Straße zu sehen. Selbst die Nächte sind ruhiger: Noch immer hört man Hubschrauber über der Stadt, Schüsse und Detonationen, aber es ist weniger geworden. Ist das Relativierung des Grauens, oder setzt sich Leben immer durch, weil man sich auch an das Ungewöhnlichste gewöhnen kann?

"Die Menschen haben einfach keine Lust mehr, zu Hause zu sitzen", sagt Alexander Christof, der als Leiter der Hilfsorganisation "Architekten für Menschen in Not" das gesamte Nachkriegsjahr in Bagdad verbracht hat. Auch wenn zum Beispiel einiges bei der Versorgung mit Wasser und Strom besser funktioniert, warnt er vor der trügerischen Ruhe: "Das größte Problem ist immer noch die Sicherheit." Es kann immer noch jeden zu jeder Zeit treffen. Doch mittlerweile habe er vor den US-Soldaten mehr Angst als vor irakischen Attentaten oder Überfällen: "Sie sind oft überfordert und haben einen nervösen Finger am Abzug."

Wohin dann?

Bagdad ist noch lange nicht über den Berg, aber es steigt auf aus dem Staub. Das Wort Bürgerkrieg will Christof nicht in den Mund nehmen, "aber etwas in der Art liegt immer noch in der Luft". Zu viele verschiedene Interessensgruppen wollen dem Chaos weiter Nahrung geben. Einige Ziele sind definierbar: Man halte sich fern von irakischen Polizeiwachen, man halte sich fern von religiösen oder politischen Großversammlungen und man halte sich fern von Orten, an denen Amerikaner auftauchen. Tja, aber wohin dann? Marina David hat sich entschieden. Sie hatte jahrelang als Rezeptionistin im "Sultan Palace Hotel" gearbeitet. Nun haben sich dort für ein Jahr zivile amerikanische Mitarbeiter eingemietet. Nach einer Woche bekamen die irakischen Angestellten des Hotels die ersten schriftlichen Drohungen: Wer mit "amrici" zusammenarbeitet wird bestraft. Obwohl Arbeitslosigkeit mit das größte Problem in Bagdad darstellt, gab Marina ihren gut bezahlten Job auf. "Die Angst ist zu groß", sagt sie. Jetzt hockt sie wieder zu Hause und hofft auf Heimarbeit als Übersetzerin.

Die neue Zeit hat viele neue Jobs produziert, aber auch zu viele in die Arbeitslosigkeit getrieben. Es entstehen neue "Betätigungsfelder": Prostitution, Drogenhandel und unscheinbare Schilder wie "The art of the doctress", hinter dem sich ein Hardcore-Porno-Kino verbirgt, lassen religiöse Führer schäumen. In Armenvierteln wie dem ehemaligen Saddam City, einer Hochburg der Schiiten in Bagdad, liegt die Arbeitslosigkeit bei 80 Prozent, schätzt Alexander Christof. Wer Englisch spricht, versucht bei irgendeiner Hilfsorganisation anzudocken, wer mutig ist, arbeitet für die Amerikaner. "Wächter" ist das bekannteste Berufsbild und sagt viel über das andere weit verbreitete Berufsbild: Ali Baba.

"Al-Qaida ist in der Stadt"

Die Unsicherheit ist das größte Kapital derjenigen, die ein Interesse an einem instabilen Irak haben. Aber auch viele Amerika-skeptische Iraker sind die ewige Angst leid. "Wir wollen in Ruhe leben", sagt Mohammed Abur. Er handelt mit Raubkopien von CDs in Bagdads Handelsstraße Al Rashid mitten in der Innenstadt. Zu seinen Bestsellern gehören selbst gebastelte Video-CDs mit Aufnahmen von Saddams Folteropfern und über das Luxusleben der Saddam-Söhne. Auch eine Art von Pressefreiheit.

Die klammheimliche Freude über tote US-Soldaten weicht mehr und mehr einer Wut über das Chaos, das dadurch entsteht - nicht zuletzt, weil zunehmend Iraker ins Visier geraten. Mohammed ist sich sicher, dass es auch nicht mehr überwiegend die Iraker selbst sind, die Bomben legen und Raketen abschießen. In den Teestuben und, was wichtiger ist, in den Moscheen, wird mal mehr oder wenig laut erzählt: "Al-Qaida ist in der Stadt. Seid auf der Hut. Sie wollen Böses."

Das sieht auch US-Zivilverwalter Paul Bremer so. Er hat nun die Zahl der Grenzübergänge zum Iran auf drei reduzieren lassen und die Kontrollen verstärkt. Aus dem Osten und dem Süden, über Basra, sind sich die Amerikaner sicher, sickern Terroristen ein. Sollte das nur ein nützliches Feindbild sein, das die Iraker mit den Amerikanern verbrüdern soll, dann war es bereits erfolgreich: Der Begriff al-Qaida hat in Bagdad Konjunktur.

Tom Murray aus South-Carolina sieht das ähnlich. Er ist mit acht Kollegen auf Patrouille, nach Einbruch der Dunkelheit in der Abu Naws Straße, direkt am Ostufer des Tigris. Dort stehen am Rande des Flusses Holzverschläge, die einst die beliebtesten Fischrestaurants des Orients waren, in denen der berühmte irakische Karpfen serviert wurde. Der Karpfen schmeckt heute nach Tigris, was nichts Gutes heißt, und die Hütten sind mehr und mehr zu Spelunken verkommen. Für einen Dollar bieten dort Männer mit glasigen Augen, die nicht nur vom Alkohol stammen können, Whisky an.

Frank Sinatra leiert

Während die eine Hälfte des GI-Trupps die Straße sichert, genehmigen sich die anderen vier im Stehen und mit Sturmgewehr vor dem Bauch ein Glas. Sie werden zuvorkommend bedient, immer mit Bückling und viel "please Mister, please Mister" - aber auch ein bisschen provoziert: "Fickificki, one Dollar", sagt der Iraker mit den glasigsten Augen und guckt herausfordernd. Tom Murray lacht darüber und winkt ab: "Sorry, I am not gay". Alle lachen, etwas unsicher. Der Besitzer der Klitsche dreht die scheppernde arabische Tanzmusik runter und legt eine leiernde Kassette mit Songs von Frank Sinatra ein: "Moon River" quäkt es nun aus den Lautsprechern. Man ist anpassungsfähig.

Wie das Verhältnis zu den Menschen auf der Straße ist? "Die meisten sind sehr freundlich. Sie sagen: Wir lieben euch. Und sie schenken uns Blumen", erzählt der 20-jährige Murray, der seit einem halben Jahr im Irak Dienst schiebt und nicht weiß, wann er nach Hause kommen wird. Er lächelt in die Runde und trinkt aus. Was Murray nicht sieht, nachdem er die Spelunke verlassen hat: Seine eben noch freundlichen Gastgeber spucken auf den Boden und werfen mit betont angeekeltem Gesicht das geleerte Glas in die Spüle. Frank Sinatra wird wieder ausgetauscht. In Bagdad ist wieder viel Musik drin. Aber sie schmeckt noch immer nach Blues.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-bush17mar…

Immer mehr Länder riechen den Braten. Will Bush die US-Truppen aus der Schußlinie nehmen und die Koalitionstruppen die Aufräumarbeiten machen lassen? Das wäre wie in Afganistan, die USA bleibt mit wenig Truppen da, nachdem sie die Arbeit halbfertig liegen ließ und wendet sich neuen Eroberungen zu.


THE WORLD
Bush Urges Resolve on Iraq
After Spain`s promise to withdraw its forces, the president calls on other wavering coalition countries to keep their troops in place.
By Paul Richter
Times Staff Writer

March 17, 2004

WASHINGTON — President Bush urged wavering members of the U.S. led-coalition Tuesday to keep their troops in Iraq, but his plea did not win over at least two nations that are considering joining Spain in plans to withdraw their forces this summer.

As the White House downplayed suggestions that its coalition was beginning to fray, Bush lobbied the Dutch prime minister on the issue but won no commitment that 1,300 troops from the Netherlands would remain in Iraq beyond June. At the same time, Honduran officials said Tuesday that they would pull their 370 troops out of Iraq during the summer, and diplomats speculated that El Salvador and Guatemala might follow suit.

Spain`s newly elected Socialist leaders promised this week to withdraw the country`s 1,300 troops from Iraq by June 30 unless they were serving under a new United Nations mandate. Incoming Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has called the Iraq war "an error" based on "lies," and his condemnations of U.S. and British war efforts have helped stimulate antiwar public sentiments in other countries.

A new poll showed that two-thirds of Italians favor the withdrawal of their country`s 3,000 troops — although Italy`s leaders promised to stand pat — and opposition Dutch political parties called for military withdrawals.

Although small in number compared with the 110,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the other nations` forces are important for giving the war effort an international face; a total of 35 other countries now contribute soldiers. Besides the British, with 8,220 troops, the other coalition members have contributed about 15,000 troops.

Leaders of several coalition nations have expressed concerns about terrorist retribution for their participation in the Iraq war after last week`s commuter train bombings in Spain. A tape said the attack, which killed 201 people, was masterminded by a previously unknown Al Qaeda figure named Abu Dujan Afghani.

South Korea announced late Tuesday that it was boosting security measures because its plan to increase its troop levels in Iraq make it a terrorist target.

In response, Bush on Tuesday argued that the United States and its allies must remain "strong and resolute and determined" in the fight against terrorism.

"I would remind Dutch citizens that Al Qaeda has an interest in Iraq for a reason," Bush said after meeting Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands, which is considering bringing its troops home in July. "They realize this is a front in the war on terror, and they fear the spread of freedom and democracy in places like the greater Middle East."

As he seeks to reassure allies, Bush planned a special gathering Friday at the White House to speak to ambassadors from about 60 nations that have supported U.S.-led military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush said citizens in coalition countries should "think about the Iraqi citizens who don`t want people to withdraw because they want to be free."

Despite Bush`s efforts, Honduras announced that it would withdraw its 370 troops from a Spanish-led humanitarian and peacekeeping brigade as scheduled at the end of June. The decision was announced by Defense Secretary Federico Breve only one day after Honduran President Ricardo Maduro said the troops would stay.

Breve said the Honduran decision "coincides with the decision of the prime minister-elect of the Spanish government."

Honduras sent its troops in August with a one-year commitment. They depend heavily on the Spanish military for logistical support. But the deployment was unpopular at home.

Maduro said Tuesday that, like Spain, he would consider keeping the troops in Iraq beyond the end of June only under a new U.N. mandate — a requirement being mentioned with increasing regularity by other allies.

Diplomats said it was unclear whether El Salvador and Guatemala, whose troops went to Iraq with the Hondurans and also rely on Spanish military help, would continue their mission beyond June. An official at the Salvadoran Embassy in Washington said she had no guidance from her government; the Guatemalan Embassy did not immediately return calls.

Officials in Britain, Italy and Poland have insisted this week that they would keep their troops in Iraq, despite the Spanish withdrawal.

Yet the uncertainty over other allies` course has complicated a week that the White House had hoped would be an affirmation of the U.S.-led coalition`s efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Besides meeting with allies at the White House on Friday, Bush will travel to Ft. Campbell, Ky., to speak on the war on terrorism.

"This was planned as `Iraq week,` " one official said.

Dutch officials, who had been expected to extend the mission of their 1,300 troops, are facing opposition at home. The Labor Party, which holds 42 of 150 seats in parliament, called Tuesday for withdrawal of the troops when their deployment ends in July.

The first Dutch death in Iraq was reported Tuesday. A Dutch civilian was one of two European contractors killed in an ambush south of Baghdad.

After his meeting with Bush, Balkenende said Dutch officials would decide the future of their troops. "That is the responsibility of the Dutch government and Dutch parliament, and we`ll talk about it," he said.

An official of the Dutch Embassy in Washington said later that his country might not make its decision on troops for several months, and emphasized that the government`s choice would depend in part on whether the U.N. was given an expanded role in Iraq.

"In this process, what is important is the role of the United Nations," the official said.

The Bush administration has been ambivalent about sharing authority with the United Nations. But in recent days, as the bloody bombings in Madrid have reminded many Europeans of their dislike of the Iraq war, U.S. officials have realized that they need the United Nations` imprimatur to maintain support from governments.

One U.S. official said the Bush administration was planning a broad effort involving the U.N. to relieve the pressure on governments that have been taking heat because of their military participation.



"That`s one area where we`re hoping to get progress that would make people feel under less pressure," the official said.

In Los Angeles on Tuesday, a European Union official also stressed the importance of working out such a resolution.

Pat Cox, the president of the European Parliament, noted that Spanish Prime Minister-designate Zapatero had made it clear that he could keep Spanish troops in Iraq if the United Nations was given a new role.

Diplomats said British and American officials have begun trying to move ahead quickly with such a U.N. resolution.

But several said they saw major obstacles ahead.

One is the continuing reluctance of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is worried about the security of U.N. representatives in Iraq and about having the world body`s neutrality compromised by its need for U.S. military protection.

A second problem is the increasing opposition to a United Nations role from some Shiite Muslim members of the Iraqi Governing Council.

"I`ve never been optimistic about the chances for a new resolution," said one senior diplomat. "It won`t be easy."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times staff writer Evelyn Iritani in Los Angeles contributed to this report.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-karen17mar17,1,18717…

Der Bericht betrifft die 4 US-Bürger, die ermordet worden sind und als Missonare bezeichnet werden. Es scheint so zu sein, dass eine Reihe US-Kirchen in den Irak gezogen sind, um den Heiden das Jesuskindchen nahezubringen.

Missionary Slain in Iraq Mourned
In a letter Karen Watson wrote to her church, she penned her own epitaph.
By Jean-Paul Renaud and John Johnson
Times Staff Writers

March 17, 2004

BAKERSFIELD — "You`re only reading this if I died," began the letter that Valley Baptist Church Pastor Phil Neighbors held in his shaking hands.

"To obey was my objective, to suffer was expected, his glory my reward."

Written just before she left for Iraq last year, that epistle became Karen Denise Watson`s self-penned epitaph after she and three of her missionary colleagues were gunned down Monday night.

Watson, 38, a onetime jail officer who sold her home and possessions to focus on missionary work, was riding in a car in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul when attackers wielding AK-47s fired on the group.

Her death left grief-stricken friends from this churchgoing town to the Richmond, Va., offices of the Southern Baptist missionary group that dispatched her halfway around the world to offer humanitarian assistance to a desperate people.

"It was very shocking" to learn of Watson`s death, said Lt. Kevin Wright, her former supervisor at the Kern County Sheriff`s Department. "There were some of us that knew she was in a dangerous situation. But we never expected this."

"In times like this, there are no words that will take away the pain of a loved one`s violent death," said Jerry Rankin, president of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. "Everyone in the IMB family and everyone who loves Southern Baptists` overseas workers are grieving with the family members and co-workers of these precious souls."

Besides Watson, a member of Valley Baptist Church in Bakersfield since 1997, also killed Monday were a married couple, Larry and Jean Elliott, 60 and 58, of Cary, N.C. David E. McDonnall, 28, of Rowlett, Texas, died a few hours after the attack while being flown to a military hospital in Baghdad. McDonnall`s wife, Carrie, 26, was in critical condition, according to the IMB.

There were conflicting accounts about what the missionaries were doing at the time of the attack. Church officials in Bakersfield said Watson and the others were working on a water purification project, while the IMB said they were on a trip to survey the needs of people in the region. The Elliotts had served with the missionary organization since 1978, mostly in Honduras. Watson, a relatively recent convert, joined a year ago.

Watson was born in Bakersfield, attended high school in Arroyo Grande, and knew firsthand what cruelties life could visit on the innocent. Church officials said the deaths of her fiance, her father and her grandmother, all within two years, led to her relatively late conversion to Christianity.

"That was a crisis point in her life," Neighbors said. "Things like that could make you better or bitter. For Karen, it made her better."

Watson began working as a detention officer at the Lerdo jail for the Kern County Sheriff`s Department in 1996.

"She was a very hardworking, professional employee," said Wright. He said other former colleagues were too broken up by her death Tuesday to come forward.

Despite being quiet, even a little shy — her favorite cut-loose activity was going out for Mexican food — she was a natural leader at work and in the missionary ranks, friends said. She headed her Iraqi team, despite her relative inexperience.

"That girl could coordinate anything," Neighbors said.

Maybe because she had seen her share of trouble, "she had great compassion" for others, said Wright. So when she saw a chance to make a difference in the lives of some of the world`s most downtrodden people, she jumped at it.

After becoming a three-times-a-week churchgoer at Valley Baptist, she began looking into missionary work. Two years ago, she took a leave from her job to go on short missions to Kosovo and El Salvador.

"It opened her eyes to the needs of the world," said Neighbors, who keeps a large map in the church hallway with Watson`s picture on it.

Watson underwent six weeks of instruction at the IMB`s Missionary Training Center outside Richmond early last year in preparation for going to Iraq.

The IMB has served as the mission agency for the Southern Baptist Convention since 1845. It says it is "one of the largest evangelical mission organizations in the world." The IMB said it had 5,411 personnel serving around the world.

It has been estimated that as many as 100 missionaries from various Christian sects have moved into Iraq in recent months, and some Muslims are not happy about it.

"The presence of missionaries in the majority Muslim country is highly resented," said Al Jazeera, an Arab satellite TV channel. Al Jazeera reported that the International Bible Society had distributed 10,000 Christian-themed manuals in Arabic.

IMB spokeswoman Mary Jane Welch said its workers were not there to proselytize. "They are free to answer questions if they are asked," she said. "Basically, we want to help the needs of the people there and share God`s love."

Welch said the organization "will examine the situation" before deciding whether to pull its personnel out of Iraq as a result of the murders. "I`m not sure what decision will be made."

The organization has suffered losses in other world hot spots. A year ago, a missionary in the Philippines was killed by a terrorist`s bomb at the airport in Davao City. A few months earlier, three workers were killed by a terrorist at the Baptist hospital in Jibla, Yemen, the organization said.

Before she left for Iraq, Watson left her life in America for good. She sold her home, her car and all her possessions, explaining that she needed to travel light. Missionaries had to be able to leave Iraq on two hours notice.

She also wrote a two-page letter in longhand, cautioning her pastors not to open it unless she died. Thoughtful as always, she wanted them to break the news to her mother, three sisters and a brother.

Watson, who still hoped to marry and have children, had been in and out of Iraq since the end of major combat. She had returned just two weeks ago. Whenever she was in an area hit by violence, said her second pastor, Roger Spradlin, she made a point of calling home to let everyone know she was all right. When they didn`t hear from her this week, church officials grew worried.

Then on Monday night, a friend of Watson who had been holding the letter brought it to the church office. Neighbors said he was shaking as he opened it. Besides assuring the church leaders that she had known the risks she was taking, the letter contained messages for her family, as well as her favorite Bible verses.

A section dealing with her funeral was characteristically straightforward. "Keep it simple," it read. She had underlined the word simple.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-bergen1…
COMMENTARY
Al Qaeda, the Movement
Madrid bombings suggest that the group`s ideology is spreading
By Peter Bergen
Peter Bergen, a fellow of the New America Foundation is the author of "Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden" (Touchstone, 2002).

March 17, 2004

The attacks in Madrid Thursday morning suggest that the Al Qaeda network remains very much in business. Despite the fact that two wars have been fought in the name of winning the "war on terrorism" and untold billions of dollars have been spent in an effort to break the back of Al Qaeda, the attacks came as a total surprise, killing more than 200 people.

Any normal organization that had suffered the loss of its base in Afghanistan and that had lost most of its top leaders in the last 2 1/2 years would have gone out of business. But Al Qaeda, which has emerged as the chief suspect in the Madrid bombings, is not a normal organization. Al Qaeda is not like some Mafia family; if you capture or kill all the members of a Mafia family, it will simply cease to exist.

Since Sept. 11, Al Qaeda the group has been morphing into Al Qaeda the ideological movement, and although it is a relatively simple matter to arrest people, it`s altogether another thing to arrest the spread of ideas.

The Al Qaeda ideology — a fervent opposition to Western policy in the Middle East and the desire for the rule of Islamic law across the Muslim world — has reached a vast global audience as a result of the wide dissemination of Osama bin Laden`s multiple statements since the 9/11 attacks. The Internet also has created a multiplier effect for Al Qaeda`s ideas.

On websites with names like Al Neda ("the Call" in Arabic), Al Qaeda disseminates its propaganda and even explosives manuals. It is no longer necessary to go to Afghanistan to sit at the feet of Al Qaeda`s leaders or to take explosives training at a camp. Signing up for the jihad is a click of a mouse away.

Bin Ladenism will never enjoy the mass appeal of other destructive ideologies of the modern era, such as communism, but it certainly enjoys wider support today than the secular Arab socialism that gripped much of the Middle East in past decades. And this means that we have barely begun the war with Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups because many thousands of underemployed, disaffected Muslims will continue to embrace Bin Laden`s doctrine of violent anti-Westernism.

In a telling survey of opinion conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in the Muslim world in 2003, people in countries as diverse as Morocco, Indonesia, Jordan and Turkey expressed more confidence in Bin Laden than President Bush, by significant margins.

With the attacks in Madrid, Al Qaeda has demonstrated the ability to strike a devastating blow in a European capital and to influence the course of the Spanish election, a result on par with the Sept. 11 attacks in terms of a psychological blow to the West.

The attacks should not have been a surprise. One of the defining hallmarks of Al Qaeda is its patience. Al Qaeda took five years to plan the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people, and it took the group at least three years to plan the Sept. 11 attacks.

Just because Bin Laden`s followers had not struck in either the U.S. or Europe since the Sept. 11 attacks did not mean that they had stopped plotting to do so.

Al Qaeda struck in Madrid at the time of its choosing, at a moment when it could cause the largest number of fatalities and create the greatest psychological effect. Moreover, Al Qaeda is operating on a timeline very different than our own. Ayman Zawahiri, Bin Laden`s deputy, pointed out in his 2001 autobiography that it took two centuries to eject the Crusaders from the Middle East in the Middle Ages.



Another reason the attacks in Spain should not have been surprising is that the most reliable guide to the Al Qaeda network`s actions are the words of its chief ideologue, Bin Laden. Last October, Bin Laden released a widely publicized audiotape calling for attacks on countries supplying coalition forces for the Iraq war, including Britain, Spain and Italy.

Since that statement, a group linked to Al Qaeda attacked an Italian police barracks in southern Iraq, killing 17, and there was an attack on the British Consulate in Istanbul. And now come the multiple attacks in Madrid.

Spain was a natural target for Al Qaeda because of its support for the Iraq war and because it is the only jurisdiction in which Bin Laden has been indicted for his role in the Sept. 11 attacks. And despite the fact that Muslims have not controlled any part of Spain for more than five centuries, one of Al Qaeda`s oft-stated aims has been to return Andalusia, in southern Spain, to the orbit of Muslim rule.

Al Qaeda has had other successes since 9/11. In Riyadh, for instance, multiple attacks last year killed dozens. In Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf narrowly survived two recent assassination attempts.



The attacks in Madrid demonstrate that the Iraq war has energized Al Qaeda and its affiliates. As one senior U.S. intelligence official told me: "If Osama believed in Christmas, he`d want us in Iraq — that`s what he`d want under his Christmas tree."


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/165013_thomas17.html

Exported jobs hot-button election issue
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- The political rhetoric in the 2004 presidential campaign is already red hot, with the no-jobs economic recovery emerging as the top issue.

Both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the likely candidates of their respective parties, already have catchy campaign epithets dealing with the economy and job loss.

Advocates of government intervention to stem the further flow of American jobs to low-wage countries are "economic isolationists," according to Bush. The term "isolationist" evokes images of a remote America before World War II, withdrawn from global affairs.

Kerry, on the other hand, says U.S. firms that export American jobs in search of cheap labor are "Benedict Arnold companies," invoking the name of the notorious traitor.

A March 5-7 Gallup poll indicates how potent the job flight issue is politically. Gallup asked 1,005 people how important they viewed the job-export problem in deciding how they would vote. The poll showed 58 percent said the issue was "very important" and 27 percent thought it was "fairly important" while 8 percent fell in the "not too important" category.

Bush`s discomfort with the job issue was apparent when he suddenly stopped plans to nominate Anthony Raimondo -- CEO of a Nebraska firm that produces grain silos and metal buildings -- to be assistant secretary of commerce for manufacturing. The White House put the emergency brake on after Kerry`s camp revealed that Raimondo`s firm recently had opened a factory in China after laying off workers at its Nebraska plant.

After the embarrassing flap, Raimondo withdrew from consideration of the post.

Gleeful Democrats said Raimondo`s business decisions typified the Bush administration`s view of job loss. Some 2.2 million U.S. jobs have evaporated since Bush took office.

Some U.S. companies have transferred operations to China, India and other low-wage countries where they sometimes pay as little as one-tenth the wages they would have to pay for American skilled labor.

The expatriate businesses also can skip over the costs of health care, pensions and other benefits for their foreign workers. And they don`t have to comply with expensive environmental regulations like they do at home.

To stop some of the job bleeding, the Senate amended an international tax bill last week to prevent U.S. government contracts from being carried out by workers in developing countries. The main tax measure is still under consideration by the Senate.

Both Bush and Kerry are focusing their campaigns on Midwestern battleground states that have been hard hit with unemployment.

On Wednesday, Bush went to Ohio, which has lost some 250,000 manufacturing jobs in recent years, and told the Women`s Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century Forum: "We`ll make sure the American workers have the education and the skills to succeed in the jobs of the future."

Without mentioning Kerry by name, Bush also said "there are economic isolationists in our country who believe we should separate ourselves from the rest of the world by raising up barriers and closing off markets. They`re wrong."

He called that approach a "recipe for economic disaster" and said it represented a "tired, defeatist mind set."

Bush made no mention of Gregory Mankiw, his chief economic adviser, who caused a flap last month when he said that outsourcing was good for the economy. A White House spokesman immediately distanced Bush from Mankiw`s remark, showing how touchy the president is about this problem.

Last month only 21,000 U.S. jobs were created, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is far too few to make a dent in the unemployment rolls. And there is nothing on the horizon to indicate that we will be seeing more products labeled "made in America" on the shelves soon.

At home, many companies are relying on temporary or part-time workers to cut costs.

Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, recalled the Great Depression and said Bush`s job creation program is the "worst since Herbert Hoover."

To stop the job drain, some Democrats are calling for a temporary halt in new foreign trade agreements and are looking for ways to provide new tax incentives for business to stay at home.

Bush is aware that his father, President George H.W. Bush, lost his bid for re-election when the economy went sour in 1992.

As their best friend in the White House, Bush would do well to tell business leaders that he might suffer the same fate as his dad if they continue to ship American jobs overseas.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: [e-mail]. Copyright 2004 Hearst Newspapers.

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Iraker zeigen wenig Vertrauen in Demokratie

Die ganze Umfrage:
http://www.tagesschau.de/static/pdf/National-Survey-of-Iraq_…

Eins steht weiter unten, es scheint für die einzelnen Regionen, besonders in der Gewaltfrage unteschiedliche Ergebnisse zu geben. Dir Kurden haben augenblicklich noch ein ganz anderes Verhältnis zu der USA, als die Sunniten und die Shiiten.
Leider habe ich die Zahlen über die unterschiedliche Einschätzung nirgends gefunden.
Hier die Home Page des Instituts, die Umfrage ist noch nicht auf der Seite.
http://www.oxfordresearch.com/

Knapp ein Jahr nach dem Sturz Saddam Husseins blickt die große Mehrheit der Iraker optimistisch in die Zukunft, trotz erheblicher Sorgen um die Sicherheit, die politische Perspektive und die Arbeitsplätze. Die Zufriedenheit der Menschen sei mit der in Ländern wie Südkorea und der Türkei vergleichbar, so Dr. Christoph Sahm von Oxford Research International im Interview mit tagesschau.de.

Das sind einige der Ergebnisse der Umfrage, die das Institut im Auftrag von ARD und den Partnersendern ABC, BBC und NHK im Februar durchgeführt hat. Befragt wurden 2737 repräsentativ ausgewählte Iraker über 15 Jahren.

Sicherheit die größte Sorge
Die größten Sorgen der Iraker sind die mangelnde Sicherheit und Stabilität des gesamten Landes. In ihren eigenen unmittelbaren Umfeld fühlen sie sich jedoch verhältnismäßig geborgen. Auffallend ist, dass sich die Befragten eine verbesserte Sicherheit nicht durch ausländischen Truppen erwarten, sondern vorrangig durch die Schaffung von Arbeitsplätzen sowie die Ausbildung und Stärkung der örtlichen Polizei. Genau die Hälfte der Befragten erhofft sich auch vom Abzug der Koalitionstruppen eine Verbesserung der Sicherheit.

Gewalt und Terror werden abgelehnt
Im Rückblick auf den Krieg sind die Iraker gespalten: 42 Prozent der Befragten verbinden mit dem Angriff der Koalitionstruppen die "Befreiung des Irak", 41 Prozent bewerten den Krieg als "Demütigung". Kaum Rückhalt gibt es für politisch motivierte Gewalt im Irak. Während immerhin noch 17 Prozent der Befragten Unterstützung für Anschläge gegen Besatzungstruppen bekunden (mit deutlich höheren Werten in einigen Gegenden), werden Attentate auf die irakische Polizei von 97 Prozent der Bevölkerung abgelehnt.

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Josh Marshall: `Kerry is right, foreign leaders want Bush beaten`
Date: Wednesday, March 17 @ 09:45:05 EST



By Josh Marshall, The Hill

An ominously off-balance White House finally seems to have found a bit of traction in taking John Kerry to task for claiming that many foreign leaders are hoping he ousts President Bush from the White House this November.

White House surrogates have spent several days pressing Sen. Kerry (D-Mass.) to name names. And yesterday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan upped the ante by claiming Kerry was lying. "Either [Kerry] is straightforward and states who they are, or the only conclusion one can draw is that he is making it up to attack the president," McClellan intoned.

Late Monday, Boston Globe reporter Patrick Healy, who filed the pool report that included the quote in question, announced that he`d gotten it wrong. Kerry said "more leaders," not "foreign leaders." Still, the context shows pretty clearly that foreign leaders of some sort were the folks Kerry was talking about. And in the week since the quotation was first reported, he`s never denied that this was what he meant.



The first thing to note about this brouhaha is that this was a really foolish thing for Kerry to say.

As we`ve already seen, it`s left Kerry open to all sorts of dingbat Manchurian-candidate-type slurs about his being a pawn of foreign governments or his having made unknown, scary promises to foreign heads of state.

Last week, the Republican National Committee put out a memo darkly claiming that "Communist North Korea Is Only Government On Record Supporting John Kerry."

Then a slightly less breathless Vice President Dick Cheney demanded that Kerry tell Americans what he`d promised to those foreign leaders to make them so supportive of his candidacy.

American elections aren`t about the views of foreigners. They`re about the views of Americans. If most people around the globe think the American president is reckless, untrustworthy or simply dangerous, that may be something American voters want to take into account in making their judgments. But that`s a more subtle point -- and there are better ways to address it than the one Kerry chose.

But McClellan`s claim that Kerry is lying just doesn`t pass the laugh test.

Yes, Kerry`s remark was ill-advised. But one of the main reasons that it was a bad idea to say this is that it`s so obviously true.

Indeed, up until the White House glommed onto this recent line of attack, the administration`s contempt for the views of foreigners has been something it had been proud of and boasted of often. Remember the president`s cocky boasts about not needing anybody`s "permission" to launch the Iraq war?

Just consider a few facts.

The record of foreign elections over the last two and a half years is telling. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find a foreign leader who has supported Bush in any high-profile way and then survived a national election. True, it`s hard to find many examples beside Jose Maria Aznar. But that`s because it`s hard to find any foreign heads of state who have been supporters of the president.

More revealing is how many foreign heads of state and candidates for national office from traditional American allies have successfully played the anti-Bush card in their election campaigns.

The clearest examples are President Roh Moo-hyun, who won election two years ago in South Korea as the first South Korean presidential candidate to openly question the U.S.-ROK security alliance, and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who pulled out a razor-thin victory in his 2002 re-election campaign by campaigning against Bush`s Iraq policy.

Washington has tended to view Schroeder`s gambit as cynical and craven, particularly for the leader of a country that has been so closely allied to the United States for half a century. But there`s seldom a shortage of craven or cynical politicians in the world. For understanding America`s current standing in the world, the key point is not so much that Schroeder was or wasn`t craven as that his tactic was successful.

Nor is it much of a surprise.

As Fareed Zakaria -- hardly a lefty or a Bush-hater -- noted a year ago, the president`s policies have "alienated friends and delighted enemies. Having traveled around the world and met with senior government officials in dozens of countries over the past year, I can report that with the exception of Britain and Israel, every country the administration has dealt with feels humiliated by it."

For anyone who follows foreign policy even remotely closely, it has to be close to a given that the overwhelming majority of foreign heads of state and foreigners in general hope that Bush will be heading back to Crawford next January.

The president`s deep unpopularity among foreigners and foreign governments is a fact that either campaign could probably use to its advantage. But the fact itself can`t be denied.

Josh Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com. His column appears in The Hill each week. Email: [e-mail]

(c) 2004 The Hill

Reprinted from The Hill:
http://www.thehill.com/
marshall/031704.aspx

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Wednesday, March 17, 2004
War News for March 17, 2004
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi killed, five wounded in rocket attack on Baghdad mosque.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi police colonel, two bodyguards killed near Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: US troops attacked near Ramadi.

Bring ‘em on: US troops mortared near Kirkuk.

Bring `em on: Many casualties reported as bomb destroys central Baghdad hotel.

US allies fear revenge attacks for role in Iraq.

Honduras to withdraw troops from Iraq.

IGC minister says coalition are not doing enough to ensure the security of Iraqis.

Civilian casualties. “It has been nearly a year since the war in Iraq started, but U.S. military commanders are just beginning to reckon with the volume of civilian casualties streaming in for assistance. Twice a week, at a center in Baghdad, masses of grief-weary Iraqis line up, some on crutches, some disfigured, some clutching photographs of smashed houses and silenced children, all ready to file a claim for money or medical treatment. It is part of a new compensation process unique to this war.”

Zapatero tells off Lieutenant AWOL: "’The occupation is a fiasco. There have been almost more deaths after the war than during the war,’ he said. ‘The occupying forces have not allowed the United Nations to take control of the situation.’"

Lies and the lying liars. “US President George Bush and his four top advisers made a combined total of 237 misleading public statements on the threat posed by Iraq. The claim was made in a congressional report released on Tuesday. Compiled by Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee, the report examined assertions made by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.”

Commentary

Opinion: “We never should have invaded Iraq, but now we have a responsibility to the Iraqi people not to leave them in a new world of chaos that we created. Even the CIA warns of the very real threat of civil war in Iraq. Is this the president`s definition of ‘Mission Accomplished?’”

Opinion: “We proved that the world’s mightiest nation could stand virtually alone and still have its way, but at what price? Can we afford to be reckless and independent gunslingers in future conflicts? Does such arrogance erode our leadership in the war against terror? If the Iraqis ever get around to thanking us for what we did, we would do well to remind them that they were the lucky recipients of a series of unprecedented political and strategic blunders that, at great cost to us, worked to their long-term benefit.”

Opinion: “Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, I have been behind a war on terrorism. Let me specify -- a war on terror that I thought would oust Osama bin Laden. This war in Afghanistan was apparently just fuel in the fire for a Bush administration that wanted to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. The administration, in my opinion, sidetracked from the true goal of the war on terror to complete its own agenda.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Massachusetts soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Missouri soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Ohio soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Florida soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Minnesota soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Tennessee Marine wounded in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.




# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:24 AM
Comments (3)

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Iraq: a year of war

The invasion of Iraq would, we were told, rid the world of mortal danger. One year on, the only people who feel safer are those who prefer not to think for themselves

By Robert Fisk

17 March 2004 "The Independent" - The impact of the cruise missiles can still be seen in the telecommunications tower across the Tigris. The Ministry of Defence still lies in ruins. Half the government ministries in Baghdad are still fire-stained, a necessary reminder of the cancer of arson that took hold of the people of this city in the first hours and days of their "liberation".

But the symbols of the war are not the scars of last year`s invasion - we cannot say "last year`s war", because the war continues to this day. No, the real folly of our invasion can be seen in the fortresses that the occupiers are building, the ramparts of steel and concrete and armour with which the Americans have now surrounded themselves. Like Crusaders, they are building castles amid the people they came to "save", to protect themselves from those who were supposed to have greeted them with flowers.

In even the smallest streets of Baghdad, you can smell the orange blossom, both sweet and bitter, a little paradise amid the muck and the stench of benzine. But you can also hear the sound of an alienated population, for whom every problem, every indignity, every mishap, every tragedy, is the fault and responsibility of its occupiers. Just as we blame Blair - and Blair and Bush only - for the war, so Iraqis blame those who have come to run their country: Americans, British, Westerners, foreigners. Oh, how different we are. Oh, how different they are. Never the twain shall meet. But we are not so different.

It was meant to be a Boy`s Own war. That`s how our leaders present death and blood and betrayal to us these days. And, strangely enough, that`s how war is presented to the Arabs, too, by their dictators and kings. When Saddam sent his legions into Iran in 1980, he dubbed their aggression the "Whirlwind War" - part two, 11 years later, was to be "The Mother of All Battles". We had Desert Shield and Desert Storm and, last year, Operation Free Iraq, and now the Americans - fighting the resistance they could never have imagined would challenge their occupation of Iraq - are initiating Operation Iron Anvil, Operation Iron Hammer and, even this week, in Afghanistan, Operation Mountain Storm.

Our folk memory of the Second World War (for most of the British population, like Tony Blair`s Cabinet, have little direct recollection of the 1939-45 conflict) is now invoked as a trailer to the big picture, a necessary part of a familiar narrative to war. The man with the moustache - Nasser or Saddam - is like the little ex-corporal with the moustache who sent the Luftwaffe over England in 1940. And the men who were going to defend us against the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris (albeit that Saddam was a fan of Stalin) were Churchills, Roosevelts, titans in battle against evil. Churchill, I fear, would have had no time for the little men who wish to sit on his historical throne, with their desperate sincerity, their arrogance, their constant use of "absolutely" and "completely".

Thus when the path to war in Iraq was being laid down for us just over a year ago, the old 1939-45 memory bank was dusted out. Those who did not wish to confront Saddam were Chamberlains, appeasers, weaklings, potential fifth-columnists. Those who were ready to de-fang the monster were marching off to battle like the Desert Rats of * * Alamein. During the 1991 liberation of Kuwait, the British commander, General Sir Peter de la Billiere, actually wore an original Eighth Army Desert Rat patch on his shoulder. At Christmas in 1990, as British troops waited in the Saudi desert to attack the Iraqis, the BBC mixed entertainment for the troops and their families with newsreel pictures of British tanks in the Western Desert in 1942.

There were some slips. When Blair told us we must support George Bush, he reminded us all of how America had come to our rescue in the Second World War, mercifully neglecting to mention the profitable period of neutrality the United States endured until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. American commentators recalled for their British audiences that the US had declared war on Hitler. This was untrue. It was Hitler who declared war on America in 1941.

And if we dared recall that Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary, had been shaking hands with Saddam back in the early 1980s - when he was at his most genocidal - Churchill was brought back. I recall one of the US right-wing "commentators" - in this instance from the Brookings Institution - reminding me during a BBC interview that "Churchill said you sometimes have to make a pact with the devil". Not so, I said. Churchill made no such statement. What he did tell John Colville after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was that "if Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons". Rumsfeld was making a lot more than a reference.

In the days before we invaded Iraq a year ago, the threats also had to have a Cold War as well as a Second World War flavour. Condoleezza Rice, Bush`s specialist on threats and terror, warned us about a "mushroom cloud" - the Russian version, presumably, rather than Hiroshima or Nagasaki - and the word "holocaust" was invoked. Blair`s preposterous "dossier" - and journalists went along with this ridiculous description of the Prime Minister`s ill-written and meretricious document - suggested obliquely that London could be attacked; take a look at the Express newspapers` report to this effect, which our most senior intelligence man saw nothing wrong with when he was questioned at the Hutton inquiry. Here again were the old nightmares - Blitz on London.

And our European friends and allies? Should they dare to oppose our rush to war, they were gutless, cowardly and ungrateful to the Americans for liberating them from under the heel of Nazi Germany. "Old Europe", to use Rumsfeld`s disgraceful expression, was collaborationist, potentially Nazi or - in France`s case, of course - Peacute;tainist. Poor old France. When The Wall Street Journal sent its correspondent back to the 1944 D-Day beaches, it was gratifying to find that the still grateful French who live there remembered that the Americans had given their lives for their liberation, not for their future political obedience. Germany was a more difficult nation to condemn because the Second World War parallels couldn`t be applied. The Germans, after all, could hardly be abused for not being warlike enough. It`s chilling to reflect, however, that when I was talking to Osama bin Laden about attacks on Americans in 1997, he compared those bombings to the French resistance against Nazi occupation during the Second World War. The conflict of 1939-45 is a mountain at which we can all quarry away.

All of this, however, was a narrative that could be - and was - combined with war for the bloke on the street. This began, I suspect, before and during the Kosovo war, when Hitler was dug up again (rather inappropriately, in view of Yugoslavia`s wartime courage against the Nazis) to further blacken the name of the Beast of Belgrade. This was the first post-war war - if you take my meaning - in which the Germans were involved. Thus reporters at Nato headquarters were encouraged to call the Luftwaffe the "German Air Force". Slobodan Milosevic himself, of course, had provided the images to go with the Holocaust memories: the long lines of dispossessed and brutalised Kosovo Albanians streaming into Macedonia.

But Nato set the stage. We had the slightly comical, cockney spokesman Jamie Shea, always ready with a good Hobbesian quotation and a quick way of dismissing questions that might prove troublesome. When a Nato plane bombed a train on the Gurdulice bridge in Serbia, up he popped with a camera-video of the bomb - too late to abort because of the speed with which the train approached the bridge - without mentioning that the film had been speeded up and, much more damagingly, that after the train stopped, the pilot went on to bomb the bridge again.
When Nato bombed a narrow road-bridge and killed a party of civilian rescuers in a second raid, Shea blandly pointed out that the bridge could carry a tank. It couldn`t; it wasn`t wide enough. When Nato killed patients at a hospital, Shea described it as a military target. Post-war enquiries by The Independent proved that Yugoslav troops had been hiding in the hospital basement. Nato must have known this, just as it knew about the patients. So it bombed the hospital anyway. And got away with it.
The missile that killed hundreds of Iraqis in an air-raid shelter in Baghdad in 1991 become a turning point in the war. The old canard about Iraqi anti-aircraft missiles exploding among Iraqis collapsed when Brent Sadler of CNN - the network briefly doing its job of telling us the truth - produced part of a cruise missile that had exploded in a Baghdad hotel.

Nato tried the same game when it bombed a Kosovo Albanian refugee convoy in 1999, suggesting that Yugoslav planes had attacked the civilians. On that occasion, it was The Independent that found the computer codings on the shrapnel, which proved the bombs were Nato`s. But by and large, Nato`s bloke-in-the-street approach worked. Milosevic was such an ugly character that we could forget his prominent role in the 1995 Dayton accord - when he was fecirc;ted by Richard Holbrooke, the US chief negotiator, who wanted to get US troops into Bosnia without a battle, and when the Kosovo Albanians were witheringly told to shut up - and we could, too, ignore the fine print of the 1999 Rambouillet peace talks over Kosovo. An annexe to the proposed agreement stated that the Serbs had to allow Nato access to all of Serbia`s roads and railways, radio stations, territory and frontiers - something no sovereign nation would ever accept. Thus was the path to war concreted over.

In the months leading up to last year`s invasion of Iraq, I suspect that this was remembered all too well in Whitehall. The Blair "dossier" was worthy of Jamie Shea, its catalogue of human-rights abuses - albeit in some cases the re-heating of dubious material already 11 years old - contained lies by omission. It recalled the Shia Muslim rioting in Basra in 1991 and Saddam`s subsequent repression without once mentioning that it was we, Britain and America, who had urged these poor people to rebel and then betrayed them by leaving them to Saddam`s mercy. Which is not that different to General Wesley Clark`s 1999 declaration that Nato was bombing Serbia to put Kosovo Albanian refugees back in their homes - even though most of them had been in their homes when Nato began bombing.

I also suspect that one of the principal reasons why so many tens of thousands of Britons - and Europeans - marched against the war was not only because they believed the war was unjust and based on lies, but because they sensed that they were being talked down to, treated as children, treated with disrespect by Blair and his supporters. Britain`s Minister for Europe, Denis MacShane, gave the game away in Brussels just before the invasion of Iraq when he told British critics that it was sometimes a prime minister`s job to "guide" his people. Europeans did not need to be reminded that the German for "guide" is F?hrer.
And I rather think that this is what Blair now believes he is - a "guide" who leads his people because of his own moral clarity. It was the Irish prime minister, Eamon de Valera, who once said that when he wanted to know what the * * people of Ireland thought, he had only to look into his own heart. Alas, this is what Blair thought when he went to war. Our feelings, our views, our beliefs, our long-held convictions and our arguments didn`t count. Because he knew best. If we could only see the intelligence material on Iraq that passed across his desk, Blair told the House of Commons, we would not be questioning him about the war. Of course, now that we know exactly what was passing across Blair`s desk, we know we were right to be suspicious.

And yet - the "and yet" is an important part of every Middle East story - there is an eerie, disturbing parallel, almost a mirror image of our own childlike walk to war, among the very people we invaded. Historically, we have provided most of the Middle East`s dictators, funded them, armed them, supported them or (if they nationalised the Suez Canal, attacked Americans in Berlin or invaded Kuwait) bombed them. What we have never been able to explain is their tenacity; or, more to the point, their subject people`s ability to lie docile under their heels. We used to ask: why don`t the Iraqis get rid of Saddam? And we forgot how few Germans dared risk the ferocity of Hitler`s revenge.

But we also have to face a fact: that Arab societies seem to be uniquely capable of absorbing these dictatorships, of playing along with the 99.9 per cent presidential election victories, and the secret policemen and the torture chambers, and the lies and distortions - able even (here is the difficult part) to give real loyalty to the monsters we decided should rule them.

The French have a very good word for this: infantilisme. Many Arab populations have indeed been "infantilised" by their leaders and regimes. In private, they may cast their eyes to the ceiling to show their abhorrence of the regime, but in front of an audience their enthusiasm might almost be real. And I suspect that it often is real. I recall a very intelligent Syrian lady who, in private, would always criticise the late president Hafez Assad. Could I believe how stupid the regime is, how little Assad understands the world or, indeed, Syria? Did I realise how the Syrian people would be happy when his regime ended? Yet when I met her the day after Assad`s death, this same woman turned to me with tears in her eyes. "Robert, you cannot understand how we feel," she cried. "He was a father to us, a real father."

And I think she meant it. Because dictatorship does not just bestow brutality and fear upon a society. It takes from the necks of grown people the yoke of blame, the burden of responsibility. They can forget Western adult cares - where to send the children to school, which political party to vote for, how to find the best tax adviser, how to resolve women`s rights, equality, crime, social injustice. Under the dictatorship, the people are returned to their childhood. They can live for ever as children, forever young, nursed and loved by the Great Father, the Caliph, the Sultan, he whom God has chosen to protect them and guide them, a guide who has only to look into his own heart to know what his people think.

Eternal youth is what they are offered in return for their loyalty. True, the price of infidelity is too terrible to contemplate - certainly too terrible to endure physically - but these are difficult times. The Great Father has to enact emergency laws for us. They are in our interest. And who are we to reject this benevolence when foreigners - Americans like Rumsfeld, for example - turn up to shake our leader by the hand and to extend to us the good relations of the West?

I rather think that this explains the patriarchal society that exists in the Arab world. The father who has no role in his society - unless he is a party apparatchik, in which case a new set of childlike rules comes into play - can only rule at home, a place in which his word, his law, his wishes are sacrosanct. Unable to play a role in real society, he mimics this role inside his own home.

He becomes the dictator whose portrait hangs in every home, indeed (for this was the case in Iraq) often in every bedroom. He decides what his children should do, whom they should marry, what his wife should think. A visit from a secret policeman - always supposing the father is not a policeman himself - is an event of fear and potential humiliation. All the more important, then, for the father to appease the policeman, to be his friend and then to reassert his own power in the house.

In earlier days, Saddam would turn up unexpectedly at the home of a poor family in Baghdad or Tikrit to hear what the people were thinking. He wanted to know their fears and concerns and complaints as well as what made them happy. Up to a point, he was told: the sewers that flooded, the houses that were badly built, the hospitals that did not immediately accept patients. And it was in Saddam`s interest to listen and hear what his people might be thinking before he stored it in his own heart. It was Saddam`s version of Tony Blair`s Big Conversation. The Iraqi television cameras would be there, the secret policemen playing the role of spinmeisters just in case things got out of control.

Arabs may think that all this is unfair. A combination of historical tragedy and cultural chance - the Islamic faith, the Caliphate, the political and military encroachment of the West at the very time when the Muslim world might have shared a renaissance with Europe - can account for present-day dictatorships in the Middle East, along with our own ruthless colonisation. Didn`t Germans behave in much the same way under Hitler, Italians under Mussolini, the Spanish under Franco?

But it remains true that Iraqi society was "infantilised" by Saddam. How else can we account for its dogged loyalty during the appalling eight-year war with Iran, when Muslim Shia fought Muslim Shia with human-wave attacks and poison gas? They were people who had no responsibility, who were told what to say and read and think, and who were - perhaps, in some dangerous way - the happier for it.
When Iraqis tell me today that "things were better under Saddam", they want to suggest that they had law and order and dictatorship rather than freedom and anarchy (the twin blessings Bush and Blair have brought them). But I also darkly fear that they look back to an age when they had no responsibility, when they could cast aside their cares and their powers of enquiry, when certainties were cast in iron, when love was unquestioning, however corrupt.

Yet this is what I suspect we now share: the Iraqis who lived through Saddam`s rule, and we who now go to war so blithely, who now occupy the lands of other people with such sublime certainty. We feel a need - or at least our leaders feel the need - to have a childlike society, where dissent is derided or ignored, where wisdom and integrity and truth are the sole characteristics of those who lead us and those who give their support to those leaders.

No, Blairite Britain and Bush`s America are not Saddam`s Iraq. But societies require what Coleridge called the "willing suspension of disbelief". We must trust. We must agree. We must accept. We must go along with what our leaders want, we must - an unhappy phrase from the Hitler period - "help to give the wheel a shove".
This is the legacy of the Iraq war, which is now a year old and shows no sign of ending. We are all children now.

© 2004 The Independent. UK.

[Joerver]

One man`s terrorist is another man`s freedom fighter

by Patrick J. Buchanan ist Herausgeber von `The American Conservative` und Sohn des ehemaligen republikanischen Kandidaten B.


03/16/04: Between 1971 and 1973, he was commander of the Derry Brigade of the Provisional IRA, which fought gun battles with British soldiers in a war that would cost 320 lives.

Arrested in Donegal near a car loaded with 5,000 rounds of ammunition and 250 pounds of explosives, he was sentenced to six months by a court whose jurisdiction he denied, "I am a member of the Derry Brigade of the (IRA) and am very, very proud of it."

A Londonderry official called him "a cold-blooded ruthless terrorist (who) will weigh up the consequences of his actions only in terms of benefit to the IRA, regardless of the cost in human lives." Another said he was a "fanatic ... responsible for mass murder."

He himself has spoken of the "legal and moral right of the IRA to kill a British soldier at any time," and was once quoted: "Freedom can be gained only at the point of an IRA rifle, and I apologize to no one for saying that we support the freedom fighters of the IRA."

He is Martin McGuinness. And the same March 13 New York Times that carries the picture of millions of Spaniards protesting the murderous terror attack on the Madrid trains has a photo of McGuinness chatting amiably with John Kerry before McGuinness spoke at Harvard.

Is it then true that "one man`s terrorist is another man`s freedom fighter"? After all, many Irish consider McGuinness and his Sinn Fein comrade Gerry Adams, whom Bill Clinton invited to the White House for St. Patrick`s Day, as freedom fighters in the tradition of the "martyrs" of the "Easter Rising" of 1916, celebrated by the poet W. B. Yeats.

As the president swears eternal war on terrorism, it is time to ask: Who is a terrorist? Exactly what is terrorism? Have we not ourselves sometimes breached our commitment "never to negotiate with terrorists"? Have we Americans also engaged in terrorism?

Terrorism has been defined as the murder or massacre of innocent men, women and children for political ends. In that sense, 9-11 qualifies, as do the Hamas bombings of buses in Jerusalem.

But looking back over the 20th century, no fewer than three Israeli prime ministers have been accused of terrorism: Menachem Begin, whose Irgun blew up the King David Hotel and carried out the massacre of Palestinian villagers in Deir Yassin in April of 1948. Yitzhak Shamir, head of the Stern Gang that murdered Edward Lord Moyne in Cairo in 1944 – enraging Churchill, who gave Moyne`s eulogy – and assassinated U.N. mediator Count Bernadotte in Jerusalem in 1948.

Ariel Sharon, as head of Force 101, is accused of massacring scores of Palestinian villagers at Qibya in 1953 in a reprisal raid for the murder of an Israel woman and her children.

Nobel Prize winner Yasser Arafat has been charged in the cold-blooded assassination of U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel in the Sudan in 1973. His PLO is an umbrella group embracing organizations for whom the weapon of choice in the war against Israel is terror.

Nelson Mandela, another Nobel Peace Prize winner, did not get life imprisonment on Robben Island for sitting in at lunch counters, but if memory serves, for plotting terror to overthrow the regime.

Jomo Kenyatta, the "Grand Old Man" of Africa in the 1960s, was the leader of the Mau Mau in the 1950s. Ahmed Ben Bella led Algeria`s war of independence, in which terror was the insurgents` weapon and torture the counter-weapon of the French.

During Tet in 1968, the Viet Cong went through the city of Hue with hit lists, executing 3,000 civilians. Within months, America was negotiating "peace with honor" with the V.C. US ties are now improving with Hanoi, where the body of Ho Chi Minh lies in state, as does that of Mao in Beijing and Lenin in Moscow. All three employed terror.

What is Nagasaki – the atomic bombing of a defenseless city of a defeated nation – other than an act of slaughter, killing 40,000 men, women and children in minutes to force Japan`s warlords to submit to America`s will?

But that was war, we say, and Japan was the aggressor. Does that also justify Dresden? Is air terror permissible in a just war if a nation can demonstrate it was the victim of aggression?

Saddam`s Iraq did not threaten us, did not attack us, did not want war with us, did not have weapons of mass destruction. Yet, we attacked, invaded and occupied Iraq. And when Iraqis attack our troops, we call it terror and we call them terrorists.

Is terrorism, then, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder?

John Brown murdered men in Kansas in reprisal for the killing of Northerners and killed civilians in his raid on Harper`s Ferry to ignite a slave revolt. Brown was hanged as a terrorist. Yet the 1920s epic poem on the Civil War written by Stephen Vincent Benet would be titled, "John Brown`s Body." And the first lines of the fighting song of the Union army were: "John Brown`s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on. Glory, glory hallelujah."

One man`s terrorist is another man`s freedom fighter. Or so it would seem.

COPYRIGHT 2004 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Whose War?

A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.

by Patrick J. Buchanan

http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html

[bares@nobles]

Das neue moveOn.org video.
http://www.moveon.org/censure/caughtonvideo/

Es zeigt ein Interview mit Rumsfeld, bei dem der Altmeister der Lüge sich selbst in seinen Fallstricken verheddert.
Es geht darum, dass die Bush-administration behauptet, niemand aus der Regierung hätte jemals den Irak als "imminent thread", also als unmittelbare Bedrohung bezeichnet.

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Published on Wednesday, March 17, 2004 by the Boston Globe
Statistics Lie on the True Cost of Living
by Robert Kuttner

WHAT IS THE MATTER with the whiny American voters? They keep telling pollsters that they think America is on the "wrong path." But don`t they read the statistics? Don`t they know that unemployment is at a comfortable 5.6 percent, that inflation is almost nonexistent, that the economy is growing smartly at around 4 percent?

These happy statistics, alas, don`t accurately capture the economic reality of ordinary people. Take inflation. It`s true that measured inflation is very low, but look at all that`s left out.

In the case of health care, the government`s consumer price index tracks the cost of medical services. But it is less precise about tracking who pays for them. If your employer`s health plan is increasing your share of premiums and cutting the company`s contribution or if the plan is increasing out-of-pocket charges or reducing what drugs it will cover, this shift is accounted for indirectly, after a lag of two years. But it hits your pocketbook immediately. And if rising medical costs deter you from seeing the doctor, that doesn`t show up in the index at all.

Or consider housing. There are parts of the country where housing prices have been declining for a decade because few people want to move there. Statistically, these declines get averaged with astronomical housing costs in major metropolitan areas to show only modest average housing inflation. Around big cities, prices have plateaued at very high levels that are plainly outstripping incomes. Try telling a young person in Greater Boston or New York or LA that there`s no serious housing inflation or that rents have not increased faster than earnings.

Another case of hidden inflation: A great many people in late middle age find themselves subsidizing their newly launched young. The causes of this trend are multiple: low starting salaries, skyrocketing rents, and the high cost of college tuitions and health insurance. Is this a dent in the cost of living for the middle aged? You bet. Does it show up in government statistics? Nope.

The inflation numbers also fail to capture pocketbook realities for retired Americans. A low official inflation rate plays a cruel trick on seniors. For starters, it means that cost-of-living adjustments in Security Security checks are mere pocket change. One new prescription can more than eat up this year`s Social Security increase.

Further, a low rate of inflation translates into a low interest rate on savings accounts, Treasury securities, and other prudent investments for the elderly. Moreover, older people on fixed incomes who are not homeowners are also at the mercy of rising rents.

And the same deficiencies in the consumer price index that fail to capture cost shifting in health care particularly affect the elderly, who spend a disproportionate share of their income on doctor`s bills, hospital costs, and drugs.

Or take energy costs. Gasoline is near an all-time high. That doesn`t affect the overall index much because energy costs are a relatively small share of average total consumer spending. But if you need your car for your business, you certainly feel it.

Then we have the unemployment numbers. Nominally, unemployment is a nice, manageable 5.6 percent -- about where it was during much of the booming 1990s. But that statistic leaves out all the people who left the labor force because they gave up on ever finding a job. If you include those, the real unemployment number is more like 7.7 percent. The proof of the soft job market is that earnings have not kept up with inflation. In 2003, the official inflation rate was 2.3 percent. The median wage increase was just 2 percent. And the 2004 statistics are likely to be worse.

The "average" voter got a tax decrease that the administration likes to put at around $1,000. But that artful statistic averages Joe Sixpack with Bill Gates. The typical voter got a federal income tax cut of more like $300, and in many cases that small federal tax cut was overwhelmed by local property tax increases that were caused by declining federal aid to states and cities.

President Bush may have gotten away with telling the voters things about Iraq that just aren`t true. But he`d better watch out when the evidence against his rosy statistics is right in voters` pocketbooks.

Ordinary people may not be professional statisticians, but they are not fools. America`s voters know better than the experts whether their own personal economy is thriving. Bogus economic optimism only reinforces the growing sense that this president speaks with a forked tongue.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

[Joerver]

BUSH CALLS GAY MARRIAGE NEW FRONT IN WAR ON TERROR

Pentagon Launches Operation Pink Storm

In a televised speech to the nation last night, President George W. Bush called gay marriage “the new front in the war on terror” and called on the civilized nations of the world to unite against “the gathering threat of gay and lesbian weddings.”

“There are those in the world who would replace freedom and democracy with gay marriages,” Mr. Bush said in his speech from the White House. “This will not stand.”

Mr. Bush’s speech coincided with news from the Pentagon that the U.S. was launching a spring offensive, Operation Pink Storm, to root out gay brides and bridegrooms hiding in the mountainous region on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In raids conducted over the weekend, U.S. Special Operations forces disrupted half a dozen gay marriages being performed in a serpentine network of underground caves, seizing hors-d’oeuvres, seating charts and flower arrangements.

In his speech, the President urged America’s allies in the war on terror not to lose resolve in the face of what he called “increasingly brazen wedding ceremonies staged by the world’s gay and lesbian community.”

In what appeared to be a pointed remark aimed at his rival, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass), Mr. Bush said, “It would be tempting to believe that gays and lesbians are not at this moment planning new and bigger weddings – but we do so at our peril.”

In other news, the Department of Labor announced that the U.S. has lost over 2.9 million manufacturing jobs in the last three and a half years, largely due to gay marriage.

**** BOROWITZ AT LUNA LOUNGE MONDAY MARCH 22 ****

Andy Borowitz performs next Monday night March 22 at 8:30 at Luna Lounge, 171 Ludlow St, NYC. $8 admission includes one free drink.

[Joerver]

Al-Qa`ida Attacks Intensify, But Iraqi Police Say: "Let Them Come"

Robert Fisk in Baghdad

16 March 2004 "The Independent" - The sun blazes down on the protective wall of concrete drums­ hundreds upon hundreds of them ­ and Major Saad stands in the car park of the Amariyah police organised crime unit with a story he wants to tell. Behind him is the shell of a suicide bomber`s car.

"I took the call from al-Qa`ida," he says. "He was a young man with an Iraqi accent and he acknowledged that they had failed to kill us the first time. Then he said, `We are coming`." Major Saad has a pistol in his belt ­ like most of his colleagues, he was a cop in Saddam`s regime ­ and intelligent eyes that are watching to see if the reporter will ask the question he wants to hear.

So I ask him what he said to the al-Qa`ida man on the phone. Major Saad smiles with relief. "I said to him: `Come! We are waiting for you!` "

A tough guy is Major Saad, along with Colonel Feisel and all the other cops in the organised crime unit who chase Iraq`s growing army of kidnappers while they wait for Osama bin Laden`s men to return. "Maybe they will come ­ maybe they won`t," Major Saad says. "But let them come."

What saved the police earlier this year was not the palisade of concrete drums; they were erected only after the bombers had attacked. There had been two cars, one to smash its way through the front gate, the second carrying the bomb.

But the second car also hit the gate, just hard enough to pull the wires from the battery which would have set off the bomb. "There were 500lbs of explosives and four torpedoes," Major Saad says. Torpedoes? Iraq never had a single submarine. No, Major Saad insists, four big shiny torpedoes with fins on the back. And very gently, another policeman tells us that the torpedoes were from the Iranian navy.

Both bombers were shot dead by the police. One was carrying a scrap of paper which suggested he was a Yemeni, though neither has been officially identified.

Not a single suicide bomber, in fact, has ever been formally identified as a non-Iraqi, despite the Bush administration`s repeated assertions that "foreign fighters" are behind the attacks on the Iraqi police. More than 600 officers have been killed here in the past four months. A police officer and his brother were the latest to be gunned down in Baghdad this week.

The policemen at Amariyah were lucky. After the first assault, they built their walls of concrete barrels. But that`s when the phone calls began. "The man would call every week or so ­ he still calls now ­ and he would be put through to the organised crime unit and ask for the officer`s name," Major Saad says. "So later, when he started calling again, he would come on and ask for us by name.

"The man wasn`t a foreigner. He had an Iraqi accent. He was an Iraqi. He called me twice, by name; both times I was on the night shift. He was quite normal, just saying each time, `We are coming.` There was no religious talk. He just said we were collaborators and would be punished for this."

The Iraqi police believe that the Wahhabi Sunni groups around Fallujah and Ramadi, originally set up as religious organisations by Saddam when he wanted to allow Sunni fundamentalists an outlet for their spiritual demands, have simply adopted al-Qa`ida`s theology and its cause ­ although Major Saad insists that Bin Laden has no cause "because he kills innocent people, like in Madrid". Unfortunately for the police, millions of Arabs do believe that Bin Laden has a cause and the insurrection that began around Fallujah and Ramadi has now spread to Baquba, Samara, Mosul, Kirkuk, Kerbala and other cities.

* Nearly 60 per cent of Iraqis believe life is better now than it was under Saddam Hussein, according to a poll released yesterday. But many have little faith in occupying troops and the American-led administration, and nearly one in five say attacks on the foreign soldiers are justified, the survey of 2,500 people by Oxford Research International, conducted on behalf of a group of broadcasting organisations, showed.

© 2004 The Independent. UK.

[Joerver]

Our Nation Betrayed: The Iraq WMD Intelligence Deception

Garland Favorito

03/17/04: "ICH" - Although many reasons have been given for the March 19, 2003 invasion of Iraq, the invasion was based on one single overriding concern as explained by Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, on May 28, 2003: "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on". However, since no significant evidence of those weapons was found, President Bush and Congress recently agreed to investigate the so-called intelligence "failure". But like many Congressional investigations, this one has been set up to avoid answering key questions while wasting millions of taxpayer dollars that do not even exist because of huge budget deficits. The focus of the investigation was limited so that it addresses only the gathering of intelligence but not how forthright the administration presented intelligence to Congress, the U.N. or the American public. The Bush administration is also appointing all committee members so the investigation can hardly be independent. In addition, the scope was expanded to include intelligence on other countries such as Libya, Syria and North Korea and the time frame was pushed into 2005 so that the findings would not impact the 2004 election. Since the Congressional investigation has been corrupted, I have produced the following analysis of the exact intelligence known PRIOR to the invasion and what the investigation will never reveal to the American public.

IRAQ WMD INTELLIGENCE SUMMARY

The following general points are key to understanding the Iraq WMD intelligence deception:
1. Public testimony by the U.N. weapons inspectors at the U.N. Security Council just 12 days BEFORE the Iraq invasion rebutted all U.S. and British weapons charges against Iraq, which is why most of the rest of the world opposed the U.S. and British led invasion;

2. U.S. intelligence conclusions prior to October 2002 about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were very consistent with the conclusions of the U.N. weapons inspectors, corroborating the fact that Iraq was not an imminent threat to U.S. security;

3. In October 2002, the CIA produced a declassified National Intelligence Estimate with false key judgments about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in spite of dissents from several other U.S. intelligence agencies;
4. No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq after the U.S. and British led invasion in March 2003 and the evidence also corroborated U.N. weapons inspectors conclusions that no such weapons or programs had existed in Iraq since 1998;

5. Many Bush administration officials made dozens of false statements to the U.N., Congress and the media about Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction;

6. The rationale to invade Iraq under the premise of weapons of mass destruction originated in the Project for the New American Century whose advocates include key Bush administration personnel Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearle and Richard Armitage;

7. No "opposing" Democrats can truthfully say that they were misinformed by the Bush administration since all had access to the public U.N. weapons inspector testimony and some also had access to U.S. intelligence corroborating those U.N. conclusions.

Detailed evidence for each of these points is provided in the following separate sections.

1. PUBLIC REBUTTAL OF U.S. CHARGES AGAINST IRAQ BY U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTORS

On March 7, 2003, just a week prior to the U.S. and British led invasion of Iraq, the U.N. Security Council received testimony from the heads of the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons inspectors concerning any weapons of mass destruction possessed by Iraq. Their testimony represented the unanimous conclusion of over 100 U.N. weapons inspectors who were on site in Iraq for four months just prior to the invasion beginning in November, 2002. Unlike the Bush and Blair administrations, these inspectors, who were from all over the world, had had no vested interest in invading Iraq. They publicly refuted every charge that Secretary of State, Colin Powell, made about chemical and biological weapons could not be substantiated.
During his verbal report, Mohammed Elbaradei, the chief U.N. nuclear weapons inspector dramatically refuted all Bush and Blair administration assertions against Iraq regarding its nuclear program.

· "The nuclear weapons program is defunct"
· "There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities or prohibited activities";
· "There is no indication that Iraq is attempting to import enriched uranium";
· "There is no indication that Iraq is attempting to import tubes for uranium enrichment".
· "There is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in centrifuge development"

Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector for chemical and biological weapons, indicated that they found nothing to support Bush / Blair claims and added.
· "No evidence so far has been found for mobile biological weapons units";
· "No underground facilities were found for chemical and biological weapons (so far)".

Also contrary to Bush administration claims and reports from our national news media of stymied inspections, Elbaradei told the U.N. Security Council that:
· "Iraq has been forthcoming",
· "Inspections are moving forward" and
· They have made "important progress".

Blix corroborated Elbaradei`s testimony as he told the council that chemical and biological weapons inspections had "few difficulties".

But perhaps the most remarkable testimony was that of Elbaredei regarding documents supplied by the U.S., British and Israeli governments about the "agreement between Iraq and Nigeria for the sale of uranium between 1999 and 2001" that was purported to be for procurement of enriched uranium. Elbaredei stated: "Iraq has provided a comprehensive explanation of its relations with Niger". "The IA was able to review correspondence from the government of Niger and compare full format contents and signature of that correspondence with those of the alleged procurement related documentation". "Based on thorough analysis the IA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are, in fact, not authentic"

Thus, the U.S. and British governments had provided falsified documents to the U.N. to justify the invasion of Iraq. No wonder, Colin Powell stated illogically at the same meeting that: "We must not allow Iraq to shift the burden of proof onto the inspectors". The conclusions of the U.N. weapons inspectors were further corroborated as being accurate by additional U.S. searches on the ground after the Bush / Blair administrations ignored the inspectors and invaded Iraq anyway.

2. U.S. INTELLIGENCE PRIOR TO OCTOBER 2002 WAS VERY CONSISTENT WITH U.N. CONCLUSIONS

U.S. intelligence conclusions about Iraq weapons of mass destruction prior to October 2002 were almost totally consistent with the conclusions of the U.N. weapons inspectors. This has been proven by a thorough, recently released study of declassified intelligence from the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace entitled WMD in Iraq, Evidence and Implications. The entire study can be viewed by all at: http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/IraqReport3.asp. Portions of the study were entered into the Congressional Record at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on February 4, 2004 to counter a claim by Sec. of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, that intelligence conclusions were consistent between the Bush and Clinton administrations. Rumsfeld offered no response to this study.

The study contrasted the March 2003 conclusions of U.N. weapons inspectors, the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), U.S. intelligence prior to the October 2002 NIE and on ground survey results compiled after the March 2003 invasion by the Iraq Survey Group. The following table illustrates those conclusions on five key charges that were made against Iraq:

March 2003 U.N. 2002 U.S. Intelligence Oct. 2002 NIE Post March 2003 Survey
Iraq reconstituted nuclear program after 1998 Probably Not Probably not Yes No
Iraq attempted to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons No Possibly Yes No
Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from abroad No No Yes No
Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons Possibly Undetermined Yes No
Iraq had covert chemical weapons production facilities Undetermined Probably Not Yes No
Iraq had current biological weapons facilities Undetermined Undetermined Yes No
Iraq reconstituted it biological weapons program Undetermined Yes Yes No
Iraq possessed 7+ mobile biological weapons labs Undetermined Not Mentioned Yes Probably Not

In these examples of key charges against Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors were found to be the most accurate, closely followed by U.S. intelligence prior to October 2002. The only consistently inaccurate intelligence regarding these charges is the October 2002 NIE, produced by the Central Intelligence Agency and entitled Key Judgments from the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq`s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction". Details to support this table are provided in the subsequent sections.


3. THE OCTOBER 2002 NIE MADE FALSE JUDGMENTS ABOUT IRAQ IN SPITE OF DISSENTS FROM OTHER U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES

The CIA`s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), is more than simply inaccurate. It is a collection of false, deceptive and speculative judgments with dissenting U.S. intelligence conclusions that were not usually mentioned during Congressional testimony. In nearly every case of incorrectly stated judgments, the change from an accurate to inaccurate judgment occurred when this document was created as shown in the previous table. The judgments were found to be false by the U.N. and contradicted by other U.S. intelligence agencies, some of whose conclusions were even stated in the same document. Here are several examples of the false judgments including contradictory findings or statements of dissent from the State Dept. Intelligence Bureau (State/INR), Dept. of Energy Intelligence (DOE) and U.S. Air Force intelligence and a partially declassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document:

3A. NUCLEAR WEAPONS FALSE JUDGMENTS AND DISSENTS

October 2002 NIE: "Most agencies believe that Saddam`s personal interest in and Iraq`s aggressive attempts to obtain high strength aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors - as well as Iraq`s attempts to acquire magnets, high speed balancing machines and machine tools - provide compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad`s nuclear weapons program"
October 2002 NIE State INR Dissent: "The activities we have detected do not add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider an integrated, comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment". The State Dept. Intelligence bureau also concluded "The tubes were not intended for use in Iraq`s nuclear weapons".
October 2002 NIE State INR Dissent: "Iraq`s efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and find unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose". "The very large quantities being sought, the way the tubes were tested by the Iraqis and the atypical lack of attention to operational security in the procurement efforts are among the factors, in addition to the DOE assessment, that lead INR to conclude that the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq`s nuclear weapons program"

October 2002 NIE DOE dissent "...the tubes probably are not part of the program".

October 2002 NIE: "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellow cake"
October 2002, NIE State/INR dissent: "Claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR`s assessment, highly dubious"

October 2002 NIE: "In the view of most agencies, Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program"
October 2002 NIE State/INR dissent: "INR is unwilling to speculate that such an effort began soon after the departure of U.N. inspectors or to project a timeline for completion of activities it does not now see happening"

3B. CHEMICAL WEAPONS FALSE JUDGMENTS AND DISSENTS

October 2002 NIE: "Baghdad has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents", "...the regime has begun renewed production of mustard, sarin, GF (cyclosarin), and VX", "Iraq probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and possibly as much as 500 (MT) of CW agents - much of it added in the last year"
U.S. Air Force dissent: "The Director, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, U.S. Air Force, does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents. The small size of Iraq`s new UAV strongly suggests a primary role of reconnaissance, although CBW delivery is an inherent capability"

3C. BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS FALSE JUDGMENTS AND CONTRADICTORY FINDINGS

October 2002 NIE: "We judge that all key aspects - R&D, production and weaponization - of Iraq`s offensive BW program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced that they were before the Gulf War"
March 7, 2003 U.N. testimony: "No evidence so far has been found for mobile biological weapons units". "No underground facilities were found for chemical and biological weapons (so far)"

3D. MIISSILE FALSE JUDGMENTS AND CONTRADICTORY FINDINGS

October 2002 NIE: "Baghdad has exceeded U.N. range limits of 150 km with its ballistic missiles"
2002 U.N. Tests: The U.N. found that 13 of 40 Al Samoud 2 missiles exceeded the range when NOT equipped with payloads or guidance systems.

3E. OTHER FALSE JUDGMENTS AND CONTRADICTORY FINDINGS

October 2002 NIE: "Iraq would probably attempt clandestine attacks against the U.S. Homeland if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable…" "The Iraqi Intelligence Service probably has been directed to conduct clandestine attacks against the U.S. and Allied interests in the Middle East in the event the U.S. takes action against Iraq"
March 2003 Invasion: Proven false by time and events

The basis for some of the false intelligence judgments in the October 2002 NIE may have originated from defectors provided by the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi who the U.N. knew was not credible. Chalabi was placed in charge of the Congress by the Bush administration despite not having lived in Iraq since 1956. He was also wanted in Jordan since 1992 to serve a 22-year sentence for a 60 million dollar bank fraud resulting from the collapse of the Petra bank he founded in 1977.

Regardless of the source of the judgments, this CIA document falsely stated that Iraq was significantly advancing its nuclear, chemical, biological and missile weaponry, all of which were blatantly false accusations as explained in the previous and subsequent sections. In a review of the basic summary text body, I found 20 false judgments, 7 deceptive assertions and only 6 essentially true statements that could not be disputed as false or deceptive. Many of the judgments are also speculative rather than being factually based, as you would expect in a credible intelligence document. It should be clear to any unbiased observer that the extent of false judgments, deceptions and speculations mean that this CIA document cannot possibly be an intelligence "failure" or "mistake". It could only be a deliberate creation of false, deceptive and speculative information to justify a planned Iraq invasion.


4. NO SIGNIFICANT POST INVASION EVIDENCE OF WEAPONS WAS UNCOVERED

President Bush and CIA director Tenet selected David Kay to head the Iraq Survey Group for weapons evidence gathering after the invasion. The appointment gave them good reason to expect a report consistent with the October 2002 NIE and favorable to the administration charges against Iraq. Kay was one of the only U.S. weapons inspectors who supported the charges against Iraq right up until the March 2003 invasion. He frequently opposed former U.N. weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, who stated facts that have now been proven to be true about how Iraq was not a threat to U.S. security.

Although David Kay is frequently referred to now as a CIA analyst, his relationship with the CIA was not so publicly well known when he was a U.N. weapons inspector in 1998. Although supposedly an impartial inspector, Kay was actually working for the CIA, which likely explains why his conclusions at that time conflicted with most other U.N. weapons inspectors. Kay was ultimately responsible for getting the U.N. weapons inspectors kicked out of Iraq in December 1998 after his U.S. team passed bombing target information back to the Clinton administration. President Bill Clinton subsequently bombed Iraq on December 18, 1998 in a futile attempt to avoid his own impeachment the day before the House vote.

In his January 20, 2004 State of the Union address President Bush referenced the October 2, 2003 testimony of David Kay before the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Bush cleverly stated: "already the Kay report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations". This is a very deceptive statement since Kay`s testimony had already closed the door on three of the four investigative areas regarding weapons of mass destruction.

In regards to nuclear weapons Kay testified: "We have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material". In regards to chemical weapons Kay testified: Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW program after 1991. Information found to date suggests that Iraq`s large-scale capability to develop, produce and fill new CW munitions was reduced, if not completely destroyed…". In regards to CIA claims of missiles exceeding their range limits, Kay testified: "We have not discovered documentary or material evidence to corroborate those claims".

Kay gave the most favorable report possible for the administration under the circumstances by leaving the door open on some potential biological activities and equipment as stated by President Bush. These involved CCHF and Brucella agents, a special type of botulinuum B and trailers that were the "strongest evidence to date" of biological weapons according to the May 28, 2003 CIA/DIA report entitled Iraqi Mobile Biological Agent Production Plants. However, after DIA engineers determined that the trailers were used for hydrogen weather balloons and Kay`s team found that Iraq never weaponized any of the agents, Kay was forced to conclude that there were no biological weapons either. He told the Senate Armed Services Committee in his January 28, 2004 testimony that: "It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing".

Kay`s opening statement was actually more accurate: "…we were almost all wrong and I certainly include myself here". In reality, several U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the State/INR, DIA, DOE and Air Force intelligence got it right as explained in the previous section. Kay, who had access to the intelligence from these agencies and was well acquainted with fellow U.N. weapons inspectors who contradicted his views, has little excuse for being "all wrong" prior to the invasion. His complete reversal after the invasion could be attributed to less pressure from the Bush administration, which had already accomplished its objectives in the invasion or more pressure from his team of inspectors in demanding a forthright survey. But perhaps the most important point of all in Kay`s testimony is that he further corroborated the findings of U.N. weapons inspectors in that Iraq not only had no weapons or programs of mass destruction but also had none of significance since the U.N. inspectors left in 1998.


5. MANY BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS MADE FALSE STATEMENTS TO THE U.N., CONGRESS AND THE MEDIA

Despite U.N testimony just prior to the invasion, many officials in the Bush administration continued to emphatically state that they KNEW Iraq had various types of weapons capabilities, were conducting specific activities to support weapons programs or were an imminent threat to U.S. security. The evidence indicates that these officials have made false or deceptive statements or produced misleading reports regarding Iraq weapons of mass destruction, Iraq links to terrorism or Iraq`s cooperation with weapons inspectors. They include President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary Of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, General Tommy Franks, Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith. Here are some over two-dozen examples of false or deceptive information disseminated by Bush administration officials along with the contradictory findings that illustrate those deceptions:

5A. FALSE OR DECEPTIVE INTELLIGENCE BRIEFINGS TO MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Donald Rumsfeld - Senate Armed Services Committee testimony and public statements - Sept 19, 2002: (Saddam) "amassed large clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons and that we know he continues to hide chemical and biological weapons, moving them to different locations as often as every 12-24 hours and placing them in residential neighborhoods". Rumsfeld stated five times to the committee variations of: "We know Iraq has weapons of mass destruction"

DIA - Iraq: Key WMD facilities and Operational Support Study- September 2002. "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons or where Iraq has or will establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities".

DOD private briefing to Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida according to Nelson`s 2/4/2002 Senate Armed Services Committee testimony:: "I was told not only that (Iraq) had weapons of mass destruction .... but there were also unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be put on ships off the Eastern Seaboard and flown over Eastern Seaboard cities with weapons of mass destruction". "However, I was not told that there was a dispute in the intelligence community over the veracity of that information". "...it was Air Force intelligence that specifically discounted that, ... it was not true". "...Why was I not told that there was this disagreement in the intelligence community instead of being told that it was gospel truth that those UAVs could be flown over Eastern Seaboard cities?" DOD requested to answer in a closed session even though Nelson`s question and the answer should not be classified.

Douglas Feith - Letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairs - October 27, 2003: (Stated still classified connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda)
DOD statement on news reports of Al Qaeda and Iraq connection - November 15, 2003: (Referencing Feith Oct. 27 letter) "News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq are inaccurate". "The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions"
U.N. Monitoring Group on Al Qaeda - June 2003: "Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links…"

5B. FALSE OR DECEPTIVE CHARGES TO THE UNITED NATIONS (U.N.)

Colin Powell - U.N. Security Council address - February 5, 2003: "Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that he has made repeated attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries even after the inspections resumed" "We also have intelligence from multiple sources that Iraq is attempting to acquire magnets and high-speed balancing machines to enrich uranium"

Mohammed Elbaredei - U.N. Security Council testimony- March 7, 2003: "The nuclear weapons program is defunct". "There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities or prohibited activities". There is no indication that Iraq is attempting to import enriched uranium"; "There is no indication that Iraq is attempting to import tubes for uranium enrichment". "There is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in centrifuge development"

Colin Powell U.N Security Council Address - February 5, 2003: "We have first hand descriptions of biological weapons on wheels and rails", "We know that Iraq has at least 7 of these mobile biological facilities", "There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more"

Hans Blix - U.N. Security Council testimony- March 7, 2003: "No evidence so far has been found for mobile biological weapons units"; "No underground facilities were found for chemical and biological weapons…"

Colin Powell - Address to U.N. Security Council - February 5, 2003: "The issue before us is not how much time we are willing to give the inspectors to be frustrated by Iraqi obstruction. But how much longer are we willing to put up with Iraq`s non-compliance before we as a council, we as the United Nations, say `Enough is Enough` "

Mohammed Elbaredei, Hans Blix - U.N. Security Council testimony - March 7, 2003: "Iraq has been forthcoming", "inspections are moving forward", they have made "important progress" and have had "few difficulties".

Colin Powell - U.N. Security Council address- February 5, 2003: " "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent".

David Kay - Congressional Intelligence Committee testimony - October 2, 2003: "Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW program after 1991. Information found to date suggests that Iraq`s large-scale capability to develop, produce and fill new CW munitions was reduced, if not completely destroyed…".

5C. FALSE OR DECEPTIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT IRAQ OBSTRUCTION OF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTORS

Condoleezza Rice - NBC Meet the Press - February 16, 2003: "We have sources who tell us that the Iraqis, through their intelligence efforts, are working very hard to frustrate the inspectors"

Colin Powell - Center for Strategic and International Studies speech - March 5, 2003: "Inspections will amount to little more than casting at shadows unless Iraq lifts the fog of denial and deception that prevents inspectors from seeing the true magnitude of what they are up against"

Mohammed Elbaredei, Hans Blix - U.N. Security Council testimony - March 7, 2003: "Iraq has been forthcoming", "inspections are moving forward", they have made "important progress" and have had "few difficulties".

5D. FALSE OR DECEPTIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT IRAQ CONNECTIONS AL QAEDA AND TERRORISM

George W. Bush - State of the Union - January 28, 2003: "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists including members of Al Qaeda.

George W. Bush - Radio Address - February 8, 2003: "Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks".

George Tenet - Senate Testimony - February 11, 2003: "Iraq is harboring senior members of a terrorist network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a close associate of Osama Bin Laden.

U.N. Monitoring Group on Al Qaeda - June 2003: "Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links…"

5E. FALSE OR DECEPTIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT IRAQI NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Dick Cheney - Veterans of Foreign Wars 103rd National Convention - August 26, 2002: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction", "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon"

Dick Cheney - NBC`s Meet the Press - September 8, 2002: "We do know with absolute certainty that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon"

George W. Bush - Address on Iraq - October 7, 2002: "Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons"

George W. Bush - Address to the Nation on War with Iraq - March 17, 2003: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised"

George W. Bush - Address to Iraq - October 7, 2002: "Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons"

Mohammed Elbaredei - U.N. Security Council testimony- March 7, 2003: "The nuclear weapons program is defunct". "There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities or prohibited activities". There is no indication that Iraq is attempting to import enriched uranium"; "There is no indication that Iraq is attempting to import tubes for uranium enrichment". "There is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in centrifuge development"

5F. FALSE OR DECEPTIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT IRAQI CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Colin Powell - Fox News Sunday, September 8, 2002: "There is no doubt that he has chemical weapons stocks"
George W. Bush - Address on Iraq October 7, 2002: "We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, and VX nerve gas" (repeated with 500 tons in January 28, 2003 State of the Union)
George W. Bush - Radio Address - February 8, 2003: "We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
Donald Rumsfeld - Press Conference - March 30, 2003: "We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad." referring to the 100-500 metric tons of chemical weapons which have never been found.
Hans Blix - U.N. Security Council testimony- March 7, 2003: "No underground facilities were found for chemical and biological weapons…"

5G. FALSE OR DECEPTIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT IRAQI BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
George W. Bush - United Nations Address Sept 12, 2002: Right now Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons
Hans Blix - U.N. Security Council testimony- March 7, 2003: "No evidence so far has been found for mobile biological weapons units"; "No underground facilities were found for chemical and biological weapons…"

5H. FALSE OR DECEPTIVE GENERAL STATEMENTS TO THE MEDIA

Tommy Franks - Pentagon Press Briefing - March 22, 2003: "There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them." -
Victoria Clark - Pentagon Press Briefing - March 22, 2003: "One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites:"
Colin Powell - (Response to U.N. Weapons Inspectors Testimony) - Mar 8, 2003: "So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? I think our judgment has to be clearly not."
Ari Fleisher - White House Press Briefing - December 2, 2002: "If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world."
Ari Fleisher - White House Press Briefing - January 9, 2003: "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
Ari Fleisher - White House Press Briefing - March 21, 2003: "Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly ... all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes"
David Kay - Senate Armed Services Committee testimony - October 2, 2003: "We were all wrong…"

The only rational explanation that President George W. Bush could possibly offer to justify so many false statements or deceptive reports by people in his administration is that they were deceived by the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate produced by the CIA. However, the President has been very supportive of Director Tenet throughout the ordeal of trying to explain all the discrepancies. Perhaps the best indicator to determine whether the deception originated solely from the CIA or from the Bush administration in general can be found in the Project For the New American Century (PNAC).

6. THE INVASION OF IRAQ ON THE PREMISE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION WAS PLANNED BY PNAC IN 1997

PNAC, is a very powerful non-profit organization founded in 1997 on principles that include "American global leadership", "national leadership that accepts the United States` global responsibilities" and "America`s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles". The 25 signatures on the statement of principles include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Steve Forbes and Gary Bauer. www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

PNAC began advocating the overthrow of Saddam Hussein shortly after its inception. In its open January 26, 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton the authors wrote: "Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use, or threaten to use, weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy". "We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration`s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam`s regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts". Some of the 18 signatures included Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Richard Armitage and co-founder William Kristol. http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

(Note: PNAC`s power is illustrated by another open letter to Bill Clinton dated September 20, 1998, advocating the overthrow of Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic in advance of the March 24, 1999 attack. It stated: "We are certain, however, that after seven years of aggression and genocide in the Balkans, the removal of Milosevic represents the only genuine possibility of a durable peace".
www.newamericancentury.org/balkans_pdf_04.pdf. Like Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the charges of genocide were known by many to be false at the time of the initial bombing campaign. There were roughly a couple of dozen deaths in Kosovo during 1999 before the bombing began and the March 25, 1999 Senate Armed Services briefing given by the Clinton administration indicated that a third of the deaths in 1998 were Serbians who were normally aligned with Milosevic. Many of these deaths occurred from a civil war between the Yugoslavian government and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA was backed by both the CIA and Osama Bin Laden, who was working with U.S., British, German and Canadian intelligence agencies to arm, train and equip the KLA at the same time he was accused of the African embassy bombings. On August 14, 2001, under the guise of "environmental concerns", NATO "defense" forces confiscated the Trepca mining complex from the Yugoslavian people for a French, Swedish and American based partnership named ITT Kosovo.)

After the letter to Bill Clinton did not result in action against Iraq, Kristol, Rumsfeld, Perle, and Wolfowitz signed and sent another open letter on May 29,1998 to Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott and Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. That letter again advocated the overthrow of the Iraqi leader: "U.S. policy should have as its explicit goal removing Saddam Hussein`s regime from power and establishing a peaceful and democratic Iraq in its place". On September 20, 2001, just 9 days after the 9/11 attacks, PNAC members drafted yet another letter, this time to President George W, Bush, stating: "But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq".

It is astounding that PNAC members would continually advocate the removal of Saddam Hussein even while there was almost no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no links between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. In fact, the evidence presented in the previous sections show that Iraq actually had no such weapons when PNAC continually advocated the removal of Saddam Hussein in 1998 on the false weapons of mass destruction premise. The PNAC documents clearly identify some of the men behind this false premise became key officials in the Bush administration. These include Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paull Wolfowitz and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Since these men were all appointed as high-level officials of the Bush administration, it is clear that the CIA was not sole source of deception regarding Iraq. The CIA merely gave the President the exact report that the these administration officials wanted when it handed over the blatantly false October 2002 NIE.

7. DEMOCRATS CANNOT TRUTHFULLY CLAIM TO BE MISINFORMED BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
Several Democrats, including presidential candidates who assisted the Bush administration in the invasion, have implied that Bush officials misinformed them or that they otherwise oppose what the Bush administration did. Sen. John Kerry voted for the resolution to allow George W. Bush to invade Iraq at his discretion and then claimed Bush "did not do it right". Former House Speaker Dick Gephart co-authored the resolution and got many Democrats in the House to vote for it. Sen. John Edwards, a member the Senate Intelligence Committee, had access to previously mentioned U.S. intelligence indicating Iraq was not an imminent threat to American security but voted to allow the Bush administration to invade anyway. Sen. Joe Lieberman also voted for the measure and still claims Saddam Hussein was a threat to America despite overwhelming evidence presented in this and other documents.

All of these individuals had access to the March 7, 2003 public testimony of the head U.N. weapons inspectors representing over 100 inspectors who were onsite for over four months just prior to the invasion. The inspectors specifically refuted every charge that the U.S. government made against Iraq in regards to nuclear weapons and testified that every charge the U.S. made against Iraq regarding chemical and biological weapons was unsubstantiated. Any one of these four Democrats mentioned could have pointed this out BEFORE the invasion and took a stand against it but none did. Therefore, they are also culpable for what the invasion has done to both Iraq and America. None can honestly claim that they were misinformed, particularly John Kerry, the Skull and Bones fraternity brother of George W. Bush.


8. MOTIVATIONS FOR THE IRAQ INVASION
The extent of false statements and deception by so many high level Bush administration officials naturally raises the question as to what would be their motives for going to such an extreme to invade Iraq. The key to answering such as question is to determine who benefits from the invasion. Defining the exact motives that these individuals may have had is outside the scope of this analysis. However, the following obvious potential motives should be evaluated by anyone who chooses to perform such a further investigation. These include:
· Oil - Iraq has the second largest untapped oil reserves in the world, which fell under the firm control of Bush administration officials, several of whom, such as Dick Cheney and Condoeezza Rice, previously held key positions in the oil business;

· Contracts - Dick Cheney was the former CEO of Haliburton whose parent company Kellogg, Brown and Root is allocated to receive up to 2.3 billion dollars in grants for reconstruction and oil servicing contracts after the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions;

· Investments - Former President George H.W. Bush and several of his colleagues, such as Frank Carlucci, who signed the PNAC letter on Yugoslavia, have undisclosed amounts of investments in private funds of the Carlyle Group which, in turn, invests secretly in aerospace and defense companies who profit by supplying U.S. military equipment and replenishing it during times of conflict;

· Zionism - Key participants of the Iraqi invasion, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith are four of 25 Zionists appointed to key Bush administration posts as identified by Free American magazine. Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith had been previously reprimanded, investigated or fired, respectively, for leaking classified information to representatives of the Israeli government. Zionists place allegiance to Israel over and above allegiance to the U.S. interests. Israel has considered Iraq one of its greatest adversaries ever since Saddam Hussein removed known Zionists from the Iraqi government when the Revolutionary Command Council granted him power in 1979.

Additional highly reasonable motives come from Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, A DOD insider who worked in the Near East South Asia policy office from which Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld spun off the notoriously deceptive Office of Special Plans, headed by Doug Feith. She suggests:
· "One of those reasons is that sanctions and containment were working and everybody pretty much knew it. Many companies around the world were preparing to do business with Iraq in anticipation of a lifting of sanctions. But the U.S. and the U.K. had been bombing northern and southern Iraq since 1991. So it was very unlikely that we would be in any kind of position to gain significant contracts in any post-sanctions Iraq. And those sanctions were going to be lifted soon, Saddam would still be in place, and we would get no financial benefit."

· "The second reason has to do with our military-basing posture in the region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. And also there was dissatisfaction from the people of Saudi Arabia. So we were looking for alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure something we had been searching for since the days of Carter - to secure the energy lines of communication in the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were very important - that is, if you hold that is America`s role in the world. Saddam Hussein was not about to invite us in."

· "The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the Food for Oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the way, long before 9/11, in November 2000 - selling his oil for euros. The oil sales permitted in that program aren`t very much. But when the sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet would have been moving to the euro. The U.S. dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a debtor nation now. Our currency is still popular, but it`s not backed up like it used to be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro that could cause massive, almost glacial, shifts in confidence in trading on the dollar. So one of the first executive orders that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on Iraq`s oil back to the dollar."

Whatever the motives of these individuals were it is clear that they were in direct conflict with the interests of American citizens. The unprecedented, preemptive American invasion of a nation that never attacked us has resulted in the slaughter of thousands of Iraqis, deaths of 500+ U.S. soldiers and costs to the American taxpayers that will probably exceed 100 billion dollars or over $300 per person. Such an act is a far more treasonous and impeachable offense than even the charges leveled against former President Bill Clinton for selling dual use technology to the Communist Chinese military in exchange for millions of dollars in campaign contributions. If we are to maintain a viable federal government, President George W. Bush and the officials who orchestrated this deception must be held accountable to the American citizens.

Garland Favorito <[e-mail]>
Out Nation Betrayed
www.blackforestpress.com/cat_law_politics.htm

© 2004 Garland Favorito

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Kisses! The new Sexy Urinal by Bathroom Mania, as seen at the JFK Airport Virgin Lounge.
Schade, dass es keinen Clinton Airport gibt.


"And the Bush administration is under fire for hiring actors to pose as reporters in video segments praising his Medicare law.... in other words people think they`re watching the news but it`s really the Bush administration talking, kind of like Fox News." -Jay Leno

"God loves you, and I love you. And you can count on both of us as a powerful message that people who wonder about their future can hear." —George W. Bush, Los Angeles, Calif., March 3, 2004

"Money does not equal victory." - Democratic consultant Paul Begala, sending a cautionary message to President Bush, whose campaign coffers are bulging with more than $160 million.

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Ist das nicht ein Thema für unsere Boardxenophoben?

March 18, 2004
Rise in Hispanics and Asian-Americans Is Predicted
By REUTERS

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) — The Hispanic and Asian-American populations in the United States are expected to triple by 2050, when non-Hispanic whites would account for the barest majority, according to a Census Bureau report to be released Thursday.

Hispanic-Americans would make up nearly a quarter of the nation`s population at mid-century, the report says.

"This is going to be the workforce that sustains us as a nation, so we can make choices today that are dramatically going to change the outlook 20 or 30 years from now," Sonia Perez of the National Council of La Raza said Wednesday, referring to coming national elections.

The number of Hispanic-Americans should rise to nearly 103 million from about 36 million, and their share of the population would nearly double, to 24.4 percent from 12.6 percent, the bureau report says.

Asian-Americans, who now make up 3.8 percent of the populace, would represent 8 percent by mid-century, it says. Their numbers would increase to more than 33 million from nearly 11 million.

The American population over all should also continue to grow, to about 420 million in 2050 from 282 million in 2000, the report says. But non-Hispanic whites would add only moderately to their numbers, to 210 million from 196 million. They would make up just 50.1 percent of the population in 2050, compared with 69.4 percent four years ago, when the last census was taken.

The black population is projected to rise to 61 million from 36 million, raising its share of the total population to 14.6 percent from 12.7 percent.

The American population will be generally older, with child-bearing rates remaining low as those born between 1946 and 1964, the baby boom generation, begin to turn 65 in 2011. By 2030, about one American in five will be 65 or older.

As the baby-boom generation moves toward retirement and seeks payments from Social Security, the largest source of new workers will be young Hispanics, said Roberto Suro of the Pew Hispanic Center.

"Financing the old age of the baby boomers would be more difficult without a growing Hispanic population," Mr. Suro said.

Over all in the United States, women will continue to outnumber men, with 6.9 million more women than men in 2050, compared with 5.3 million more in 2000.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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SPANISH LIE

Three Years After 9-11, Our Fibber Keeps His Job
NEW YORK--Two days after Spanish socialists won an upset victory over rightist Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, three of the New York Times` four opinion columns called the results a victory for Al Qaeda. "This is not how democracies are supposed to react when they are attacked by fanatics," scolded Edward Luttwak. "What is the Spanish word for appeasement?" asked David Brooks. (The answer, interestingly, is pacificación.)

These reactions follow party lines; Republicans lament the demise of one of the two major European governments aligned with Bush while Paul Krugman, the lone leftie on the Times op-ed page, raises a tall glass of Toldyaso on the rocks. As usual, the conventional wise men are missing the point.

Think yourself all the way back to Friday, September 14, 2001. Do you remember how you felt that day? The Twin Towers are still burning, the New York Daily News is estimating the death count at 15,000 and bus stops in Manhattan are blanketed with homemade missing persons posters. The story that an elderly man "surfed" collapsing debris all the way down to safety has been circulating online, but we`ve just learned it`s a hoax. We know that Muslim men had hijacked the planes, but that is all. We know neither their identities nor the precise cause for which they were willing to kill and be killed. We`re stunned. Antenna flags are still weeks away.

Bush waited months before suggesting that invading Iraq was part of the war on terrorism, but imagine for a moment that he had instead followed Donald Rumsfeld`s counsel, given at a meeting of the National Security Council hours after the towers fell, and immediately blamed Saddam Hussein for 9/11. What if Bush had addressed a shocked and grieving nation that very night, calling for war against Iraq?

"September 11, 2001 has taken its place in the history of infamy...It is absolutely clear and evident that the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein was looking to commit a major attack. We will defeat the Iraqi murderers. We will succeed in finishing off the terrorists, with the strength of the rule of law and with the unity of all Americans."

Intelligence experts express skepticism that Iraq is responsible, but everyone ignores them. Then, suddenly, contradicting Bush`s confident assertions, Al Qaeda issues a credible claim of responsibility. Bush has been caught cynically exploiting the still-warm ashes of the fallen in order to promote an illegal war while letting the real murderers get away.

The next day, you`re in a voting booth.

Switch the names and dates from Bush to Aznar and from 9-11 to M-11--the Spanish name for the Madrid bombings--and you`ve got the atmosphere that led to the leftist victory on Sunday. "The Spanish people smelled a rat," wrote The UK Mirror. "In an age of alarming voter apathy, an extraordinary 77 per cent turned out at the polls."

(Ted Rall is the author of "Wake Up, You`re Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right," coming in May. Ordering information is available at amazon.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2004 TED RALL

RALL 3/16/04

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Tom Friedman gehört nicht direkt zu den NeoCons, argumentiert aber ähnlich. Der verbohrtes NeoCon bei der NYT ist David Brooks, der sich auch nicht scheut mit widerlegten Argumenten seine Positionen zu verteidigen. B. schreibt auch für alle Neocon-Blätter. Ein anderer bei NYT ist William Safire.

March 18, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Axis of Appeasement
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The new Spanish government`s decision to respond to the attack by Al Qaeda by going ahead with plans to pull its troops from Iraq constitutes the most dangerous moment we`ve faced since 9/11. It`s what happens when the Axis of Evil intersects with the Axis of Appeasement and the Axis of Incompetence.

Let`s start with the Axis of Evil. We are up against a terrible nihilistic enemy. Think about what the Islamist terrorists are doing: they are trying to kill as many people in Iraq and elsewhere as possible so the U.S. fails in Iraq, so Iraq collapses into civil war, so even a glimmer of democracy never takes root in the Arab world and so America is weakened.

But if they are so bad, why aren`t we doing better? It has to do with the pigheadedness of the Bush team and the softheadedness of many allies. Regarding the Bush team, let me say yet again: We do not have enough troops in Iraq, and we never did. From the outset, the Bush Pentagon has treated Iraq as a lab test to prove that it can win a war with a small, mobile high-tech Army. Well, maybe you can defeat Saddam that way, but you can`t build a new Iraq — and control its borders to prevent foreign terrorists from coming in — with so few troops, especially when you disband the Iraqi Army on top of it.

Don`t tell me we have enough troops in Iraq when our soldiers are getting picked off daily by roadside bombs, when our aid workers are getting murdered and when Iraqis are getting massacred by suicide missions. Don`t tell me we are not fighting this war on the cheap when our diplomats in Baghdad don`t have enough armored cars, cellphones, bulletproof vests or escort troops to protect them as they try to travel around the country. We are now paying for the contradiction between Mr. Bush`s two great projects: his war on taxes and his war on terrorism.

Yes, we can still win this, but right now, despite Paul Bremer`s heroic success in helping Iraqis forge a progressive interim constitution, we can still lose it. If we do, it will be largely due to the Pentagon`s inability to secure Iraq, which has encouraged Iraqis to turn to sectarian militias for security, undermining nation-building and planting the seeds of civil war. Second, it will be because we have so few real allies. As Spain proves, we had a few friendly governments, but most people in Europe and Asia have never been with the Bush team — especially when it continues to insist that we are going to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the war. It`s time for the Bush team to admit it was wrong about this and move on.

Unless President Bush dispenses with his discredited argument for the war — W.M.D. — no one will hear or listen to what I believe was always the only right argument for the war and is now the only rationale left: to depose the genocidal Saddam regime in order to partner with the Iraqi people to build a decent government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world — because it is the pathologies and humiliations produced by Arab misgovernance that are the root causes of terrorism and Muslim extremism.

Spain is planning to do something crazy: to try to appease radical evil by pulling Spain`s troops out of Iraq — even though those troops are now supporting the first democracy-building project ever in the Arab world.

I understand that many Spanish voters felt lied to by their rightist government over who was responsible for the Madrid bombings, and therefore voted it out of office. But they should now follow that up by vowing to keep their troops in Iraq — to make clear that in cleaning up their own democracy, they do not want to subvert the Iraqis` attempt to build one of their own. Otherwise, the Spanish vote will not be remembered as an act of cleansing, but of appeasement.

My dream is that the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Spain announce tomorrow that in response to the Madrid bombing, they are sending a new joint force of 5,000 troops to Iraq for the sole purpose of protecting the U.N.`s return to Baghdad to oversee Iraq`s first democratic election.

The notion that Spain can separate itself from Al Qaeda`s onslaught on Western civilization by pulling its troops from Iraq is a fantasy. Bin Laden has said that Spain was once Muslim and he wants it restored that way. As a friend in Cairo e-mailed me, a Spanish pullout from Iraq would only bring to mind Churchill`s remark after Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich pact with Hitler: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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March 18, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Pride and Prejudice
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

House Republicans haven`t suggested an embargo on olives and paella yet, but it`s probably just pocos minutos away. By the time these guys are through, it will be unpatriotic to consume any ethnic food but fish and chips and kielbasa, washed down with a fine Bulgarian wine.

Republicans like Dennis Hastert were ranting yesterday about the Spaniards. "Here`s a country who stood against terrorism and had a huge terrorist act within their country," Mr. Hastert said, "and they chose to change their government to, in a sense, appease terrorists."

The Republicans prefer to paint our old ally as craven rather than accept the Spanish people`s judgment — which most had held since before the war — that the Iraq takeover had nothing to do with the war on terror.

The Spanish were also angry at José María Aznar because they felt he had misled them about the bombings, trying to throw guilt on ETA and away from Al Qaeda. The Republicans certainly don`t want anyone here to think about throwing somebody out of office because he was misleading about Al Qaeda.

During a photo-op with Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands on Tuesday, Mr. Bush did his "Beavis and Butthead" snigger as a Dutch reporter noted that most of his countrymen want to withdraw Dutch troops from Iraq because they think the conflict "has little to do with the war against terrorism, and may actually encourage terrorism." (Uh-oh, looks like no tulips on the Capitol grounds this spring.)

"I would ask them," the president replied, "to think about the Iraqi citizens who don`t want people to withdraw because they want to be free."

Now that he hasn`t found any weapons, Mr. Bush says the war was worth it so Iraqis could experience democracy. But when our allies engage in democracy, some Republicans mock them as lily-livered.

The Republicans treat John Kerry as disdainfully as they do the European allies who have disappointed the White House, painting him as a French-looking dude who went to a Swiss boarding school, as an effete Brahmin who would rather cut intelligence and military spending than face down terrorists.

The election is shaping up as a contest between Pride and Prejudice.

Mr. Kerry is Pride.

He has a tendency toward striped-trouser smugness that led him to stupidly boast that he was more popular with leaders abroad than President Bush — playing into the Republican strategy to depict him as one of those "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."

Even when he puts on that barn jacket over his expensive suit to look less lockjaw — and says things like, "Who among us doesn`t like Nascar?" — he can come across like Mr. Collins, Elizabeth Bennet`s pretentious cousin in "Pride and Prejudice." Mr. Collins always prattles on about how lucky people would be to be rewarded by his patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, with "some portion of her notice" and to receive dollops of her "condescension."

Speaking to Chicago union workers last week, Mr. Kerry happily informed them that on the ride over, his wife, Teresa, had said she could live in Chicago. What affability, as Mr. Collins would say, what condescension.

Mr. Bush is Prejudice.

Like Miss Bennet, who irrationally arranged the facts to fit her initial negative assessment of Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bush irrationally arranges the facts to fit his initial assessment that 9/11 justified blowing off the U.N. and some close allies to invade Iraq.

The president and vice president seem incapable of admitting any error, especially that their experienced foreign policy team did not see through Saddam`s tricks. As Hans Blix told a reporter, Saddam had put up a "Beware of Dog" sign, so he didn`t bother with the dog. How can they recalibrate the game plan when they won`t concede that they called the wrong game plan to start?

When he challenged Mr. Kerry to put up or shut up on his claim of support from foreign leaders, Mr. Bush said, "If you`re going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you`ve got to back it up with facts."

If you`re going to make an accusation in the course of a presidency, you`ve got to back it up with facts, too.


E-mail: [e-mail]



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Für alle Fälle, ein Stadtplan von Baghdad

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Nachdem gestern die Feierlichkeiten zum Jahrestags des Kriegsbeginn in Baghdad begonnen haben, bereiten sich auch die Besatzer mit weiteren Maßnahmen darauf vor.

washingtonpost.com
More Private Forces Eyed for Iraq
Green Zone Contractor Would Free U.S. Troops for Other Duties

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 18, 2004; Page A25


The U.S.-led authority in Iraq plans to spend as much as $100 million over 14 months to hire private security forces to protect the Green Zone, the four-square-mile area in Baghdad that houses most U.S. government employees and some of the private contractors working there.

The Green Zone is now guarded primarily by U.S. military forces, but the Coalition Provisional Authority wants to turn much of that work over to contractors to free more U.S. forces to confront a violent insurgency. The companies would employ former military personnel and be responsible for safeguarding the area for the first year after political authority is transferred to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.

Surrounded by 15-foot concrete walls and rings of barbed wire, the Green Zone is on the west bank of the Tigris River and serves as a relatively secure home, office and relaxation area for more than 3,000 people in what is otherwise an increasingly dangerous city.

The car bomb that killed at least 28 yesterday destroyed a hotel across the river and less than a mile from the Green Zone, in a neighborhood where some of the U.S. authority`s contractors live and where security is far less robust.

U.S. officials expect attacks by insurgents to increase as the June 30 deadline for the political transition nears, and are struggling to protect employees of the CPA and civilians employed by its contractors.

The U.S. Embassy slated to open in June will be in the Green Zone, though not in Saddam Hussein`s Republican Palace that has housed CPA Administrator L. Paul Bremer. Also within the guarded area are the al-Rashid Hotel; the Iraqi Governing Council offices; the Convention Center where news conferences are held, a military police compound; a recreation facility, restaurants; two compounds for food and service employees of contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root; a parking area; and a heliport.

The zone has regularly come under attack in past months. On March 7, seven rockets were fired into the zone, five hitting the al-Rashid Hotel. Saturday night, in what officials said was a first, someone stabbed and badly wounded a U.S. Army officer who was walking inside the gated compound. Dan Senor, chief spokesman of the Coalition Provisional Authority, said Monday that it was not known whether the attacker was Iraqi, American or some other nationality.

Bremer, his staff and Iraqis working with the CPA are now protected by the U.S. military and some private security organizations already on contract. Expanding the commercial security force will "augment coalition military forces and allow coalition military forces to focus on counterterrorism and the highest priority sites within the Green Zone," according to the March 7 solicitation for bids.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters yesterday that the U.S. military is trying to reduce the number of troops inside Baghdad and station them in six bases on the city`s perimeter. "That will reduce much but not all of the coalition presence here inside the city of Baghdad, because we certainly will be continuing the presence of American and coalition forces inside to provide a safe and secure environment," said Kimmitt, who did not address plans for hiring additional civilian forces to take over in the Green Zone.

The threats that the private security force will be asked to meet provide a summary of the dangers facing U.S. and coalition personnel 10 months after President Bush declared the main fighting over. The contractor, according to the bid proposal, must be prepared to deal with vehicles containing explosive devices, the improvised explosives planted on roads, "direct fire and ground assaults by upwards of 12 personnel with military rifles, machine guns and RPG [rocket-propelled grenade], indirect fire by mortars and rockets, individual suicide bombers, and employment of other weapons of mass destruction . . . in an unconventional warfare setting."

To meet that challenge, the bidders` personnel must have prior military experience, and those involved directly in force protection must have "operated in U.S., North Atlantic Treaty Organization or other military organizations compatible with NATO standards."

If Iraqis are hired by either the prime contractor or subcontractors, they cannot be former senior members of Saddam Hussein`s Baath Party or affiliated with any organization the Iraqi Governing Council labeled as prohibited. No contractor or subcontractor can "display the image or likeness of Saddam Hussein or other readily identifiable members of the former regime or symbols of the Baath Party or the former regime in government buildings or public spaces," the solicitation said.

Contractors will also be expected to provide dogs and handlers experienced in detecting explosives to provide 24-hour per day, seven-day-a-week coverage for all entry control points and all other locations, the proposal states.

The bids are due Sunday, and selection will apparently be quick. The winner is expected to begin work on April 1. For its part, the U.S. government will supply housing, meals and minor medical care to the contractor employees along with vaccinations against anthrax and smallpox.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Da lehnt sich aber jemand ganz schön weit aus dem Fenster.

washingtonpost.com
Spain`s Next Prime Minister Says U.S. Should Dump Bush


By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 18, 2004; Page A23


MADRID, March 17 -- Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Wednesday described the U.S. occupation of Iraq as "a fiasco" and suggested American voters should follow the example set by Spain and change their leadership by supporting Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts for president in November.

"I said during the campaign I hoped Spain and the Spaniards would be ahead of the Americans for once," Zapatero said in an interview on Onda Cero radio. "First we win here, we change this government, and then the Americans will do it, if things continue as they are in Kerry`s favor."

Zapatero, whose Socialist Party swept the governing Popular Party out of office in elections Sunday, just three days after terrorist attacks killed 201 people in Madrid, also rejected President Bush`s request that he reconsider his plans to withdraw Spain`s troops from Iraq unless the United Nations is given control of the country. "I`ll listen to Mr. Bush. But my position is very clear and firm," Zapatero said.

"The occupation is a fiasco," he said. "There have almost been more killed after the war, from a year ago, than during the war. In the end, the occupying forces have not handed over control of the situation to the U.N."

Spanish troops constitute 1 percent of the U.S.-led occupation force in Iraq, and other nations participating in the coalition have rushed to reaffirm their willingness to remain in Iraq. But a Spanish pullout could hamper U.S. attempts to encourage other nations to send troops. In addition, diplomats said the new Spanish government`s position would make it more difficult for the Bush administration to persuade NATO to take a stronger role in Iraq after the planned June 30 handover of sovereignty.

The Spanish force currently in Iraq is scheduled to come home in April, and a replacement contingent had its farewell ceremony Wednesday at a Spanish military base. Officials said no decision had been made to delay or cancel the transfer. Zapatero said he looked forward to "a profound debate" with the Bush administration about how to effectively combat terrorism. "Fighting terrorism with bombs, with Tomahawk missiles, isn`t the way to beat terrorism, but the way to generate more radicalism," he said.

Zapatero`s implicit endorsement of Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, was a surprising public repudiation of a sitting U.S. president by the incoming leader of an allied country and fellow NATO member.

Members of Spain`s Popular Party -- which will become the opposition when Zapatero, a 43-year-old lawyer, takes office next month -- immediately criticized Zapatero`s remarks, saying they demonstrated his inexperience in diplomacy.

"I think that was extremely un-careful," said Gustavo de Aristegui, a Popular Party member of parliament who is expected to become the opposition`s spokesman on foreign affairs. "A prime minister cannot say that -- maybe an opposition leader can say that."

The outgoing prime minister from the Popular Party, Jose Maria Aznar, was one of the Bush administration`s most steadfast allies in Europe. He joined Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair a year ago at a prewar summit in the Azores before the invasion of Iraq and sent more than 1,300 Spanish troops to help with peacekeeping after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Aznar was not running for reelection, but his close embrace of the Bush administration was seen as a major factor in his party`s defeat.

Government officials and Popular Party leaders, stunned by their loss Sunday, have accused the Socialists of exploiting the March 11 attacks on trains in Madrid to gain the upper hand in the elections. Some officials have questioned whether the Socialist victory would be seen as a victory for the terrorists who planted the bombs.

On Wednesday, several thousand Popular Party supporters converged on the party headquarters chanting "Zapatero, manipulator!" and waving placards equating the Socialist Party with terrorists.

Meanwhile, several Spanish media outlets reported that an Arabic-language newspaper in London had received a new letter from an Islamic group claiming credit for the attacks. In the new message, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade said it was halting "all operations in the Spanish territory" to give the new government time to honor its pledge to withdraw from Iraq.

Several experts had previously discounted the group, saying it had falsely claimed responsibility for such actions as the power blackouts on the U.S. East Coast last year that were caused by a faulty power grid.

Spanish investigators continued seeking clues Wednesday that might link three arrested Moroccans, and at least five others being sought, to Thursday`s bomb attacks. One of the Moroccans already in custody, Jamal Zougam, has been linked to an al Qaeda cell operating in Spain and to suicide bombings in the Moroccan city of Casablanca last May that killed 45 people, including 12 of the bombers.

The Spanish interior minister, Angel Acebes, offered no new details about the investigation Wednesday, telling reporters that it had reached "a decisive phase." The Spanish are being assisted by Moroccan investigators and by other European intelligence agencies. The FBI is helping with fingerprint and background checks on some suspects.

Also Wednesday, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that investigators believe the explosives used in the attacks may have been stolen from a factory in Burgos, north of Madrid, and that the detonators had come from a nearby rock quarry. That would suggest a high degree of local knowledge and some sophisticated planning for the attacks.

Special correspondents Pamela Rolfe and Robert Scarcia contributed to this report.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Afghan Elections Face Delay, Karzai Says


By Glenn Kessler and Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 18, 2004; Page A28


KABUL, Afghanistan, March 17 -- Long-sought direct elections in war-torn Afghanistan could be delayed until August, President Hamid Karzai said Wednesday, providing the strongest hint yet that his struggling government will miss a June 30 deadline set at the end of 2002.

With Secretary of State Colin L. Powell standing by his side at a news conference, Karzai said difficulties in registering millions of eligible voters in rural areas had made a delay increasingly likely. "By the end of May we should be able to register 8 million people," but with only 1.5 million registered so far, only a major push by the United Nations would help bridge the gap, Karzai said.

"If this is done on time by the United Nations," he said, "the Afghan government is keen to have elections in June, July or in August -- depending on the preparations for elections."

Powell`s seven-hour visit here was designed in part to bolster the registration effort before foreign donors meet in Berlin this month to consider pledging further aid to Afghanistan. A sense that the country is faltering in its transition to democracy could complicate efforts to raise the more than $28 billion in aid and reconstruction financing sought by the Afghan government over the next seven years.

Before meeting with Karzai, Powell stopped at a voter registration center housed in a girls` school. He also met with 11 women chosen to represent Afghan civil society and told them: "The United States is here for the long term. We`re not just waiting for the election and we can say, `That`s it, let`s go home.` "

Powell pledged twice -- to the group of women and to Karzai at the presidential palace -- that the United States would make a significant contribution at the Berlin conference: "Another billion dollars on top of the $1.2 billion we have already committed," he said. But he later conceded to reporters that he was referring to money that was appropriated by Congress last year and was already being spent in Afghanistan. "It`s not a new supplemental," he said. President Bush has requested another $1.2 billion for Afghanistan in the budget for the fiscal year starting in October.

The next stop on Powell`s trip through South Asia and the Middle East is Pakistan, where he is scheduled to meet Thursday with the country`s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Powell, during his news conference with Karzai, praised Pakistan for "picking up the pace" of raids targeting suspected al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts on the Afghan-Pakistani border. Powell said a fierce clash between paramilitary troops and armed tribesmen Tuesday, in which 40 people were killed, demonstrated Pakistan`s "good intentions" in not allowing the border area "to be used as a haven for the Taliban," which ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until U.S. troops and Afghan militia forces drove the radical Islamic group from power in late 2001.

Under an international agreement reached in Bonn in December 2002, Afghanistan`s interim government agreed to prepare "for free and fair elections by June 2004," after a national assembly approved a new constitution. But progress toward elections has been extremely slow, raising serious doubts about whether they can be held on time.

Voter registration has been beset with problems of security, logistics and Afghan tradition. Registration has been especially low in conservative rural areas among women, who rarely leave their homes but must travel considerable distances to reach registration centers, which have been set up only in eight major cities.

Moreover, the government has yet to approve or publish an election law, making it impossible for candidates to register and for other preparations to get underway. Karzai remains the only major candidate, with no serious rivals and no significant organized political opposition.

Under heavy pressure from U.N. and U.S. officials here, the government is attempting to speed up the election process. Officials plan to open 4,200 registration sites by May. In some areas, the centers will be segregated by sex so women can register without violating cultural traditions.

While continuing to insist that they hope to hold elections on time, various Afghan officials have suggested in recent days that it may not be possible. But Karzai`s comments Wednesday marked the first time he has acknowledged they might be delayed until August. He is expected to announce a new election date at the Berlin donors conference.

Powell noted that even the population of Afghanistan is unclear. "I think if they can get up to 8 or 9 million people to register, you have got proper representation of total population," he said. "Whether it`s June or July or August remains to be seen. . . . I don`t think it`s a significant difference as long as it`s done well and seems honest, fair and effective."




© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
World Opinion Roundup on the Aftermath of the Madrid Terror Attacks
Eine Diskussion aus USA.

Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 16, 2004; 1:00 PM


In World Opinion Roundup, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Jefferson Morley conducts a freewheeling tour of the best of Internet news sites from Afghanistan to Beijing to Mexico City to Paris to Zimbabwe.

Roundup brings the diversity of global online media to your screen, presenting today`s news and views from journalists, pundits and commentators from every continent. We`ll talk about America in the eyes of the world, compare journalistic practices, analyze politics and perspectives, examine the nature of news and debate styles of journalism.

Morley was online Tuesday, March 16 at 1 p.m. ET, to examine how the world sees the news of the day.

Editor`s Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

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Jefferson Morley: Welcome everybody. The Spanish elections results, as influenced by the March 11 terror attacks in Madrid, have triggered lots of questions. We`ll start with those. There also seems to be some interest in Haiti and Iran. I will try to get to those well.


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Bethesda, Md.: It seems to me you led your column with a misleading premise, though I don`t know if you meant to. You wrote:

"The authors of the attack ... prompted the new prime minister, antiwar socialist Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero, to call for the withdrawal of 1,300 Spanish troops from Iraq."

Doesn`t this fly in the face of Zapatero`s pre-attack campaign pledge to remove Spanish troops from Iraq, and ignore that there was popular opposition to backing Mr. Bush`s invasion of Iraq? You are inadvertently (or purposely?) feeding the misconception here in the states (not elsewhere in the world) that the Spanish people are appeasing terrorists. It`s such a simplistic and facile conclusion, even if it does feed our self-serving delusions of being the world`s storehouse of "firm resolve and freedom". Please tell me you haven`t joined that crowd at The Post (along with Kurtz, Krautheimer, et al). Real journalists are in such short supply as it is at our newspapers of record.

Jefferson Morley: Hi Bethesda,

Another reader made this same comment. I think my wording is not as precise as it should have been. Yes, Zapatero was on record as saying the war was a "disaster" and that the Spanish troops had been withdrawn BEFORE the attacks. So the attacks did not prompt them.

Good point. No, I am not purposely or inadvertently feeding the notion that the Spaniards are appeasing terrorists. And now I have not joined "that crowd" at the Post. As my colleagues will be glad to tell you I am not part of any political grouping at the Post. Like everybody else at the Post I have my opinions.



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Nederland, Colo.: You say "the authors of the attack ... manipulated the Spanish parliamentary system and prompted ... Zapatero to call for the withdrawal of 1,300 Spanish troops from Iraq."

How did they manipulate parliament?

And this morning at another WP Forum, Borja Echevarria says "Zapatero had already announced before the elections that he would withdraw spanish troops from Irak if he won."

So how was Zapatero "prompted" as you say? Thank you.

Jefferson Morley: How al Qaeda manipulated the parliamentary system is fairly obvious. They massacred 200 people on the eve of the vote with an eye towards influencing the voter`s behavior. By all accounts, they succeeded. In my judgment, that`s manipulation.


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Washington, D.C.: Hi Mr. Morley,

I am curious to know your thoughts about the recent Spanish elections. There are those who believe that the election there singled an appeasement to the terrorists who carried out the bombings. What do you think will be the implication of the elections vis-a-vis U.S.-Spanish relations on the "War on Terror," especially considering the close relationship the U.S. has enjoyed with Spanish Socialist Prime Ministers in the past?

I thank you.

Jefferson Morley: The notion that the Spaniards are appeasing al Qaeda is already a staple of the conservative media pundits. This view, like so much of the foreign commentary from this set, is unburdened by much knowledge of Spain, Spanish politics or Spanish society.

The implications of the elections for the U.S.-Spanish relations are profound. First, the administration is going to have to mute its rhetoric about the "coalition of the willing" and "New Europe." Membership in both groups just shrank. Second, the administration has already sent its congratulations, a signal, I think, that Bush and Co. know they cannot simply scorn their European critics but have to engage them. This is progress, of sorts. The real impact though, I think will be on U.S.-British relations. As The Guardian noted this morning, the Spanish attacks and election results are "a brutal lesson" for Tony Blair. That is to say, al Qaeda could flush him from office just as they flushed Aznar. If an antiwar government came to power in London, Bush would face a crisis in Iraq. Given the overstretched condition of the U.S. military in Iraq, the British troops in Iraq probably could not be replaced.

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Washington, D.C.: Are there any exit polls to clarify whether Spain`s voters were reacting to (a) the terrorist attack itself or (b)the government`s initial response to the attack -- i.e., deflecting blame from al Qaeda?

Jefferson Morley: I haven`t seen any polling on this question. Most of the press coverage suggests both factors were at work: a) the government`s initial handling of the event smacked on `spin` and b) many had believed that supporting the U.S. war in Iraq would invite terror attacks. The context for these developments also worked against Aznar. Like Tony Blair, Aznar has a reputation, right or wrong, as a skillful political manipulator. When that skill seems too obvious or inappropriate, he was vulnerable. Like President Bush, Aznar has a reputation among his critics as arrogant. For example, when Spanish opponents to the war mounted huge demonstrations last year, Aznar ignored them. These factors contributed to his weakness in the wake of the attack.

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Ames, Iowa: Dear Jeff,

Thanks for answering our questions. An obvious one -- do you think what happened in Spain could also happen in the U.K., seeing as the government supported a war that was hugely unpopular with the general public? How defining was this election in Spain for U.S./European relations?

Jefferson Morley: What happened in Spain could definitely happen in the U.K and in the United States. Indeed, I would be surprised if both London (and Washington) do not experience mass terror attacks in the next year.

The question for U.S.-European relations is trickier. The al Qaeda strategy in Europe, as in Iraq, is go for the achilles heel of the strong Bush strategy: the doubts of allies. In Iraq, U.S.-trained policemen, the Jordanian embassy, the United Nations, and now this week, international aid workers, have all been targeted. The geopolitical version of this strategy is to punish U.S. coalition allies.

So as the danger mounts for Europe, the Bush administration no doubt hopes that they will flee to Washington`s embrace. I doubt its going to happen. The European`s domestic security situation requires Washington`s help but I doubt any European leader, even Tony Blair, is going to think that the occupation of Iraq is part of the effort to protect European subway systems.

And there is the pressure of reality pushing Washington toward Europe. The U.S. cannot, under any circumstances, afford to lose the British troops in Iraq. So the Bush administration may have to do what it loathes: accommodate antiwar public opinion in Britain.


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London, U.K.: Hello,

Just a quick response to your mention of Tony Blair`s vulnerability.

As an American expat in the U.K. (of four years) it seems highly unlikely to me that a terrorist attack could be used in the same way to manipulate a British election unless the current political landscape changes significantly.

The Labour party has a solid lock on the electorate and the chief opposition has been 100 percent behind both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Only a split within Labour threatens Blair. And my feeling is that a terrorist attack would likely force labour closer together rather than tear them apart.

Jefferson Morley: Interesting point, London.

The dynamics of British politics ARE different. Both countries have a large antiwar constituency. The British left would probably view a mass terror attack in London more as a result of the Iraq war than of al Qaeda resurgence. But unlike Spain there is no leading rival to Blair set to take over.

In the U.K. -- and the United States -- mass terror attacks might well have the opposite effect as in Spain: bucking up public support for pro-war incumbents.


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Washington, D.C.: How is Kerry perceived outside the U.S? Is it a "better than Bush" mentality?

Jefferson Morley: There is definitely an "anybody but Bush" mentality. I explored the issues in a recent column which you can read here:

Kerry Ahead in International Online Caucus (Post/World Opinion Roundup, March 9)

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Alexandria, Va.: There is one question that I cannot get out of my mind. Who would al Qaeda rather see win in November? A Bush victory would seem to be best. The U.S. would remain alienated and Bush-bashing could continue worldwide. Many would still view terrorism as America`s problem. A Kerry victory risks bringing the U.S. back into Europe`s good graces thus enabling increased support and cooperation against al Qaeda activities. The frightening thing is that another attack in the U.S. would almost guarantee a Bush victory and I doubt this concept is lost on al Qaeda.

Your thoughts?

Jefferson Morley: My guess is that al Qaeda has no greater preference or fear of the candidates. Bush is probably helpful for recruiting purposes, especially in Iraq. But Al Qaeda recruiting will not suffer if Kerry comes to office. Kerry, if he reduces U.S. military commitment to Iraq, might be able to concentrate more on al Qaeda but not in a qualitatively different way.

The big advantage Bush`s reelection would provide al Qaeda is his unwillingness or inability to attract allies to help deliver effective results in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This makes al Qaeda`s task of isolating the U.S. easier.


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Washington, Mo.: Is there any sense of "buyer`s remorse" setting in among Spain`s voters? Has anyone questioned the Socialist Party`s rallies and how they may have exploited the emotions of voters at the time?

Jefferson Morley: I don`t see much sign of that in the Spanish press. More typical has been commentary saying that Aznar got his comeuppance for defying massive public opposition to the war in Iraq and for a political style that critics found haughty.

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Fairfax, Va.: What is the likelihood other European governments will follow Spain`s lead and withdraw troops from Iraq? Is the invasion in Iraq as unpopular with the citizens now as it was pre-invasion?

Jefferson Morley: I don`t think any other governments are going to pull their troops. In fact, both Norway and the Netherlands, two of the quieter members of the coalition of the willing, today stated their intention to stay.

But none of these nation`s participation is practically important. Only the British forces matter and Tony Blair is wholly committed to keeping them there. The question is what the British government would do in the wake of a massive terror attack in London?

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Savannah, Ga.: Hello,

When you say that the view that Spain has appeased the terrorists "is unburdened by much knowledge of Spain, Spanish politics, or Spanish society," what sort of aspects about Spain are you referring to?

Jefferson Morley: The fact that Spaniards were overwhelmingly opposed to the war in Iraq and that Prime Minister Aznar was mistrusted by some both for manipulatively and arrogance, and that many Spaniards had predicted that getting involved in the war would precipitate attacks against Spaniards. The people who made those predictions feel vindicated. The people who had doubts about Aznar had those doubts confirmed. This is why people against his party, not the hope that their vote will "appease" al Qaeda.

_______________________

Washington, D.C.: Mr. Morley -- Would it be an overstatement to say that "The terrorists have won in Spain?"

Jefferson Morley: No. It wouldn`t be an overstatement to say the terrorists won.

They won a victory in Spain because they understood the vulnerability of democratically elected leaders who went to war in Iraq despite the opposition of their publics. They understood this vulnerability better than the leaders themselves. Prime Minister Aznar, like President Bush and Blair, thought success in Iraq would strengthen their hand and bring around the doubters. This didn`t happen. The opponents of the war thought "success" in Iraq would strengthen al Qaeda and bring more attacks. This did happen.


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Alexandria, Va.: Do you believe that U.S.-European intelligence and military cooperation in pre-empting terrorist will now increase whether or not political differences continue to expand across the Atlantic? And secondly, does John Kerry benefit politically from the increased risk we find ourselves experiencing because of Bush`s war on Iraq?

Jefferson Morley: Such cooperation is urgent and necessary. As someone who rides the subway in Washington, I certainly hope it is increasing. The question is whether the Bush administration can put aside its ideological certainties and admit that it needs help from the very Europeans it so confidently derided as "irrelevant" and unnecessary. The Europeans too will have to put aside their dislike of Bush and enlist U.S. power in their own defense.

Yes, I think Kerry does benefit from increased risk -- it enables him to argue that Bush`s policies haven`t made Americans safe. That said, another attack on U.S. soil would probably redound to Bush, if only because he is the leader

_______________________

Portland, Maine: I don`t think the U.S. people are dumb -- they`re just slow. They finally figure out the truth, it just takes a little while for us to sort it out. The recent election in Spain is an indication that many in the world have realized that the war in Iraq and the occupation is a "disaster" (to quote the newly elected Spanish leader) -- not only did it fail to uncover WMD, but it has actually increased terrorism, not reduce it. Polls suggest that the British people have already figured this out. Take a look at Hans Blix`s comments today to reflect the increasing world opinion. The American people may be the last to figure this out, but we`re getting it -- and we`ll get it before November.

Jefferson Morley: Americans are certainly slow to pick up on the ways in which the rest of the world sees things differently than they do. But this is changing.

_______________________

Miami, Fla.: I believe that the dislike for the Bush Administration abroad will have a direct effect on the upcoming election and might be the deciding factor of whether or not Bush will be able to win Florida (and some of the other swing states). Florida is populated with many "new Americans," immigrants who recently became naturalized citizens. These people love America, but they also understand and internalize the feelings of people who live in their homelands. Unlike many Americans whose immigrant roots are too distant to care about the people in Europe, newer Americans know why foreigners dislike Bush so much. In fact, if they would have stayed in their homelands, they would probably dislike Bush too. I believe that especially in Florida, this marginal group will tip the balance and give the White House to Kerry.

Jefferson Morley: Interesting observation. One possible bit of evidence in support of your thought.

Recent arrivals to the United States from Cuba are much less hard-line against the Castro government than earlier arrivals. They are also poorer, blacker and more liberal in their voting patterns.


_______________________

Arlington, Va.: I realize that he may have been misquoted, but, presuming it is true, do you get the sense that at least a respectable group of foreign leaders prefer Kerry over Bush?

Jefferson Morley: It would not surprise me a bit if French President Jacques Chirac and German leader Gerhard Schroeder would welcome Bush`s defeat and Kerry`s election. I suspect that Mexican president Vicente Fox, Chilean president Ricardo Lagos, Brazilian president Lula da Silva fall in the pro-Kerry camp.

But Bush has his fans too. Colombian president Alvaro Uribe has a good relationship with Bush that might be replicated with Kerry. Other Bush fans include Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Ariel Sharon of Israel, and the emir of Kuwait who is still grateful to the first President Bush for returning his real estate to him in 1991.

Vladimir Putin may prefer Bush, if only because Bush hasn`t given him a hard time about much.

_______________________

Houston, Tex.: Mr. Morley,

Why do you believe the media at large has described the election of a socialist government a "step back for democracy?" Last time I check, the Spanish people have not lost any of their democratic rights and I feel this characterization is both misleading and shows typical conservative bias.

Jefferson Morley: I don`t believe the media at large has described the Spanish election as a "step back for democracy." I believe the conservative media is dismayed that Spanish voters bounced a Bush ally.

Who is the "media at large" and who used the phrase "a step back for democracy?"

_______________________

Meriden, Conn.: First Powell, then Cheney, and now Bush have demanded that Kerry "name names" to back up his assertion that some leaders are hopeful that he`ll defeat Bush. Am I the only one who is reminded of the McCarthy committee`s demand that political adversaries "name names" of their colleagues? Why haven`t the Democrats pounced on Bush & Co. over this nonsense?

Jefferson Morley: Of course, they have. This is an election year and they`re trying to lock in voters first impressions. They`ve got a good hook here because it Kerry says, (and this example is entirely hypothetical), "Tony Blair`s people tell me they`d love to have a new team in Washington," then Blair`s people will immediately deny it. They`re trying to get Kerry in a box where he can`t reply. The Democrats have "pounced," mainly by sending out diplomatic surrogates like former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke to say, "Of course, Kerry is right. I`ve talked to those same leaders."

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Washington, D.C.: Perhaps I am reading too much into some of the editorial comments you cited, but there seems to be a disconnect between the editorials from France, Germany, Italy and Britain and those from Spain. While Spain`s editorials seem to place the blame on Bush/Aznar and the war on terrorism, the editorials from the other papers, especially the French sociologist and the Guardian newspaper, seem to be arguing for a more aggressive approach to combatting terrorism, while stating a sense of increased vulnerability in Europe. Is it possible that these attacks will have the possibility of bringing the U.S. and E.U. closer together in the fight against terrorism and other areas? I am sure the Spanish and Europe as a whole is experiencing the whole range of emotions we experienced after 9/11 -- anger, reflection, resolve to live -- and perhaps it is too early to tell what the end result of this attack will have on U.S./EU relations. However the recognition of vulnerability and a common threat, causes possibility of closer U.S.-E.U. cooperation to jump out at me from the divergent views expressed. Your thoughts would be appreciated on this matter.

Jefferson Morley: I have noticed the same difference and I think its real. I think Europe is more worried. When worried they look to the United States. The question they face is, how will aligning themselves with the U.S. enhance their safety? If they send troops to Iraq, will that make their subways safer? This is especially excruciating question for the countries that are already cooperating with the U.S: ie. The U.K., Holland, Poland, Norway, etc.


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Kennesaw, Ga.: One of the themes in American press commentary is that even with disagreement over the war in Iraq cooperation between European countries and the United States on intelligence efforts against Islamists remains strong.

How true is this, really? The 3/11 bombings in Spain seem to have caught everyone by surprise, and other Europeans have to wonder whether they are any better protected than the Spanish were. At a minimum it seems that even if allied intelligence efforts are coordinated there are major gaps.

Jefferson Morley: It`s a good question. My guess is that cooperation is strong -- but not strong enough to prevent mass terror attack on "soft" targets in major Western cities.

_______________________

Jefferson Morley: We are well past our scheduled conclusion. So I have to sign off now. Many thanks for all the questions. I`m sorry we didn`t have time to get to Haiti but with so many questions on our main topic, the Madrid bombing questions took priority.

See you next Tuesday at 1.


_______________________


© 2004 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive

[Joerver]

Einmal “Front” und zurück
Reise durch die moralischen Niederungen des Konzern-Staats-Medien-Universums
von Paul Street
ZNet 28.02.2004
Begibt man sich auf eine Reise durch die Kanäle der amerikanischen Konzern-Staats-Fernsehmedien des Mainstream - im Hinterkopf immer das krankmachende Wissen um unsere US-Politik - kommt man sich vor wie ein Sternengucker, der das Firmament nach bestimmten astronomischen Ereignissen absucht. Die meiste Zeit wird man in einen leeren Abgrund des Nichts starren. Erhascht man ausnahmsweise einen Glimmer, gilt es, rasch zu reagieren und genau hinzuschauen. Vor allem ist das nötige Rüstzeug wichtig, um das Gesehene identifizieren, festhalten und interpretieren zu können. Denn, bevor man sich’s versieht, ist der Spuk schon wieder vorbei - welche Bedeutung das Ganze hatte, bleibt häufig unklar -, und das Konzern-Staats-Kommunikations-Universum kehrt in seinen Urzustand zurück, sprich, zu langweilig-monotoner Gedankenkontrolle im Sinne der Mächtigen und Privilegierten.

“Wir alle bedauern den Verlust unschuldiger Menschenleben”

Nach zuvielen Büro-Überstunden kehrte ich Donnerstagabend fröstelnd heim und zappte mich durch die übliche TV-Kost aus Wiederholungen, Infommercials und Basketball-Spielen, bis ich schließlich bei PBS (Public Broadcast System) landete, einem Sender, der (ab und zu) das gemäßigte linke Kanal-Spektrum bedient. Dort entdeckte ich eine 2-Stunden-PBS-Dokumentation - sie hatte vor 30 Minuten begonnen und trug (soweit ich mich erinnere) den Titel: ‘The Iraq War’. Was ich nach 10 Stunden vor dem (Computer-) Bildschirm brauchte, war ein Spaziergang an der frischen Luft, aber mir war sofort klar, ich würde kleben bleiben. Auf dem Bildschirm sieht man “Colonel Parker” - Held der US-Invasion vom letzten Jahr. Stolz und genüsslich erzählt er von seinem tapferen Einmarsch in Bagdad - “Thunder Road”. Wie der ‘Frontline’-Bericht zeigt, hatte die Aktion einen kleinen Haken. Niemand hatte die normalen Iraker auf der Straße informiert, wann und wo die amerikanischen “Befreier” in die Stadt eindringen würden. Auf einer Brücke (ich glaube, “Diala-Brücke”) waren folglich ein Dutzend Menschen zur falschen Zeit am falschen Ort. Das US-Militär befreite sie von der Last ihrer biologischen Existenz. Die Doku ‘The Iraq War’ zeigt die Augenzeugen-Aussage einer Irakerin, die an der “Diala-Brücke” Bruder (?) und Neffen (?) verlor. Die Frau hatte derart Angst vor ihren “Befreiern”, dass sie sich einen ganzen Abend lang im kugeldurchsiebten Van tot gestellt hatte - zwischen den Leichen ihrer ermordeten Lieben. Schneller Kameraschwenk zu einem US-Militärkommandeur, der sich noch gut an das Gemetzel erinnert, jedoch sofort betont, die “Operation” an der Diala-Brücke sei ein “Erfolg” gewesen. “Den Verlust unschuldiger Menschenleben, zu dem es kam”, räumt der Kommandeur ein, “bedauern wir alle”. Allzu erschüttert wirkt er nicht. “Shit happens” im “Krieg” - aber kann man überhaupt von einem Krieg sprechen, wenn die mächtigste Militärmacht in der Weltgeschichte in ein praktisch wehrloses Land einmarschiert? Ein Iraki erzählt von einem zweiten Zwischenfall: Ein amerikanischer GI hatte den Wagen des Mannes gestoppt und “meine Mutter erschossen”. Sie “fiel tot zu Boden”. Ein anderer Iraki erinnert sich: die Amerikaner “zeigten keine Gnade”. “Überall gab es Leichen”, die den glorreichen, blutigen, imperialen Weg zu Saddams Palast säumten. Dann kommt wieder unser lächelnder “Colonel Parker” ins Bild. Der hatte schnell “begriffen, es ist vorbei” und verbrachte einen triumphalen Abend im Palast (Saddams) - den er sich auch nicht durch den Verlust “unschuldiger Menschenleben” vermiesen ließ.

Predators Opfer: “Mit meinen eigenen nackten Händen grub ich sie aus”

Der ‘Frontline’-Bericht blendet den Kommentar eines Ex-Analysten der DIA (Pentagon-Geheimdienst) ein. Der Mann heißt Mark Garlasco. Ein sinnloses Gemetzel an Zivilisten hatte Garlasco so zu schaffen gemacht, dass er mit Human Rights Watch zusammenarbeitete, um die illegale Tötung unschuldiger Irakis zu dokumentieren. Garlasco erinnert sich, wie er in einem Pentagon-Büro saß und am Bildschirm live, per Airforce-Videostream, miterlebte, wie die Präzisions-Bomben in ein Gebäudes einschlugen, das von der DIA zum Zielobjekt erklärt worden war. Angeblich sollte sich dort der berüchtigte “Chemical Ali” aufhalten, ein irakischer General. Garlasco sah, wie menschliche Körper “wie Stoffpuppen” aus dem explodierenden Komplex flogen. Die “Stoffpuppen” waren unschuldige Zivilisten - darunter mehrere Mitglieder einer Familie. ‘Frontline’ zeigt ein Foto, auf dem sie lächelnd abgebildet sind. Das Bild wurde wenige Tage, “bevor Predator kam”, aufgenommen. Der Satz (Predator = Räuber/Raubtier) ist eine Anspielung auf den brillanten Indianerexperten Ward Churchill. “Bevor Predator kam” - das war “Amerika” vor der Eroberung durch die Europäer. Im 21. Jahrhundert überquert Predator den Atlantik nun in eine andere Richtung. Einige seiner Eroberungswerkzeuge hat er nach den Stämmen der eingeborenen nordamerikanischen Bevölkerung benannt, die er im 19. Jahrhundert vom Angesicht der Erde zu tilgen versuchte (“Apache”- und “Comanche-”-Angriffshelikopter, “Blackhawk”-Transporthubschrauber (benannt nach einem besiegten Häuptling der Sauk)).

Da war diese Fahndungspanne - mit sehr unterschiedlichen Folgen für die US-”Verteidigungs”-Strategen und deren Opfer. Bei den Opfern handelt es sich um 18 Zivilisten, die von Ersteren in einem Haus in Al Mansur in die Luft gejagt wurden, weil man darin das Versteck Saddams vermutete. Ein Mitglied der Airforce, an dem “unglücklichen” rassistischen Gemetzel beteiligt, erklärt gegenüber ‘Frontline’, die beiden Sets Koordinaten, die man den beiden B-1-Bomberpiloten, die die Operation ausführten, übermittelte, seien “nicht so präzise wie üblich” gewesen (der “Geheimdienst” hatte der Airforce nämlich gesagt, sie solle zwei - anstatt nur ein - Gebäude angreifen, das erhöhe die Chance, Saddam zu kriegen). Ein Offizier erinnert sich: “Emotional war es so, wir haben das Ziel ausgelöscht, okay, erledigt, auf zum nächsten”. Klasse: 18 Zivilisten tot, und die USA sagen “erledigt, auf zum nächsten”. In den Trümmern zurück blieb die “gesamte Familie” von “Abdul M.” - einschließlich Frau und Tochter. “Ich grub sie aus”, so Abdul zu ‘Frontline’, “mit meinen eigenen nackten Händen. Ich trug sie auf meinen eigenen nackten Händen. Ich beerdigte sie mit meinen eigenen nackten Händen”. “Aber wo war Saddam wirklich?” kommt der “Frontline”-Sprecher auf die eigentlich wichtige Frage zurück.

“Im Grunde”, so der Sprecher, “kämpften (irakische) Straßengangs gegen (amerikanische) Soldaten”. Worauf sind Colonel Parker und seine lächelnden imperialen Kameraden, die ‘Frontline’ interviewt, dann bitte so verdammt stolz, fragt man sich unwillkürlich. Szenenwechsel. Man sieht den Platz mit der Saddam-Statue. In Wirklichkeit habe es sich bei der irakischen ‘Menge’ um ein Häuflein gehandelt, so ‘Frontline’. Aber die Gegend “wimmelte von (westlichen) Journalisten”, die alle darauf warteten, ein paar gute Fotos schießen zu können, mit denen sie die blutige, illegale Invasion Zuhause verkaufen konnten. “Colonel McCoy” erinnert sich, wie er beschloss, den wenigen echten Irakern zu helfen, die Statue umzustürzen - und “die Leute gerieten völlig aus dem Häuschen”.

“Mission accomplished”

Anschließend nimmt uns ‘Frontline’ mit ins Pentagon - zu einem alten aufgeplusterten Protofaschisten namens Donald Rumsfeld, der gegenüber Reportern erklärt, wie “atemberaubend” es war, mitanzusehen wie die irakischen Massen die verhassten Symbole des alten Regimes niederrissen. Aber, so ‘Frontline’, nicht überall in Bagdad wurden die Amerikaner als “Befreier” begrüßt - wer hätte das gedacht. Nur vereinzelt, wenn überhaupt, sei es zu “triumphalen Szenen” gekommen wie damals, Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs, in Paris. Das irakische Volk hat Saddam gehasst - stimmt - gleichzeitig waren/sind die Iraker nicht sonderlich pro-amerikanisch. Garlasco glaubt, den Grund zu kennen: Die irakischen “Zivilisten glaubten, man würde Zivilisten angreifen” - laut Garlasco eine verständliche Schlussfolgerung. Nach dem Einmarsch, so ‘Frontline’, sei die Zahl der Plünderungen explodiert. Die US-Kommandeure ließen es geschehen, sie hatten “andere Prioritäten”, gleichzeitig begann ein gewaltsamer Aufstand gegen die Predator-Okkupation. Diesem Aufstand sind bislang mehr als 400 US-Soldaten zum Opfer gefallen. ‘The Iraq War’ zeigt, wie George W. Bush aus seinem Pilotenanzug steigt und verkündet: “mission accomplished”. Ein Reporter weist auf folgenden ebenso vielsagenden wie merkwürdigen Widerspruch hin: A) Das Weiße Haus behauptet, es hätte die Irak-Invasion befohlen, um etwas zu exportieren, was von ihm “Demokratie” genannt wird. B) Allein aufgrund des Sturzes des alten Regimes erklärt das Weiße Haus die Mission schon für “erfolgreich beendet” (mission accomplished), also bevor die unterworfene Nation nach demokratischen Prinzipien wiederaufgebaut werden kann. ‘Frontline’: Das “Chaos” in der Nach-Invasionsphase im Irak war vom Generalstabschef und dem Secretary of the Army prophezeit worden. Vor der Invasion hatten die beiden mit Rumsfeld und Wolfowitz eine öffentliche Debatte geführt, wieviele Soldaten es brauche, nicht nur das Regime zu stürzen, sondern gleichzeitig das besetzte Land zu “befrieden”, zu “stabilisieren”, und “wiederaufzubauen”. Sie verloren die Debatte.

Wie verbreitet man den Geist zweckfreier Nutzlosigkeit und modebewussten Konsumverhaltens?

Die TV-Doku endet, die Zuschauer werden über einige der Konzern-Sponsoren dieser ‘Frontline’-Doku unterrichtet - US News und World Report, zum Beispiel - und wir erfahren, wo es die Video-Kassette zu kaufen gibt. Mein lokaler PBS-Sender (WTTW in Chicago) wirbt für die nächste Doku, mit dem Titel: “Was geht in den Gehirnen von Teenagern vor?” Dann weiter mit der Wochenshow ‘Wild Chicago’, wo es um so groteske urbane Phänomene wie Körperbemalung oder professionelles Hunde-Walking geht. Also schalte ich um auf Channel 7 zu den Lokalnachrichten um 22 Uhr. Die wichtigste Lokalnachricht ist gleichzeitig “nationale Story”. Es geht um die Zerstörung - hightech und mit Spezialeffekten - des berühmt-berüchtigten “Bartman Balles”, ein Baseball, den ein unglückseliger Fan der Chicago Cubs namens Steve Bartman im letzten Herbst einem Feldspieler der Cubs vor der Nase weggeschnappt hatte - futsch war die Three-Run-Führung im 6. Spiel der National Champions League. Vor einem sehr weißen und angetrunkenen Publikum in Harry Carays Restaurant wurde der “Bartman Ball” im Stile einer echten Hinrichtung elektro-exekutiert. Das Restaurant liegt in der reichen Chicagoer Northside. Vor seiner Hinrichtung bekam der “Bartman Ball” seine “Henkersmahlzeit” und einen Abend in einem teuren Hotel downtown, inklusive Candlelight-Massage, spendiert. Wir “hoffen”, so die Chefsprecherin von Channel 7 zu den Zuschauern, dass der Medien-Hype “(den Cubs) den Weg in eine Siegessaison ebnen wird”. Und weiter geht’s auf Channel 7 mit hochbrisanten Stories. Eine Kostprobe der wichtigsten Nachrichten: Scheidungsdokumente eines Chicagoer Millionärs, der für den Senat kandidieren will, aufgetaucht; schlimme Entführungsgeschichte; Rosie O’Donnells Homosexuellen-Hochzeit, dann ein Spezial-Feature über einen wichtigen neuen Mode-/Beziehungstrend in den USA - “Diamantringe an der rechten Hand”, die man an Single-Frauen verhökert, die nicht länger warten wollen, bis der Richtige um ihre Hand anhält und diese mit teurem Schmuck beringt. Channel 7 verweist auf einen eigenen Weblink - für alle, die bei dieser hochbrisanten, aktuellen Story unbedingt am Ball bleiben wollen.

Zwischen diesen immens wichtigen Nachrichten zwei clevere Auto-Spots. Im ersten Spot fährt ein leuchtend orangefarbener Audi in verrückten Achter-Kurven am Rand eines Canyons in Amerikas Westen entlang. Wahrscheinlich verbrennt das Fahrzeug gerade fossilen Brennstoff aus dem Mittleren Osten, während es über heiliges Eingeborenenland brettert. Im zweiten Spot zoomt ein schwarzglänzender Jaguar durch schneebedeckte europäische Berge. Vor einem Außen-Café stoppt er, damit ein unsichtbarer Fahrer / Insasse einen Schneeball auf einen blonden Mann mit teurer schwarzer Lederjacke werfen kann, der vor einer wunderschönen weißen Frau und einem Glas Wein sitzt. Meine Gedanken driften kurz zu Stuart Ewens (Neue Linke) Analyse unserer US-Konzernwerbungs- und Konsumkultur ab - wie in seinem Buch ‘Captains of Consciousness’ (1976) beschrieben. Ewens: Die Business Class versucht, in den Köpfen der amerikanischen Massen “eine Philosophie der Zweckfreiheit”, ein Gefühl, alles sei egal, zu implantieren. Damit in Zusammenhang stehe das Bemühen dieser Klasse, “die Aufmerksamkeit der Menschen auf eher oberflächliche Dinge zu lenken, aus denen der Modekonsum ja größtenteils besteht”. Einen Moment lang geht mir durch den Kopf, wie wohl die Sache mit den Diamantringen und der Jaguar-Spot in Chicagos 15 (überwiegend) schwarzen Vierteln ankommen, wo laut ‘Volkszählung 2000` mehr als 1/4 der Kinder in massiver Armut aufwachsen (das heißt, sie leben um mehr als die Hälfte unter der bekanntermaßen zu niedrig angesetzten offiziellen Armutsgrenze, die von der Bundesregierung festgelegt wird). Die ‘Volkszählung 2000` fand auf dem Höhepunkt des Clinton-Booms statt. Seither hat sich die Situation in den Vierteln weiter verschlechtert. Gut möglich, dass einige der Bewohner dieser Viertel - Außenposten einer ‘Dritte-Welt-Nation’ innerhalb der Grenzen des reichsten Staats der Erde -, sich eher mit den (wenigen) irakischen Widerstandskämpfern, die die ‘Frontline’-Doku (kurz) zeigte, identifizieren als mit den reichen weißen Frauen der Chicagoer Northside, die auf Channel 7 über ihr subversives Verlangen, einen Diamanten an der rechten Hand zu tragen, sprechen.

Zum Schluss kommt mir noch der Gedanke, dass letztlich auch die ‘Frontline’-Doku ihren Beitrag leistete zur Verbreitung der “Philosophie der Zweckfreiheit”. Schließlich werden die grimmen Wahrheiten, die hier kurz über den Bildschirm flimmerten, weder den Herren des Kriegs (Masters of War), noch dem Imperium, noch der Ungleichheit ernsthaft gefährlich, zumal sicher eingebettet - eingegraben - in eine Gesamthaltung der Gleichgültigkeit, die einen frösteln macht, sieht man die vielen Beweise für den rassistisch grausamen, imperialen Raub, den die Herren jener korrupten Gesellschaft, der diese Menschen angehören, begehen. Aber all die schrecklichen Fakten sind ja nur PR-Artefakte, eingebettet in die ebenso dominante wie autoritäre Erzählung vom Nicht Aufzuhaltenden Fortgang Der Geschichte - mit (nicht immer ganz perfekten) Edlen Weißen (Männern) als Führer, die letztendlich aber doch benevolent den Weg weisen. Keiner bei ‘Frontline’ wird glauben, wir hätten die Invasion verhindern können - oder es auch nur versuchen sollen. “Shit happens”, und “alle zeigen Bedauern”. Letztendlich ist der Switch von kugeldurchsiebten, blutigen Bagdader Zivilfahrzeugen (und diese Bilder sind ja schon wieder antiquiert) zu explodierenden Basebällen und “Diamentringen für die rechte Hand” reicher Chicagoer Northsiderinnen bzw. zu Sportwagen, die durch die Alpen flitzen, also gar nicht so abrupt. Verschmilzt doch alles ohnehin im moralischen Nichts des Konzern-Staats-Medienuniversums - ein Universum, in dem das spektakulär Empörende routinemäßig nüchtern und langweilig daherkommt und das Nüchtern-Langweilige in empörender Weise spektakularisiert wird.

Paul Street ([e-mail]) aus Chicago, Illinois, schreibt gegen Rassismus, Imperialismus und Thoughtcontrol.

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Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

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____________

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 18. März 2004, 10:59
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,291131,00.html

Noch einer der Spiegel-Online Berichte zum Jahrestag des Kriegsbeginn.

Polizei-Krieg in Bagdad

Wo die Armee des Mahdi herrscht

Aus Bagdad berichtet Markus Deggerich

Das Machtvakuum nach dem Fall Saddams hat in der Verbrechenshochburg Bagdad viele selbsternannte Ordnungshüter produziert. Nicht nur die im Eiltempo runderneuerte Polizei patrouilliert in den Straßen, auch Milizen der Religiösen, Revanchisten und Reformer sorgen eigenmächtig für Ordnung - jeweils in ihrem Sinne.

Bagdad - Der Irak des Saddam war ein Polizeistaat der übelsten Sorte. Permanente Überwachung, Denunziation, Folter, Korruption und Willkür waren Alltag. Der Irak nach Saddam war ein komplett rechtsfreier Raum, in dem Chaos und das Recht des Stärkeren herrschte. Plünderer, Mörder, Entführer, Vergewaltiger, Banditen und Erpresser hatten freie Bahn und haben es oft bis heute.

Erst langsam bilden sich wieder Strukturen, die so etwas wie Recht und Ordnung durchsetzen sollen. Doch durch das Vakuum entstanden Organisationen, die den Aufbau eines Rechtsstaats nun behindern: Neben den offiziellen versuchen alle Arten von inoffiziellen Polizisten, jeweils ihre Vorstellung von Recht durchzusetzen. Sie alle kämpfen für einen sichereren Irak - und für dieses Ziel im Zweifelsfall auch gegeneinander.

In einem drei Wochen dauernden Basiskurs lernen die künftigen Mitglieder des irakischen zivilen Verteidigungskorps (ICDC) wie man eine Maschinenpistole sichert, Straßensperren aufbaut und Autos filzt, was man beim Patrouillengang zu beachten hat und wie man scharfe Minen und Bomben sichert. Das Straßenbild von Bagdad hat sich im Vergleich zum Vorjahr bereits verändert. Es ist deutlich mehr irakische Polizei präsent als in der schlimmsten Anarchie während des vergangenen Frühjahrs und Sommers. Die neuen Polizisten sollen Präsenz zeigen und ein Gefühl von Sicherheit vermitteln. Denn Sicherheit ist immer noch das knappste Gut im neuen Irak.

Am 20. März jährt sich der Beginn des US-Feldzugs gegen Saddam Hussein zum ersten Mal. SPIEGEL ONLINE bringt aus diesem Anlass ein Irak-Spezial mit täglichen Hintergrund-Analysen und aktuellen Reportagen von SPIEGEL ONLINE-Reporter Markus Deggerich aus Bagdad.
Die Bewerber stehen Schlange an den Rekrutierungsstellen - trotz der vermehrten Anschläge auf irakische Polizeistationen, mit denen Extremisten die "Kollaborateure" in Uniform treffen wollen. Das hat mit den guten Gehältern zu tun: Bei der ICDC kann ein Iraker zwischen 120 und 190 Dollar im Monat verdienen - ein kleines Vermögen für hiesige Verhältnisse. Doch bei der Personalwahl gilt es, viele Sensibilitäten zu berücksichtigen. Zum einen will man auf das Know-how früherer irakischer Sicherheitsleute nicht ganz verzichten. Andererseits sollen möglichst viele unbelastete neue Gesichter auf der Straße auftauchen, um das Vertrauen der Iraker in die neuen Polizeikräfte nicht zu gefährden.

Die Last der Vergangenheit spüren die Ausbilder jeden Tag. Chris Burrow von der US-Armee steht vor fünfzig Azubis in einem kahlen Raum im Bagdader Stadtteil Arassat. Von außen ist dem Gebäude nicht anzusehen, dass hier Polizei trainiert wird - man will keine Bombenleger anlocken. "Ist Folter eine gute Methode, um an Informationen zu kommen?", lässt Burrow seinen Dolmetscher die Bewerber fragen. Ein Viertel der Gruppe hebt den Arm und nickt mit dem Kopf. Burrow atmet tief ein - und wieder aus. Am Ende des Kurses, sagt er, werden es schon viel weniger sein. Es klingt ein wenig beschwörend.

Kommandiert die "Armee des Mahdi": Scharfmacher Ajatollah Sadr bei einer Predigt
Mit solchen Problemen plagt man sich einige Kilometer Luftlinie im Norden Bagdads nicht. Sadr City heißt der Slum, der früher Saddam City hieß und das größte Armenviertel der Stadt ist. Hier leben fast ausschließlich Schiiten. Hier traut sich kaum ein Polizist hin, US-Patrouillen werden mit Steinen empfangen.

Es ist eine Stadt in der Stadt. Der neue Name des Viertels stammt von dem radikalen Ajatollah Muktada al Sadr. Der Imam hatte das Machtvakuum nach dem Krieg schnell gefüllt. In den stinkenden Gassen und auf den Märkten kontrolliert seine "Armee des Mahdi" das öffentliche Leben - nach strengen religiösen Regeln. Mahdi bedeutet: Führer der Schiiten.

Der Imam war es, der direkt nach dem Krieg funktionierende Strukturen aufbaute. In der Moschee rief er nach Freiwilligen, und sie kamen in Strömen. Er bezahlte die Lehrer weiter, ließ den Müll wegräumen und organisierte Bürgerwehren gegen die Kriminalität. Doch das sind nicht die einzigen Aufgaben der Armee des Mahdi; sie ist auch eine Religionspolizei, die den US-Besatzern nicht gefällt.

"Wir schließen die Häuser, in denen Frauen mit schmutzigem Ruf arbeiten", sagt der 30-jährige Ali Kabarra. Er ist erst nach dem Krieg zu der Imam-Polizei gestoßen, die auch schon zu Saddams Zeiten im Untergrund aktiv war und vor allem den Einfluss der Baath-Partei in Saddam-City zurückdrängte. Bezahlt wird Ali nicht für seinen Job. Aber er genießt viel Ansehen in seinem Viertel und kann seine Kinder kostenlos auf die Koranschule schicken, wo sie Lesen und Schreiben lernen - aber eben auch, was es heißt, ein echter Schiit zu sein. Trifft er auf der Straße Frauen, die nicht "ordentlich" gekleidet sind, hält er ihnen eine Moralpredigt - fürs Erste.

Aber Ali und seinesgleichen jagen auch ehemalige Baath-Mitglieder, legen Feuer in Geschäften, die Alkohol verkaufen, verprügeln Taschendiebe, regeln Nachbarschaftskonflikte - und sie halten sich bereit für den großen Kampf.

"Die Sunniten wollen uns weiter beherrschen", sagt Ali. Saddam hatte die schiitische Mehrheit im Irak unterdrückt zu Gunsten der sunnitischen Minderheit. Und seit den brutalen Anschlägen in Kerbela, der heiligen Stadt der Schiiten, sinnen sie auf Rache. Nie wieder wollen sie ihre Glaubensrichtung unterdrücken lassen.

Gottesstaat oder Bürgerkrieg

Vorläufig belassen die schiitischen Gangs es bei Drohungen. Aber sie streben nach einem Gottesstaat im ganzen Irak, wie sie ihn im Kleinen bereits in Sadr City praktizieren. Sie haben für Ordnung gesorgt - aber eben für ihre Ordnung. Und deren Werte könnten schon bald kollidieren mit denen der neuen Machthaber und deren eigenen Ordnungshütern. Gottesstaat oder Bürgerkrieg, so klingt die fast unausweichliche Schlussfolgerung aus dem, was Ali und seine Kumpels antreibt.

Die Ausbildung der neuen offiziellen Polizisten dauert derweil. Wo sie auftauchen, agieren sie oft noch unerfahren; vor allem sind sie schlecht ausgerüstet. "Die Amerikaner geben uns zu wenig Waffen", sagt Ahmed Assura, der nun seit zwei Monaten seine neue Uniform trägt. Zu wenig Autos, zu wenig Funkgeräte, zu wenig Autorität - das sind die Kernprobleme der offiziellen Polizei, die durch ihre Schwäche Raum lässt für die vielen selbsternannten Ordnungshüter.

Seit zwei Wochen ist eine neue Gruppe aktiv, die sich "Schwarze Flagge" nennt. Mit bewaffneten Rollkommandos taucht sie bevorzugt in jenen Stadtvierteln auf, die als besonders Saddam-treu gelten. Bisher haben sie es dabei belassen, Pro-Saddam-Graffitis an den Wänden zu übermalen und ihre schwarze Flagge mit zwei gekreuzten Schwertern zu hissen. Aber sie verteilen Flugblätter und geben irakischen Zeitungen Interviews über ihre Motive. Angeblich umfasst die Truppe 5000 bewaffnete Männer, die nicht darauf warten wollen, bis die neue Polizei sich die ehemaligen Baathisten und Saddam-Parteigänger vorknöpft.

Die "Schwarze Fahne" tritt als eine Art proamerikanische Guerilla auf. Jeder, der sich gegen die Besatzer wendet oder die alte Zeit wieder herbei wünscht, muss mit unangenehmem Besuch rechnen. "Wir haben lange Listen mit Namen", so einer der Führer in der irakischen Zeitung "Iraq Today". Auch irakische Journalisten, von denen man glaubt, dass sie die Angriffe auf die Besatzer gutheißen, stehen angeblich auf der schwarzen Liste. "Jeder, der den Aufbau des neuen Irak behindert, wird sich verantworten müssen", heißt es auf einem Flugblatt der "Schwarzen Fahne". Religiöse Ziele verfolgt sie dabei nicht: "Unter uns sind Schiiten, Sunniten, Christen und Kurden", lässt die Gruppe mitteilen, deren Mitglieder sich als eine Art "Bürger in Uniform" sehen, die lieber kurzen Prozess machen wollen, statt auf den Aufbau eines Rechtssystems zu warten.

Noch wirken all die unterschiedlichen Milizen in einem gewissen Sinne stabilisierend. "Aber es kommt der Tag", ahnt der amerikanische Polizei-Ausbilder Burrow, "an dem werden wir mit ihnen reden müssen". Und dann atmet er wieder tief ein - und aus.


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© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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Herrlich, Schulsport bei Bush: cheerleading.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-macho18mar18…
COLUMN ONE
Who`s the Man? They Are
George Bush and John Kerry stand shoulder to shoulder in one respect: Macho is good. Very good. It`s been that way since Jefferson`s day.
By James Rainey
Times Staff Writer

March 18, 2004

It was once a late-night comedy riff, comparing a pair of Latin he-men. "¿Quién es más macho, Fernando Lamas o Ricardo Montalban?"

The gag on the preening masculinity of two aging stars had its day, then faded away. But an increasingly ornery presidential election season might resurrect the question. To wit: "¿Quién es más macho, George Bush o John Kerry?"

If it`s not Kerry tossing a football across an airport tarmac, it`s President Bush stomping around his Texas ranch in denim and cowboy boots. Bush waves the starter`s flag at NASCAR`s Daytona 500. Kerry blasts away at pheasant with a double-barreled shotgun.

In a campaign that has seen candidate Howard Dean infamously appeal to "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," many political scientists, historians and gender experts say that a good portion of the presidential image-making in 2004 will center on masculinity.

Driving the paternal imperative, they say, is the anxiety many Americans feel because of the war in Iraq and the threat of terrorist attacks at home.

"When you have a war going on, usually the macho factor will prevail," said Joan Hoff, a Montana State University history professor and former president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency. "Bush feels it`s to his advantage to keep foreign policy as a major issue. But when that comes up, I think you are going to see a lot of `Who is tougher than whom.` "

The televised images of machismo may be as overt as Bush powering along the Maine coast in his father`s cigarette boat or Kerry exchanging slap shots and forechecks on the hockey rink. But the manly theme also will be cast in more subtle and euphemistic terms, as pundits talk about the candidates` "authenticity," "decisiveness" and "toughness."

"There is no doubt that one of the things that Bush has going for him, even with some people who otherwise wouldn`t like him, is that he seems decisive and a leader," said Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist and gender expert. "For many people that links to maleness."

But both the president and the senator from Massachusetts need to be careful that their embrace of traditional masculine roles does not become forced, Schwartz said, lest they become perceived in that most un-macho of roles — the poseur. Think Michael Dukakis in 1988, clad in an oversized helmet and perched atop a tank.

American politicians have not been above feminizing their opponents dating back to the era of powdered wigs, playing on the stereotypical notion that only the "manly" can lead.

Some critics of the day called Thomas Jefferson "womanish." In 1840, President Martin Van Buren — accused of wearing a corset and taking too many baths — lost to William Henry Harrison. The challenger purportedly took care not to be seen in the tub.

Adlai E. Stevenson found himself belittled as "Adelaide" in two unsuccessful 1950s presidential confrontations with Dwight D. Eisenhower, the retired war hero. And in 1984, onetime movie cowboy Ronald Reagan made swift work of Walter F. Mondale, who was labeled a "quiche eater" by Republican true believers.

Bush and Kerry appear to come by their macho naturally. At Yale University, both won admission to the exclusive, secret society "Skull and Bones," then open only to men. Bush was the party guy — drinking hard and later quipping about his relative disdain for academics. Kerry played two sports at Yale and volunteered for the Navy, which sent him to Vietnam.

In adulthood, Bush has taken pride in his fitness, once challenging members of the press corps to try to keep up as he turned 7-minute miles in 100-degree Texas heat.

Kerry, a licensed pilot, took the controls of a helicopter during a campaign swing in Iowa last fall. When blessed with more free time, he`s been spotted rollerblading up Beacon Hill in his native Boston and catching big air while kite surfing off Cape Cod.

Beware the `Priss Brush`

Both Bush and Kerry have been witness, up close, to the potential danger of being painted with what one magazine writer called "the priss brush."

Bush`s father had to go to great lengths to overcome the "wimp" label in his 1988 run for the White House, despite the fact he once captained the Yale baseball team and flew a torpedo bomber in World War II. Al Gore suffered a similar taint in 2000 when it was revealed that feminist author Naomi Wolfe advised him on what colors to wear.

Well aware of the many Democratic presidential contenders destroyed by the notion they were soft, Kerry has said repeatedly he`s "a fighter." He even co-opted Bush`s challenge to Iraqi insurgents — "Bring it on!" — to challenge the president to a debate over national security.

Bush has equally pragmatic political reasons for sending reminders that he`s a traditional man`s man, political analysts say. He`s trying to appeal to his electoral base, white men, who favored him by a whopping 59% to 37% over Gore in 2000. (Four percent voted for Ralph Nader.)

"It`s the Bush campaign, primarily, that`s using the masculinity and macho themes," said Eric Davis, a political science professor at Middlebury College in Vermont. "In his speaking and the way he presents himself, down at the ranch in denim shirt and jeans; the tough talk, this is all designed to appeal to males who … don`t want to associate with a party or candidate that`s seen as soft."

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush has found repeated opportunities to display masculine bravado. Just three days after the World Trade Center collapsed, he stood beside the rubble and used a bullhorn to shout encouragement to hardhat-wearing rescue workers.

Most famously, Bush zipped himself into an olive green flight suit last May for a television-ready visit to an aircraft carrier, where he declared an end to major combat in the Iraqi war.

The landing on the Lincoln had some pundits gushing about the president`s victorious glow. Newspaper commentator Lisa Schiffren searched for the word to describe the president`s look and finally settled on "hot."

"Also presidential, of course," added Schiffren, writing in the Wall Street Journal. "Not to mention credible as commander in chief. But mostly `hot` as in virile, sexy and powerful."

Democrats viewed the president`s shipboard performance with an opposite measure of vitriol. His challengers soon noted that more U.S. service members had died after Bush`s declaration than before it. But their most biting words were aimed directly at the president`s macho persona.

Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark accused Bush of "prancing" in the flight suit. The president, Kerry said, had been "playing dress-up."

The image of a costumed commander in chief became the most biting challenge of Kerry`s stump speech.

"I know something about aircraft carriers for real," Kerry, the Navy veteran, liked to say. "And if George Bush wants to make foreign policy and national security the central issue of this campaign, I have three words for him that I know he understands: `Bring it on!` "

Supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire began shouting the tough-guy payoff along with Kerry, so much did they enjoy throwing Bush`s machismo back in his face.

Indeed, a central Kerry point during the early primary season was that he could go mano a mano against Bush, unlike other Democrats, because of his experience as a decorated Vietnam veteran. Hardly a stop in the early primary states passed without Kerry`s old boat-mates, and other veterans, attesting to his bravery and leadership.

Bush, in contrast, found his military record in the Air National Guard called into question. Left-leaning filmmaker Michael Moore got the discussion started in January, when he endorsed Clark for president and called the president a "deserter."

The White House responded by releasing the president`s service records, including an honorable discharge. Kerry didn`t find fault with Bush`s service, but he didn`t dismiss the issue either. "I think it`s up to the president and the military," he said, "to answer those questions."

Other gender judgments creep into the campaign in more subtle forms, said Michael Messner, a USC sociologist.

Messner said he has heard television commentators repeatedly describe Kerry as too verbose and intellectual to connect with average voters, in contrast to the plainspoken Bush.

"It`s a particularly American definition of masculinity that, somehow, if you are intellectual and have a lot of book learning and talk in ways that make that clear, then you are feminized," said Messner, who researches gender stereotypes. "You are seen as someone who could waffle when it comes time to make a big decision. All of that is code for not being masculine enough."

Far less oblique were the Internet rumors that Kerry used Botox to remove facial wrinkles (he denied it) and the Republican Party press releases that routinely jab Kerry as the "International Man of Mystery," after the foppish title character of the Austin Powers movies.

Don`t Scare the Women

But political handlers say there is a danger in striking the manly man pose too blatantly, and it can be summed up in one word: women. They will cast more votes than men in November. And although some female voters may crave a paternal figure they feel can protect the country, polls indicate more women remain preoccupied with so-called "soft" issues such as jobs, education and healthcare. In recent surveys, women tend to be more critical of Bush.

Political pros say it`s no accident then, that, after Bush started the month with a NASCAR event and a rodeo, he shifted quickly to campaign stops focused on women. First, Bush posed in front of female entrepreneurs in Cleveland to talk about his job-creation plans. Then he held a White House event to say he was helping improve the rights of women around the world.

Voters, though, have almost certainly not seen the last of Bush chopping wood on his Crawford ranch, or Kerry jumping on motorcycles, as he did for the "Tonight Show" and again the other day at the airport in San Antonio.

"In general, leadership is one of the key factors that voters are looking for," said Susan McManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. "A lot of people define that as strength, decisiveness and the ability to make decisions. It`s tough, tough, tough."

The day may not be too far off, however, when gender politics are turned on their head.

With women like Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Condoleezza Rice, Bush`s national security advisor, looming as potential presidential candidates, the nation may have to find new ways to think and talk about qualities traditionally attributed to men.

"When you think about it, Hillary is viewed in all those leadership ways," McManus said. "So the discussion may not just include men anymore."

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Measure of the Man?

Many voters say macho doesn`t matter. But experts say that stereotypically masculine behavior can imbue political figures with leadership qualities such as toughness and decisiveness.





Bush-----------------------------Kerry




Height 5` 11 ¾"------------------ 6` 4"


Weight 194-------------------------- 185


Current job Commander in chief--- U.S. senator


Past jobs Governor, oil executive, part owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team ---------Assistant district attorney, lieutenant governor


Recreation Fishing, swimming, chopping wood -----Windsurfing, flying, ice hockey


School sports Cheerleading, stickball* -------Soccer, ice hockey**


Military Lieutenant in the Air National Guard------- Navy lieutenant and recipient of the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart


Footwear Cowboy boots------ L.L. Bean duck boots


Speaking style Texas terse------- Brahmin baroque




Source: Times staff research

*Bush was yell leader at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. He also founded an intramural stickball league at the academy. Broomsticks and tennis balls were used in a prep school version of the old street baseball game.

**Kerry played soccer and ice hockey at the intercollegiate level at Yale University.

Times staff writer Matea Gold contributed to this report.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-oil18ma…

Auch ein Erfolg der Bush Politik.

Oil Prices Reach 13-Year High, Posing Threat to U.S. Economy
The surge, caused by strong global demand and limited supplies, could hinder a recovery as firms and consumers face greater costs.
By Tom Petruno and Don Lee
Times Staff Writers

March 18, 2004

The price of crude oil hit its highest level in 13 years Wednesday, raising the risk to an economy struggling to create jobs.

The price for the benchmark grade of U.S. crude jumped 70 cents to $38.18 a barrel in New York trading. It hadn`t closed at that level since Oct. 16, 1990, when oil was soaring in the aftermath of Iraq`s invasion of Kuwait.

The chief catalyst for the latest run-up was an Energy Department report showing that U.S. gasoline inventories fell last week while demand rose. In fact, that has been the story for both oil and gasoline worldwide for much of the last year.

"Global demand is rising at a faster rate than was expected," said George Gaspar, an energy industry analyst at investment firm Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee.

With gasoline prices already at record levels, well above $2 a gallon in California, energy is becoming a drain on many businesses and consumers. Rising fuel costs are almost like an added tax on everything from transportation to manufactured goods. And some analysts warned that those costs could soon do more serious damage to the economy.

"If within the next four weeks you don`t see a break, then it becomes an issue" for economic growth, said James Glassman, an economist at J.P. Morgan Securities in New York.

A number of factors are driving oil prices higher. Energy consumption in Asia has been particularly strong over the last year, for example, as China`s economy has boomed.

Last week, the International Energy Agency raised its forecast for global oil demand in 2004 by 2.1%, to 80.2 million barrels per day.

Oil supplies, meanwhile, have been tighter than was anticipated. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has been more disciplined about production and many cost-conscious oil companies have been reluctant to build up inventories for local markets.

U.S. crude oil inventories hit a 28-year low in January.

As demand rises while inventories remain limited, the result is more competition worldwide for available supplies, pushing market prices higher. Since the start of the year, the benchmark U.S. oil price has climbed 17% from $32.52 a barrel.

As for the U.S. gasoline market, supplies are constrained because many refineries are running full-out. And no new capacity is being added.

Stubbornly high energy costs run counter to what many observers figured would happen after the U.S. invasion of Iraq one year ago. A fast victory — and a ramp-up in Iraqi oil production — had been expected to push oil prices sharply lower after they crested at $37.83 a barrel last March. But the U.S. benchmark price never fell below $25 a barrel last year.

Now, OPEC — which supplies about one-third of the world`s oil — is planning to cut production in April, as the winter heating season in the Northern Hemisphere ends.

Some analysts believe that, even if OPEC does cut back, crude oil prices will nonetheless fall as heating demand ebbs.

Gasoline prices, however, may be a different story because of the refinery capacity issues, many experts say.

Philip Verleger, an energy analyst and visiting fellow at the Institute for International Economics, predicted that average pump prices could reach $2.50 a gallon in California this summer.

Southern California figures to feel a disproportionately big hit from rising fuel costs because the region is a major trade hub, as well as the nation`s largest manufacturing center.

"This is something quite serious. It could have a major ripple impact," said Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

Mario Rueda, president of Pacific Molding Inc. in Corona, a producer of scuba diving fins, said the costs of his raw materials have been creeping higher in recent months. He fears that the latest surge in oil prices will further erode his profitability.

Every week, Pacific Molding`s factory goes through as much as 23,000 pounds of rubber and synthetic rubber materials, in which petroleum is a component. Some of those materials shot up from 60 cents a pound in October to 75 cents a pound in January. Rueda said he was expecting to pay 90 cents when he places his next order in June.

"It makes me feel we`re losing some of the grip in staying in business here," he said Wednesday. "It`s tough to compete when your hands are tied."

Rueda said he would pass on some of the higher supply cost to his customers. "The ones who are paying more at the end of the chain is the consumer."

Dependable Logistics Services, a major trucking company based in Los Angeles, has been coping by tacking on a fuel surcharge for most of its customers. The surcharge, indexed to a baseline price of $1.25 a gallon, changes weekly. On Monday, the surcharge for customers using less-than-full trucks was 5.5% of the total tab, up from 3.5% three months earlier.

"It`s pretty substantial," said Michael Dougan, Dependable`s chief financial officer. He noted, however, that some larger clients don`t pay that surcharge — and that has cut into the company`s profit margins.

Dependable operates about 500 trucks and employs 1,000 people, mostly in California.

So far, Dougan said, the company hasn`t laid off workers, thanks partly to belt-tightening measures all around. But he gave no assurances for the future, especially if oil prices remain high.

"No responsible company can absorb those increases over the long run and it not affect employment," he said.

With U.S. job growth overall at meager levels over the last few months, despite other signs that the economy is advancing strongly, anything that would further impede job creation could depress consumer confidence and threaten the pace of spending.

Some analysts say that although higher energy costs are a drain on consumers and businesses, the threat to the economy overall isn`t yet severe.

"There are a lot of other things this economy has going for it now," said Peter Hooper, an economist at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York.

Falling interest rates are spurring another wave of mortgage refinancings, he noted. What`s more, federal tax refunds are substantially larger this year because of the tax cuts Congress voted on last year.

Energy costs so far "aren`t enough of a negative to offset those positives," Hooper said.

But that rings hollow for some consumers. Climbing gas prices are what forced 27-year-old Jose Gutierrez in January to give up on Jai Express, the courier service he had owned.

Traversing Southern California delivering packages and documents, Gutierrez said he was spending between $200 and $250 a week on gas. "With the maintenance, insurance and gas, I couldn`t afford it. I wasn`t making enough."

The high cost of filling gasoline tanks is already a political issue: In a nonbinding resolution, the U.S. Senate last week voted to suspend oil purchases for the nation`s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to divert more supply to the marketplace. The idea is opposed by the Bush administration.


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Times staff writer Arlene Martinez contributed to this report.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-newport…
COMMENTARY
At This Point, the Polls Toll for Bush
By Frank Newport
Frank Newport is editor in chief of the Gallup Poll.

March 18, 2004

It`s too early to rely on polls to predict exactly what will happen in the 2004 presidential election, but the data we do have, set in the context of recent history, provide some patterns worth watching.

First, consider job approval. President Bush has a 50% job approval rating at the moment. Gallup Poll archives since 1952, when modern polling techniques came into play, show that his rating is slightly below those of the most recent successful candidates for reelection. In March of their election years, Bill Clinton had a job approval rating of 52%, Ronald Reagan had a rating of 54% and Richard Nixon had a rating of 53%. The two other successful incumbents since 1952, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, had even higher job approval ratings at this point in 1956 and 1964. (And the losers? Gerald Ford had a job rating of 50% in March 1976, identical to Bush`s, while George H.W. Bush`s and Jimmy Carter`s ratings were 41% and 43% at this time in 1992 and 1980.)

History shows that the incumbent`s approval rating can change substantially as the year progresses. The factor to watch is the trend: It won`t be auspicious for the president should his ratings drift downward.

There are also less-than-positive signs for Bush when we look at a more direct measure: the hypothetical "trial heat" ballot pitting an incumbent against his opponent. In February and so far in March, each trial heat conducted by Gallup shows Kerry beating Bush.



Some arguments have been advanced that it is "normal" for an incumbent president to be losing to his opponent at this stage, given intense media coverage of the challengers in the primaries and the fact that the "real" campaign hasn`t begun.

But the numbers show otherwise. Since 1956, of eight presidents who sought a new term, five won. Two of these eventual winners started their reelection years on somewhat shaky ground but quickly recovered. Reagan was tied with Walter Mondale in a Gallup poll survey taken in January 1984. Clinton was behind Bob Dole in two Gallup polls conducted in January 1996. But from February 1984 on, Reagan was ahead of Mondale in every trial-heat ballot that Gallup conducted. And, in similar fashion, Clinton was ahead of Dole in every trial-heat ballot Gallup did from February on in 1996.

The other three incumbent presidents who won a new term in the second half of the 20th century — Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon — never once fell behind their opponents in the election year. Nixon, for example, was ahead of McGovern in every trial-heat ballot Gallup conducted in 1972, ranging from margins of 13 points to 24 points, despite less than overwhelming job approval ratings.

In fact, it`s usually the case that incumbents — whether they end up winning or losing in their reelection bids — start the election year doing well in trial heats. Two out of three of the incumbent presidents who went on to lose their elections were actually ahead of their eventual opponent at this point in their reelection bids. Carter was ahead of Reagan until June 1980 (they traded the lead off and on later). George H.W. Bush was ahead in every poll conducted in early 1992 until Ross Perot jumped ahead in May. (Clinton didn`t move into the lead until Perot dropped out in July.) Gerald Ford was behind his eventual opponent, Carter, in early polling, although Gallup did not begin pitting Ford against the little-known former Georgia governor until March 1976.

Obviously, this is not particularly good news for Bush. But there are caveats. The sample — eight cases — is small, and it doesn`t include the famous election of 1948, in which an incumbent president, Harry S. Truman, was behind in the polls of the time but went on to win.

Still, if Bush is reelected, he will become the only president out of the last eight incumbents to win after having been behind a challenger in Gallup polling conducted after January of his election year. And, if his job approval ratings don`t rise above 50% in April and May, his reelection would mark the first of those eight to win with less than majority approval in the late spring of their election year.


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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/165194_means18.html

President treads a rough road
Thursday, March 18, 2004

By MARIANNE MEANS
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON -- New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, of all people, can empathize with President Bush`s current political discomfort. "If there`s anything that my White House experience taught me, it`s that there can only be 52 rough weeks in a year," she joked recently.

The Bush administration has staggered recently from one rough-news week to another. The most stunning setback came Sunday, when terrorist-shocked Spain revolted against further participation in the Iraq war, electing as prime minister Socialist José Luís Rodriguez Zapatero. The new Spanish leader calls the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq "a disaster" and vows to pull out the 1,300 Spanish troops in Iraq in June if the United Nations role is not enlarged.

This came on the heels of a White House claim that the president`s Democratic rival John Kerry was "making up" his statement that some foreign leaders had told him privately they were rooting for him and wanted Bush out.

The GOP demanded he reveal with whom he had been speaking and Kerry understandably refused. To trump up a fake flap over this is silly because it`s no secret that there are many important folks abroad and at home who oppose Bush and his Iraq war.

In their eagerness to paint Kerry as a liar, the Republicans overreached. Vice President Cheney intoned, "We have a right to know what he is saying to foreign leaders that makes them so supportive of his candidacy."

Hello? Isn`t this the same vice president who so reveres confidentiality he is appealing all the way to the Supreme Court to keep secret the makeup of an industry-dominated task force that was supportive of the administration`s drill-for-oil energy policy?

There`s more, lots more. The White House so mishandled a tardy appointment for a token "manufacturing czar" that Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., complained about "gross incompetence."

The president proposed the new Commerce Department position six months ago as a cosmetic gesture meant to show administration concern over the loss of nearly 300,000 jobs the past three years. But after taking so long to fill the post, the administration then prepared to name a Nebraska businessman who had constructed a plant in China and recently laid off 1,180 U.S. workers at his company.

Anthony Raimondo had also committed the unforgivable political sin of contributing to Nebraska`s Democratic senator, Ben Nelson. Raimondo was hastily forced to withdraw.

This kind of mistake was a new wrinkle for the White House, which has been accused of many bad things but never before of ineptitude and sloppiness.

Then there are the polls, which are going south on the president. The latest USA Today-CNN-Gallup Poll reports 60 percent of those surveyed are dissatisfied with the way things are going. And 47 percent now say they think the economy is getting worse, compared with 44 percent who think it is getting better.

A similar New York Times/CBS News poll found that 54 percent feel the nation is going in the wrong direction and 52 percent felt his priorities for the country were not the same as theirs. Both polls found Kerry running neck-and-neck or narrowly beating the president.

After Kerry accused the president of stonewalling the federal commission investigating the 9/11 attacks, Bush reluctantly agreed to spend more than the one measly hour he had originally promised with panel officials.

A Bush commercial meant to stress his patriotic leadership that showed flag-draped coffins being carried from the Twin Tower rubble prompted outraged outcries from families of the victims.

The president has been trying to find bright spots in the economy to tout, with not much success. He appeared at a manufacturing plant recently and cheered the owners for creating two new jobs. Count them: two.

After his expensive new Medicare prescription drug bill passed Congress, the administration abruptly raised its estimated cost by more than $100 billion more than officials previously had admitted to lawmakers.

The Medicare program`s chief actuary, career civil servant Richard Foster, then accused his political superior of threatening to fire him if he shared with Congress the actual data showing how costly the prescription drug bill would be.

The superior, Thomas Scully, who ran Medicare until he left earlier this year to advise pharmaceutical companies, flippantly responded that if he had threatened to fire the auditor, it was only as a joke.

Democrats began calling for a repeal of the Medicare bill, which Bush cites as one of his major accomplishments.

And, of course, all of this is played out before the continuing casualties and violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel. A gloomy picture indeed for the Bush White House.



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Marianne Means is a Washington, D.C., columnist with Hearst Newspapers. Copyright 2004 Hearst Newspapers. She can be reached at 202-263-6400 or [e-mail]

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Das `Feuerwerk` zum Jahrestag geht weiter!

Bloodshed as Iraq Braces for Invasion Anniversary
Thu Mar 18, 2004 08:00 AM ET


By Fiona O`Brien
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A blast killed at least four people at an Iraqi hotel and gunmen killed three in an attack on staff of a U.S.-funded television station on Thursday, two days before the anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The blast in the southern city of Basra also wounded two people, including a child, at the Mirbad Hotel in the center of town, witnesses and hospital officials said.

The Basra attack came a day after a car bomb blast near a Baghdad hotel which U.S. officials said killed about 17 people. They blamed it on Muslim militants with links to al Qaeda.

Security forces have been on alert for an increase in violence ahead of Saturday`s first anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion on March 20 which toppled Saddam Hussein.

Basra, in Iraq`s mainly Shi`ite Muslim south, has seen far fewer attacks than Baghdad and the Sunni Muslim areas surrounding the capital. The hotel has been regularly used for news briefings by the British military, in charge of security in Basra, and by the civilian administration of Iraq`s second city.

A British military spokesman said it was not clear whether a car bomb or explosives planted in the street caused the blast.

In Baghdad, rescuers said there were no more survivors in the rubble of the central neighborhood devastated by Wednesday night`s suspected suicide bombing, which tore through the Mount Lebanon hotel and neighboring residential buildings.

The U.S. army said it bore the marks of the Ansar al-Islam militant group or of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian accused by Washington of working for al Qaeda to sow chaos in Iraq.

In Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a minibus carrying local employees of a U.S.-funded television station, killing three and wounding at least five, company officials said. Guerrillas have mounted repeated attacks on Iraqis seen as cooperating with occupying forces.

SMOKE RISING

Rescuers, some using bare hands, worked into the early hours of Thursday trying to find people trapped under the smoldering ruins of the hotel in Baghdad. Locals helped carry away bodies torn apart by the blast.

There was widespread confusion over the death toll.

On Wednesday, U.S. officers at the scene had estimated the death toll at 27. U.S. officials said on Thursday they believed 17 were killed. But Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Badran said six people had been confirmed dead and about 40 wounded:

"So far it looks like a car bomb. The number of casualties is six dead, one of them British and five of them Iraqi."

Officials in London named the dead Briton as 30-year-old telecommunications engineer Scott Mounce, originally from Hull.

A spokesman for Iraq`s Governing Council said reports suggested the car was moving when it exploded, probably driven by a suicide bomber.

A senior U.S. military official said the fact that the explosion was in the middle of the road suggested the Mount Lebanon may not have been the intended target.

"If somebody was trying to target the hotel you would expect them to get as close to the hotel as possible," he said.

By first light, smoke was still rising from a smoldering house, its front wall ripped off in the explosion. On the upper storey, a picture still hung on the wall, a mattress and carpet lying on the floor of what used to be someone`s bedroom.

Two U.S. soldiers were also killed on Wednesday in separate mortar attacks by guerrillas, the U.S. army said.

Mortar fire at a U.S. base near Baghdad killed one soldier and wounded seven on Wednesday afternoon, and in the evening a mortar attack on Qusayba on the Syrian border killed a Marine and wounded three, the military said.

The attacks brought to 391 the number of U.S. troops killed in action since the start of the war a year ago.

The Baghdad car bomb attack marred a White House campaign ahead of the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq to stress the progress made in the year since the war began.

"We will meet this test with strength and resolve. Democracy is taking root in Iraq and there is no turning back," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

"This is a time of testing. We will continue to stay to finish the job for the Iraqi people."

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Baquba)

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Published on Wednesday, March 17, 2004 by the Inter Press Service
For U.S. Hawks, Madrid 2004 = Munich 1938
by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - For neo-conservative and other right-wing U.S. hawks, Madrid has suddenly become Munich in 1938 and Spain`s Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

In an extraordinarily unanimous campaign, newspaper columnists and television commentators are flooding the media with cries of ``appeasement``, the dreaded epithet with which Chamberlain was permanently tagged after his meeting in Munich with Adolf Hitler, which permitted the Nazis to slice off a major chunk of Czechoslovakia.

In the hawks` view, the electoral defeat of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar`s People`s Party in the wake of last Thursday`s bombings, followed by Zapatero`s pledge to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq by Jul. 1, marks a collapse of will by a key U.S. ally in President George W. Bush`s ``war on terrorism`` that will only encourage Islamist extremists.

``Neville Chamberlain, en Espanol`` was the title of the featured column by Ramon Perez-Maura of Madrid`s `ABC` newspaper on the neo-conservative editorial page of Wednesday`s `Wall Street Journal`, while the New York Times` David Brooks asked in his bi-weekly column Tuesday, ``What is the Spanish word for appeasement?``

Tony Blankley, editorial page editor for `The Washington Times`, was quick to put a name to what he called Zapatero`s ``policy of appeasement`` -- ``The Spanish Disease`` -- while the increasingly neo-conservative editorial writers at the `Washington Post` worried that the Socialist leader`s ``rash`` response to the bombings will mark the beginning of a domino effect throughout Europe.

``The danger is that Europe`s reaction to a war that has now reached its soil``, the Post said, ``will be retreat and appeasement rather than strengthened resolve``, a point echoed by Edward Luttwak, a long-time fixture of the national-security commentariat who wrote in the `New York Times`, ``the Zapateros of Europe ... seem bent on validating the crudest caricatures of `old European` cowardly decadence``.

The image was starkly drawn as well by Robert Kagan, the neo-conservative who coined the phrase ``Americans are from Mars, and Europeans are from Venus``.

Warning that the bombings and the election results in Spain ``have brought the United States and Europe to the edge of the abyss``, the co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose alumni include the most powerful hawks in the Bush administration, poured scorn on European Commission President Romano Prodi`s comment after the attacks that, ``It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists``.

``Are Europeans prepared to grant all of al-Qaeda`s conditions in exchange for a promise of security?`` asked Kagan. ``Thoughts of Munich and 1938 come to mind``.

While some of these commentators conceded that Aznar might himself bear some responsibility for the sudden turn of events -- notably by trying to blame the Basque group ETA even while evidence that the perpetrators were radical Islamists was becoming overwhelming -- the basic thrust of all their comments was that, by supporting Zapatero, the Spanish electorate had lost its will to confront the larger terrorist threat, just as Chamberlain had done in handing over the Sudetenland.

This interpretation of the Spanish electorate`s choice and of Zapatero himself obviously ignored a number of factors, among them the fact that the Socialist leader said explicitly from the moment of his victory that he was committed to the fight against terrorism.

``My most immediate priority is to fight all forms of terrorism``, he said. ``And my first initiative, tomorrow, will be to seek a union of political forces to join us together in fighting it``.

That right-wing commentators here generally ignored that vow, or refused to take it seriously, helps illustrate their view -- which they have been hawking since Sep. 11 with great success among the U.S. public -- that Iraq is part of the larger war on terrorism, as opposed to there being two different conflicts.

In the hawks` view, opting out of one war means opting out of both -- a notion that accords very well with their ``you`re either with us or you`re against us`` political philosophy.

But the Spanish electorate, like much of the rest of the world, clearly did not see it that way. ``In this country, Iraq and terrorism are indelibly linked in the public mind``, according to Charles Kupchan, a foreign-policy specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. ``In Europe, they are almost indelibly separated``.

``Indeed, there`s a general sense in Europe that the war in Iraq has certainly not advanced the struggle against terror and probably degraded it``, he added, noting Tuesday`s release by the Pew Global Attitudes Project of surveys in eight European and Arab countries that showed strong majorities who concur in that assessment.

Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan, asserted that, by mixing Iraq with al-Qaeda, the neo-conservatives -- in particular -- had made a strategic error in the war against terrorism, which was now coming home to roost.

``Aznar, in supporting Bush on the war against Iraq, was not standing up to al-Qaeda``, Cole wrote, noting that the former prime minister`s decision to deploy troops and spend financial and intelligence resources in Iraq meant those same assets could not be used against al-Qaeda, even when it was clear from last May`s attack on a Spanish cultural center in Casablanca that Islamist terrorists had Spain in their sights.

``How much did Spain spend to go after the culprits in Casablanca?`` asked Cole? ``How much did Bush dedicate to that effort? How much did they instead invest in military efforts in Iraq?``

In that respect, Zapatero`s pledge to refocus the war against al-Qaeda can hardly be called a ``victory for (Osama) Bin Laden``, according to Cole.

But aside from this rather fundamental disagreement over whether Iraq is or is not part of the war against terrorism, the eagerness with which the hawks have taken to comparing the Spanish electorate`s verdict to the 1938 Munich agreement also betrays a basic distrust of democracy, about which the neo-cons have long been ambivalent.

In their view, it was liberal democracies that appeased Hitler in the 1930s and so paved the way to World War II and the Nazi Holocaust. Indeed, the perception that ``liberals`` failed to fight for their principles in the 1960s is what first alienated neo-conservatives from the Democratic Party.

The neo-cons` perception that Spaniards voted for the Socialists out of fear of al-Qaeda`s wrath confirms to them that democracy, particularly of the European variety, is weak.

``Now all European politicians will know that if they side with America on controversial security threats, and terrorists strike their nation, they might be blamed by their own voters``, wrote Brooks, who argued that U.S. voters would, in a comparable situation, rally around their president.

``Does anyone doubt that Americans and Europeans have different moral and political cultures``? he added.

But this contention ignores the growing weight of political opinion that the main reason for the last-minute swing to the Socialists was public outrage with the Aznar government`s attempts to withhold and manipulate what it knew about the perpetrators for its own political advantage, as well as citizens` opposition to the Iraq war.

Such attitudes were reported by journalists` following the election in Madrid.

``In interviews,” the `New York Times` reported, ”they said they (voted for the Socialists) not so much out of fear of terror as out of anger against a government they saw as increasingly authoritarian, arrogant and stubborn”.

That lesson might cut a little too close to the bone for the hawks, who led the drive to war in Iraq.


Copyright © 2004 IPS-Inter Press Service

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`If I am told to go, I will go.` Spanish soldiers prepare to return to home front

by Robert Fisk

18 March 2004 (The Independent) -- Ask the three Spanish soldiers atop their troop transporter if they want to stay or go home, and they roar with laughter amid the Iraqi traffic jam.

"We just do what we`re told to do," one of them shouted down, amid more ironic guffaws. But 28-year old Private Francisco - all beard and shades, who wants to see his wife and nine-month old baby - was about as frank as a Spanish soldier can be. "I think we should go," he said. "It`s clear that they`re going to do something worse in Spain if we stay here. I have a baby and a wife I want to be with. I want to go - and forget it all."

`They", of course, is al-Qa`ida and back at their Najaf headquarters, the soldiers never had much doubt about who bombed the Madrid trains. The only man to suspect that Eta might have been to blame - he quickly abandoned the idea - was the deputy commander, Lieutenant Colonel Alfredo Fernandes Benito, who is a Basque from Irun. "Eta had attacked civilians before, but I couldn`t understand how al-Qa`ida would do this," he said. "I could understand a military target, however much I would disapprove of such a thing. But to attack civilians like that! Why should Arabs have attacked Spain?"

It`s not difficult to understand the officer`s puzzlement. His 140-strong unit - Spain has about 1,500 soldiers in Najaf and the neighbouring city of Diwaniya - is not part of the occupation force.

Officially, it`s here on a civil support mission, helping farmers irrigate and fertilise their land and help local justices set court systems - Lt-Col Benito is a military judge in the Canary Islands - and once the people of Najaf learnt of the Madrid bombings, they offered their condolences to Spanish troops in the streets.

"The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Dawa party and even the more fanatic Islamic people, they all came here to see us at our headquarters to say how sorry they were," Lt-Col Benito says. "There are some small Sunni groups and they came too, and some of the party people offered to postpone our normal Saturday meeting last week because they said we were in mourning. We get on well with the people here. But leaving? Look, I am a soldier and I obey my orders. I am a volunteer. If I am told to go, I will go. We do not have opinions."

The Spanish soldiers here all voted by postal ballot, before the Madrid bombings and the colonel says he has no idea whom they might have favoured in the elections. Western officials attached to the Spanish headquarters in Najaf have fewer qualms when they are guaranteed anonymity.

"It`s a blow for us if they leave. It`s a victory for al-Qa`ida, and we`re really worried it will leave a vacuum around us here," one says. "We`ve come to rely on the Spanish. Officially I suppose they will be leaving on 30 June, which is what their new prime minister says, but I`m told they might stay until July or August if they`re going to turn out the lights."

It`s not just the vacuum that western civilians worry about here. The road to Baghdad - Highway 8, the "road of death" - is now the scene of almost daily assassinations of western aid workers, occupation officials, even Red Cross personnel. The seven Spanish intelligence officers murdered in Iraq just before the Spanish battalion arrived were gunned down on the same stretch of road. Among the most recent victims was a former American Marine helicopter pilot who had returned to Iraq with an NGO. At night now gangs of armed men - 25 or 30-strong - roam the main highway between Najaf and Kerbala.

General Ricardo Sanchez, who seems to exude more confidence after each disaster in Iraq, claims that Spain`s probable withdrawal is "clearly manageable", that "it is not a significant military problem for the coalition to be able to cover that area." But if any other nation withdraws - the Poles, for example, who run the international division in central Iraq - then General Sanchez`s position will be a lot less "manageable".

The Cuscatlan Battalion of the Brigada Multinacional Plus Ultra - the "International Brigade Above All Others" - is based on the campus of Kufa university and its canteen is plastered with posters of Grenada, Zaragosa, Huelva and Malaga. They share their headquarters with 150 Salvadoran soldiers who believe they will not be withdrawn - San Salvador might be outside even al-Qa`ida`s range - but the Spaniards in Najaf feel that the Madrid bombings have brought them closer to their homeland. One of them lost a close friend in the army - the trains exploded close to the Spanish ministry of defence - and the soldiers had only a single Spanish international television channel to tell them of the slaughter. "We used to think of `us` here and `them` - our Spanish people - `there`," Colonel Benito says. "Now we think much more that `here` is also Spain."

Copyright: The Independent. UK.

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Polish leader: We were `taken for a ride` about Iraq`s WMD


Kwasniewski says his country has been deceived about Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction.


WARSAW - In a first sign of official criticism in Poland of the US-led invasion of Iraq, President Aleksander Kwasniewski Thursday said that his country had been "taken for a ride" about the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction in the strife-torn country.

"That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that`s true. We were taken for a ride," Kwasniewski said.

He argued however that it made no sense to pull US-led coalition troops out of Iraq.

His comments marked the first time Poland has publicly criticized Washington`s argument for invading Iraq and for winning support from Poland and other European allies such as Britain and Spain.

Poland heads up a 9,000-strong multinational force patrolling a swathe of Iraq south of Baghdad.

Warsaw itself has the fourth-largest contingent in the coalition, with around 2,500 soldiers.

Kwasniewski was speaking days after the prime minister-elect of Spain, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, said Madrid would withdraw its 1,300 soldiers from the Polish-led contingent by June 30, unless the United Nations took over administration of Iraq.

The Polish head of state questioned the wisdom of pulling foreign troops from the strife-torn country saying such a move could have a counter effect.

"What would be the point of pulling the troops if it meant a return to war, ethnic cleansing and conflict in neighboring countries," he told a group of visiting French journalists.

"If we protest against the United States` dominant role in world politics and we withdraw our troops knowing they will be replaced by US soldiers, what would be the point of such a move?" he questioned.

He said he was disappointed by the new Spanish government`s threat to withdraw its 1,300 soldiers.

"We cannot alter our mission to stabilize Iraq to one to destabilize the country," he said.

"Passiveness will lead us nowhere," he added

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The Pinocchio presidency
A former diplomat says it`s time to blow the whistle on the Bush administration`s blatant lies.

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By Joe Wilson



March 16, 2004 | President George W. Bush, in a recent "Meet the Press" interview, acknowledged to interviewer Tim Russert that the upcoming presidential campaign would be a time for the American people to assess whether he had used "good judgment" in his key decisions on foreign policy, and that he welcomed that debate.

I agree. In a time of great stress to our international leadership, national security, economy and social fabric, it is long past time for us as a nation to engage in a thoughtful discussion about our future, devoid as much as possible of the histrionics and dirty political tricks that have characterized recent campaigns. This is not a moment for business as usual. We have been in two wars over the past four years. One, against al-Qaida and the Taliban government of Afghanistan, was perfectly legitimate. It was supported by the overwhelming majority of the American people and our allies. The other, against Iraq, still provokes legitimate debate over war aims and goals, and the consequences to our national security of having opened an unnecessary second front in the war on terrorism. Our country remains under threat of terrorist attack, a threat that has likely increased as a consequence of the international anger at our attack and ongoing occupation of Iraq. Yet with the activation of our National Guardsmen and reserve forces for service overseas, many of our first responders are now over there instead of here protecting the homeland. In the meantime, the government`s budget is hemorrhaging red ink with annual budget deficits in the $500 billion range, and we are piling on national debt less than a decade before the baby boomers retire and begin drawing Social Security.

Our international leadership is also on the wane, as those who might otherwise follow instead resent our having unleashed the dogs of war and confused the exercise of power with the abuse of force. The collective security arrangements enshrined in the United Nations system, and in the Western alliance of NATO (which we helped create and which has served our interests well over 60 years), are now threatened as leading administration supporters like Richard Perle delight in predicting its demise, without any notion of what might replace it other than American boys and girls in uniform.

In these perilous times the president should be held accountable for his stewardship. He should run on his record. But what do we see from him and his campaign? First, a political ad that desecrates the memories of our dead at the World Trade Center, using flag-draped bodies as political props. Now we see an ad that racially profiles olive-skinned men as terrorists while mendaciously suggesting that the Democratic candidate and war hero John Kerry is soft on terrorism. Some have rightly made the connection between that ad and the infamous Willie Horton ad of the Bush/Dukakis campaign of 1988, an ad that exploited racial fear, but a better comparison might be with the negative ad run against triple amputee and Vietnam veteran, Max Cleland. In that one Cleland was made to appear as part of a trio whose other members were Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. When not running nasty ads, Bush`s attack dogs are busy launching vicious attacks on the characters of those who would dare to point out where this administration has failed the American people. Who will soon forget Ann Coulter`s two articles defaming Max Cleland? It`s worth noting that not a single supporter of Bush had the decency to defend Cleland and criticize that smear. Instead Coulter`s libel was widely circulated by conservatives. And just the other day, Max Boot, a neoconservative publicist who coined the "jodhpur and pith helmet" term to promote his imperialistic view of America`s future, decided to smear former Air Force officer Karen Kwiatkowski, as well as retired CIA officer Ray McGovern and myself. These smears must be understood as part of the Bush campaign strategy of "slime and defend."

Those who parade like schoolyard bullies operate in the tradition of the founder of the breed: Donald Segretti, the political trickster of the Nixon administration, who called his cadres "ratfuckers." The current "ratfuckers," like those in Watergate before them, have loyalty to ideology before country and believe in the politics of personal destruction instead of democratic debate. But like schoolyard bullies everywhere, they must be confronted.

No more will we stand idly by while the president hides from the 9/11 commission. We will learn what he knew and when he knew it. We have already learned that it was the Bush White House that gave the orders to fly Osama bin Laden`s family and a suspected al-Qaida go-between out of the country in the days after 9/11 even as Americans were grounded.

No more will we stand idly by while the administration manipulates intelligence, like the Niger uranium fraud, or worse yet, uses manufactured intelligence from discredited sources to circumvent the necessary channels of government, forcing lies instead of facts to become the basis on which policy decisions are made. And we will not accept attempts to scapegoat the intelligence services when it is abundantly clear that the main problem is the perversion of the system by a few at the top, not the system itself. We will not accept the lies by Bush and his pack of surrogates that John Kerry is not committed to proper intelligence, when in fact it is this administration that has politicized and deranged intelligence to an unprecedented degree.

No more will we stand idly by while the administration blatantly lies about the reasons it went to war with Iraq, or about the costs of the occupation. This was not a war about weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, or even about the liberation of Iraq and the overthrow of a brutal tyrant. This was a war about "changing the dynamics" in the Middle East, as neoconservative William Kristol stated in a recent debate with me in Odessa, Texas. But we did not debate a "change the dynamics" war. That was not the reason Bush gave to our Congress when it voted on a war resolution. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, guardsmen, reservists, and their families deserve the truth from their government. As taxpayers, we deserve to know why $150 billion has been spent to put Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted bank embezzler, back in Baghdad -- and why the Pentagon keeps financing his operations with U.S. dollars after he has openly boasted to having provided a stream of false information to government officials. We also deserve to know why Andrew Natsios, the head of the Agency for International Development, so badly miscalculated what we would be required to spend on the reconstruction of Iraq when he told Ted Koppel on ABC`s "Nightline" that our expenditures would not exceed $1.7 billion, total. Now we know the cost will run to hundreds of billions.

No more will we stand idly by while the Bush campaign lies about John Kerry`s record on defense and national security. The criticism of his vote to shut down the B-2 bomber program came about as the result of recommendations by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and President George H.W. Bush. It is outrageous for the Bush-Cheney campaign to take that vote out of context, as it is outrageous to suggest that a unanimously adopted congressional resolution to return monies hidden away in the National Reconnaissance Office to the taxpayer is to be weak on national security.

We Americans need a sound debate on the actions of our government over that past three and a half years, on our national security posture and on the future direction of our country. The president has said repeatedly that he welcomes the opportunity to defend his record. He should tell his minions to run just such an aggressive defense of his record and his vision of the future, but not a series of vicious attacks characterized by lies and disinformation as he is doing now. But his campaign of lies is consistent with his administration. Should he continue to march down that low road, he should know that this time the band of brothers and sisters will be the first responders.


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About the writer
Joseph C. Wilson IV, the former U.S. deputy chief of mission to Iraq during the Gulf War and ambassador to Niger during the George H.W. Bush administration, blew the whistle on the George W. Bush administration`s lies about Niger uranium sales to Iraq. He is the author of the upcoming book "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife`s CIA Identity -- A Diplomat`s Memoir" to be published by Carroll and Graf on April 30 and serialized by Salon.

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Wie eben schon von einer arabischen Seite berichtet. Weitere Nackenschläge für Bush.
Das Neue Europa wird Alt.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 18. März 2004, 20:43
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,291337,00.html
Irak-Politik

Polens Präsident greift Bush und Blair an

Polens Staatspräsident Kwasniewski hat erstmals öffentlich Kritik an den USA und Großbritannien geübt. Er fühlt sich von den Regierungen in London und Washington in Sachen irakischer Massenvernichtungswaffen getäuscht. Er deutete einen früheren Abzug polnischer Truppen aus dem Irak an.

Warschau - Aleksander Kwasniewski nannte die beiden Staaten nicht beim Namen. Doch vor einer Gruppe Journalisten aus ganz Europa sagte er, er fühle sich nicht wohl angesichts der Tatsache, "dass wir bei den Informationen über Massenvernichtungswaffen getäuscht wurden".

Er fügte hinzu, dass der Irak ohne den gestürzten Präsidenten Saddam Hussein ein besseres Land sei. Eine Abschrift der Äußerungen Kwasniewskis wurden vom Pressebüro des Präsidenten veröffentlicht.

Zuvor hatte sich Kwasniewski zum Verbleib polnischer Truppen im Irak geäußert. Er deutete an, dass diese früher als geplant aus dem von Terror zerrütteten Land abgezogen werden könnten. Alles deute darauf hin, dass der Abzug nach dem erfolgreichen Abschluss der Stabilisierungsmission beginnen könne. "Das könnte meiner Ansicht nach schon bald sein, Anfang 2005", sagte Kwasniewski im polnischen Rundfunk. Zuvor hatte Kwasniewski erklärt, der Abzug der polnischen Truppen könne frühestens Mitte 2005 beginnen.

Polen befehligt eine multinationale Truppe in Irak, zu der auch die spanischen Soldaten gehören, welche die neue spanische Regierung möglicherweise abziehen will. Die polnische Regierung ist mit ihrem Engagement in Irak unter Druck geraten, seit die spanischen Sozialisten nach ihrem Wahlsieg den baldigen Abzug der spanischen Truppen angekündigt haben.

Einlenken bei EU-Verfassung

Im Streit um die EU-Verfassung deutet sich an, dass Polen möglicherweise einlenken wird. Nachdem am Mittwoch bereits Außenminister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz Kompromissbereitschaft hatte erkennen lassen, sagte Kwasniewski der "Financial Times Deutschland", die von der irischen Ratspräsidentschaft vorgeschlagene neue Gewichtung der doppelten Mehrheit sei "eine wichtige und interessante Idee, über die man nachdenken sollte".

Nach Darstellung des Blattes sieht das irische Kompromisspapier vor, dass künftig ein Beschluss im EU-Ministerrat als angenommen gilt, wenn 55 Prozent der Staaten zustimmen, die zusammen mindestens 55 Prozent der Bevölkerung repräsentieren. In dem im Dezember gescheiterten Verfassungsentwurf war eine doppelte Mehrheit mit 50 Prozent der Staaten und 60 Prozent der Bevölkerung vorgeschrieben. Dieses Abstimmungsverhältnis war am Widerstand Polens und Spaniens gescheitert.


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McCain war der Gegenkandidat von Bush bei der Bewerbung um die Präsidentschaftskandidatur 2000. Er ist ein Republikaner alter Schule.

March 18, 2004
POLITICAL POINTS | 3.18 1:14 PM
McCain Comes to Kerry`s Defense on National Security
By CARL HULSE

Senator John McCain added a rare bit of restraint to the escalating tone of the presidential campaign today, rejecting assertions by other Republicans that his colleague, Senator John Kerry, would endanger national security if elected.

``I don`t think that,`` Mr. McCain said on CBS this morning. ``I think that John Kerry is a good and decent man. I think he has served his country. I think he has different points of view on different issues and he will have to explain his voting record. But this kind of rhetoric, I think, is not helpful in educating and helping the American people make a choice.``

Mr. McCain also defended Mr. Kerry in an appearance on NBC`s "Today," saying in response to a question that he did not believe Mr. Kerry was "weak on defense."

But Mr. McCain made it clear he supported the president and said he had no intention of joining his fellow Vietnam veteran on the ticket after he recently left the door slightly open to that possibility, much to the distress of the White House.

``I don`t want to be vice president of the United States,`` Mr. McCain said on CBS, adding that he enjoyed his work in the Senate. ``I do not want to leave the Republican Party. I would not be vice president of the United States on either ticket.``

Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican who opposed President Bush in the 2000 primaries and was himself the subject of some tough attacks, indicated he was alarmed by the ferocity of the rhetoric so early in the campaign. He suggested that both sides might want to pull back a bit.

``I think it`s because both parties are going to their bases rather than going to the middle. I regret it. I think there are serious challenges facing America in the form of Medicare, Social Security, health care, deficit spending. And I think we ought to have open and honest debates on those issues,`` said the Arizona senator. If the attacks and counterattacks continue, he said, voters might ultimately tune out.

``I would certainly hope that we could raise the level of this debate,`` he said. ``Otherwise we`re going to have very low voter turnouts in November.``



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
A Divider, Not a Uniter


By Richard Cohen

Thursday, March 18, 2004; Page A31


Sooner or later some industrious journalist will comb through all the promises George W. Bush made during his first presidential campaign and see which ones he kept. A good start would be to return to the speech he gave in Iowa at the beginning of the 2000 campaign. He promised to reduce taxes, to "rebuild the military," to institute a missile defense system and to impose education standards -- all of which he has done. Still, he gets a failing grade.

For it was at Ames, Iowa, on Aug. 14, 1999, that Bush declared himself "a uniter, not a divider" -- maybe his most important promise and the one he has clearly not kept. He prefaced that vow by saying, "I reject the ugly politics of division." Instead he has reveled in it, pursuing policies and appointments that sometimes seem designed to do nothing more than energize the president`s conservative base and drive everyone else up the wall.

This has been the greatest disappointment of the Bush presidency -- the president`s most personal failure. I confess I am -- or was -- a bit surprised. Whether naively or not, I took Bush at his word and thought maybe, just maybe, he would do nationally what he had done as governor of Texas. Among other things, he won reelection there with an amazing 27 percent of the black vote and 49 percent of the Hispanic vote. For a Republican in Texas, those are heroic numbers. Bush could fairly claim to be a uniter.

That has turned out not to be the case. The country remains as divided as it was under Bill Clinton, who was such a divisive figure that Al Gore virtually turned his back on him. What`s more, Bush has had the same effect abroad as he has at home. He has all but wrecked the Atlantic alliance. He is so unpopular in Britain that when he visited there in November, he had to remain in a security bubble. A recent poll shows that 57 percent of the British view him unfavorably. Bush has managed to put the vaunted "special relationship" on the rocks.

But Britain is Bush Country -- a virtual red state -- compared with some other European countries. The poll by Pew Research Center shows that in both France and Germany, 85 percent of the people view him unfavorably. In Turkey, another NATO ally, it`s 67 percent, and in the Arab world . . . well, as Mel Gibson says about his father, don`t go there.

Of course, as in the United States, some of this animosity or antipathy toward Bush has to do with policy and programs -- the war in Iraq in particular. But to a degree that is impossible to quantify, it also has to do with Bush`s demeanor, a perceived smugness and a plain unwillingness to be what he promised he would be: a uniter.

On the contrary, he came out of the gate as a hard-edged conservative. In foreign affairs, he repudiated treaties and agreements. He became unilateralism personified. In domestic affairs, he acted for all the world as if he had won a landslide election and not a squeaker that had to be decided by the Supreme Court. If it wasn`t for the "activist judges" he so dislikes, he would now be just another gentleman rancher in Texas.

"I know how to lead," Bush said that day in Iowa -- but he does not. Leadership does not mean going your own way. It means getting others to follow, constructing a consensus. Bush has failed to do this, and the failure is not due to a lack of leadership skills. It`s purposeful. The narrowness of the election kept Bush close to his conservative base. Among other things, he has nominated judges who are not mere conservatives but true right-wing reactionaries. In two cases his nominees had to be sneaked onto the bench by fiat, not by Senate confirmation. Just recently Bush threw his base the red meat of a frivolous constitutional amendment that would bar gay marriage. It`s a sop to homophobes and Bush knows it. His body language gives him away.

I am constantly surprised at the animosity toward Bush. When, for instance, I said in a recent column that he had handled himself "admirably" in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, I was barraged by dissenting e-mails. I thought I had said something unremarkable, but clearly Bush has become so divisive a figure that some people cannot give him credit even for what, to be fair, he has earned credit for. He did, for a moment, unite a wounded nation. Pity he could not or would not make it last.

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March 19, 2004
A Year Later, an Iraqi Family Is Free but Wary
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 18 — Just one year ago, Om Abbas al-Imari was clearing out her kitchen cabinets. As tanks rolled into her neighborhood and Iraqi soldiers took up defensive positions, she boxed up the family`s china and the one television set and the little gold cups with "ahlan wa sahlan," or "welcome," stamped on them.

Then, a couple days later, the bombs began to fall.

The family rushed south, three generations of Imaris crammed into a sputtering Toyota minivan stuffed with sacks of bread, tea, sugar and rice, fleeing the bombardment of Baghdad for the shelter of the countryside. They knew the Americans were coming. But they had no idea what was next.

"We had waited so long for Saddam to fall that we were stunned when it began to happen," Om Abbas said. "Would he turn chemical weapons on us? Would our country be destroyed? We didn`t know what to feel. It was between fear and hope, hope and fear."

The Imaris are Shiite Muslims, like most Iraqis. They may practice their religion now without the persecution they endured under Saddam Hussein. But they disagree over how strict to be. They weathered the war, but they are wary about the future.

A middle-class clan of artists and laborers, six grown daughters and four grown sons, they are held together by a wizened grandmother, Om Abbas, who scans the newspaper every day for some mention of Saddam Hussein.

"But we know nothing, nothing," she said about Mr. Hussein, who was captured in December and is in American custody. "It`s like there is a dark curtain around him. He still has evil power."

Day to day life is not radically different for the family after Mr. Hussein`s fall. Even with a steady rhythm of bombings and bloodshed, the Imari men still go to work. The Imari women still stay at home. They boil chickpeas and mop floors and watch the Imari children chase after soggy soccer balls in the street, just as they always did. Their neighborhood, Zeiyouna, looks the same as it did before the war, except for a new car lot down the street.

It is the atmosphere that has changed, not the landscape.

Abbas, the eldest son, said that for the first time in more than 20 years, he feels relaxed.

A former political prisoner who says he was tortured for years for suggesting that Iraqis should not fight fellow Shiite Muslims during the war with Iran, he works as a guard at a girl`s school, making $4 a day. "It`s not the best job in the world," he admits. "But nobody is hurting me."

Hamid, a younger brother and the family artist, is still a sign painter. But the messages have changed. Around this time last year, he was asked to paint banners that read "Happy Birthday Our Magnificent Saddam." Now, he gets paid to make pretty letters that say "Get Rid of the Americans" or "Drink Pepsi."

Om Abbas can buy the bananas she loves. In the prelude to the war and during the long years of sanctions that preceded it, bananas were far too expensive.

"All I could do was look at them," she laughed. "Now I eat."

During the bombardment, the Imaris stayed with relatives in Kut, southeast of Baghdad. They thought it would be safe. Instead, there was heavy fighting there, too.

"Sometimes, it felt like the bombs were falling right on us," said Abu Abbas al-Imari, the family patriarch. Both he and his wife use the old-fashioned titles meaning father and mother of Abbas, their eldest son.

Three weeks after the bombardment, they returned to Baghdad. Americans soldiers were cruising the streets.

"They looked young, they looked strong," Abu Abbas said. "We wanted to give them food and flowers, but we were embarrassed by what we had to offer."

The euphoria did not last long. The Imaris found their home intact, but in the power vacuum that followed, looters swept through the city.

"It was the law of the jungle," said Hamid, 36. "Even going to the market was a risk."

The violence continued for months. And it is still going on. Ahlam, one of the daughters, lost her husband in January, shot to death by looters. "That would have never happened during Saddam," she said.

Like many Iraqis, Ahlam, 38, is sometimes taken aback by her new freedom. "We don`t know whether to stay in the cage or fly away," she said. "We have freedom, yes. But we don`t know what to do with it."

She pulled at the corners of her head scarf and began to cry.

"Do you know what you want in life?" she asked one day, apropos of nothing. "I don`t."

After years of repression and discrimination, Iraq`s Shiites are reclaiming a culture and an identity that Mr. Hussein tried to bury. Shiite prayer leaders were murdered; sons disappeared. Religious festivals were canceled or curtailed.

But all that changed when Mr. Hussein was ousted.

Now the family is split over how to be good Muslims. Some members are "multazem," or committed; others are more secular.

The role of Islam is one of the stickiest issues in the new Iraq. Last month, members of the interim government nearly scuttled the signing of the new constitution over an argument about whether Islam is "a" source of law or "the" source of law.

This month, for the Shiite holy day of Ashura, Om Abbas and her husband took a bus to Karbala, the holiest of Shiite cities, about two hours` drive from Baghdad. The couple, she 67, he 69, hit the streets, joining the thousands singing, chanting, dancing and beating themselves bloody.

"It was beautiful," she said.

Her husband is a religious man. Three times a week he goes to a Koran class in a "liberated" building that used to house the secret police. "It is like a joke that we are meeting here, a good joke," he said.

The new religious freedoms, though, have caused some tensions.

Ahmed, one of the brothers, is known in the family as a playboy, not so God-fearing. "One day I pray, one day I don`t," said Ahmed, 34, a construction worker. "What`s the big deal?"

Asia, the youngest daughter, wears thick make-up and pads around in sultry pajamas. Even though more women are wearing hijabs now, partly as a way of expressing their Shiite solidarity, Asia goes bareheaded.

"My brothers say it is forbidden," she said. "But they don`t know what it`s like to always be told what to do."

Her father shakes his head — in resignation, not anger. "These young people," he said. "You can`t force them to be religious. If you do, they will grow to hate Islam."

Asia is causing other headaches for the family. Twenty-three years old, with big almond eyes, she has turned down suitor after suitor. Her parents are desperate for her to get married. She will not hear of it.

"Saddam may have been a bad leader, but he was handsome," she told her mother the other day. "Find me someone who looks like that."

"Walla!" Om Abbas exclaimed. "Help me, God!"

Asia insisted she was never a fan of Mr. Hussein, but she said she was sad in July when his two notorious sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed in a shootout with American soldiers.

"Yes, they were cruel," Asia said. "But when you grow up with them and see them all the time living such a beautiful life, it doesn`t feel good to turn on the TV one day and see their bodies in boxes."

Abbas had no trouble seeing Uday and Qusay in boxes.

"Saddam and his people made me feel like a carcass," he said.

He and his mother cheered in December when a neighbor came running over, saying Mr. Hussein had been captured. Some of the Imaris did not believe it. "We were living in a time of rumors," said Zenab, another daughter.

But when they climbed up to the roof and listened to all the gunshots across the city, they knew people were celebrating; they knew it was true.

Om Abbas then promised to give a kilogram of mutton to every neighbor when Mr. Hussein is convicted.

His trial has not been scheduled. Many Iraqis have complained that the Americans are being too secretive, just like Mr. Hussein used to be.

In 1981, while Abbas was an army conscript fighting in the Iran-Iraq war, he was charged with treason and taken away. According to him, all he did was talk with fellow Shiite soldiers about how they thought it was wrong to kill Iranians, who are mostly Shiites.

He was hung from his arms, he said, and tortured with electric probes. Every part of his body was beaten. He still walks with the stiffness of a man whose back has been broken, along with his spirit.

Abu Abbas lost his job as a policeman because he was accused of not turning in his treasonous son. His sisters were expelled from school. Om Abbas continuously shooed away secret police who spied on their home.

"It was like Saddam put an X on the entire family," Abbas said.

But his mother never gave up. While Abbas was in prison, she planned picnic visits. She cooked kebabs. She baked cakes. She even sewed a tent to shelter the family when they went to the prison and waited in the yard.

Finally, six years later, Abbas was released. He was sent back to the army but escaped from a base by squeezing through a window. His mother smuggled him to northern Iraq, where he floated across a river in an inner tube to Syria. He returned home last March, days before the bombardment began.

Many people in Iraq seem to have nine lives, nine painful lives. Today, part of the catharsis is sharing the pain.

This week Abbas went to meet with some fellow ex-prisoners at an office in Baghdad called the Free Prisoner Society. Inside, there were lines of prematurely gray men who walked stiffly like Abbas. A rumor was floating around that the Americans would pay $2,000 for each year a man spent in prison if he could prove he was wrongly jailed. There is no such policy, but one of the services the Free Prisoner Society provides is helping men find their case files.

But when Abbas gave his name to a clerk working a computer, the man shook his head. "Your name is not here," he said.

That afternoon, Abbas talked on the telephone to his sister Narjis, who lives in Denmark. Years ago, she married an architect and got out.

"When are you coming home?" he asked. "It`s not so bad here. There are fewer bombs."

Narjis`s daughter is sick with diabetes. During the sanctions, after the first gulf war, the girl nearly died because there was a shortage of insulin. "As soon as there is treatment, we`ll come back," Narjis told Abbas. "I miss you."

Later that day, Abbas and his father went to a Koran chanting class. The family says Abbas is the most religious because he is the eldest. When he was a boy, he used to follow his father to the mosque.

"Do good deeds that for them are gardens in which rivers flow," a turbaned imam chanted as Abbas and his father sat following copies of the Koran in their laps. Again, Abbas was at father`s elbow as they prayed.

When they got home, Om Abbas had plates of chicken and rice and yogurt ready for them. She was in top spirits, as usual.

Om Abbas said she likes the Americans. Whenever a soldier dies, she says, she thinks of their mothers.

The Imaris live in a neighborhood that is home to many ex-army officers. Most are Sunni Muslims. The only Shiite flag to be seen flies from the Imaris` roof.

A few weeks ago, two sisters in the neighborhood who worked as translators for American soldiers were shot while driving home. One lived. One died. Neighbors said it was the former army officers who did it. A number of other translators have been killed recently.

Asked whether, if she were a young woman, she would take a job with the Americans when it seems so dangerous, Om Abbas did not hesitate.

"Young woman, I`ll go work for them now," she replied. "I`ll cook them chicken. I`ll sew their clothes."

"Why live scared?" Om Abbas asked. "You can only die once."



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March 19, 2004
One Year After

One year ago, President Bush began the war in Iraq. Most Americans expected military victory to come quickly, as it did. Despite the administration`s optimism about what would follow, it was also easy to predict that the period after the fall of Baghdad would be very messy and very dangerous. In that sense, right now we`re exactly where we expected to be.

It`s nonetheless important to remember that none of this might have happened if we had known then what we know now. No matter what the president believed about the long-term threat posed by Saddam Hussein, he would have had a much harder time selling this war of choice to the American people if they had known that the Iraqi dictator had been reduced to a toothless tiger by the first Persian Gulf war and by United Nations weapons inspectors. Iraq`s weapons programs had been shut down, Mr. Hussein had no threatening weapons stockpiled, the administration was exaggerating evidence about them, and there was, and is, no evidence that Mr. Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Right now, our highest priority is making the best of a very disturbing situation. Even our European allies who opposed the war want to see Iraq stabilized and turned over to its citizens — even if they don`t necessarily see Washington as the force to do that. The other possibility, an Iraq flung into chaos and civil war, open to manipulation by every unscrupulous political figure and terrorist group in the Middle East, is too awful to contemplate.

This is a good moment to take stock of what has been accomplished and what has not, especially since the day is rapidly approaching when the United States hopes to turn over the governing of Iraq to the leaders of the nation`s three major ethnic or religious groups — who have shown no serious signs of being able to cooperate.

Grim Scenes From Iraq

In the short run, the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of its leader have done virtually nothing to stop terrorism. In Iraq, as in Spain, Turkey, Indonesia and other countries, terrorist attacks have continued since the capture of Mr. Hussein. On Wednesday, and again yesterday, Americans saw on television news the flames and casualties from bombings in Baghdad and Basra by forces opposed to the American-led occupation, which have become more deadly and more sophisticated in response to every change in tactics by American soldiers. Indeed, the war in Iraq has diverted scarce resources from the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and other places.

For many Iraqis, freedom has come at a high price. In Baghdad, civilians line up at offices where the American military doles out money to compensate them for relatives killed, limbs lost and eyes blinded in the war. The innocent Iraqi casualties of Mr. Bush`s war are literally countless because the Pentagon refuses to estimate their number.

Still, there have been important gains that are the basis of our hopes for the future.

A bloodthirsty dictator who tortured and murdered his people, and sacrificed their well-being to his gilded palaces, is locked up. An interim constitution has been adopted, a step toward laying the groundwork for a democratic government in Iraq, should the country`s fractious groups ever resolve their differences. American-led efforts to rebuild Iraq have progressed to the point that some services are better than they were under Mr. Hussein, and Iraqis are starting to express satisfaction with how things are going. Iraq`s power grid, for example, generates more electricity than ever.

Still, there are enormous gaps. According to the United States Agency for International Development, Iraq has a third less drinking water than it did before the war. And the pace of the rebuilding is alienating some Iraqis who clearly overestimated the powers and efficiency of the occupying forces. While some of that disappointment was inevitable, there was a bewildering lack of planning put into the occupation by an administration that seemed to believe its own talk about American soldiers` being greeted with flowers as an army of liberation.

The so-called surgical bombing did indeed limit damage to Iraq`s civilian areas, but American troops did not come into Baghdad in enough force last April to deter the shocking sabotage and looting that occurred. In addition, the American government, under presidents from both parties, had spent 13 years in denial about the civilian toll of the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. The Bush administration was unprepared for the total collapse of Iraq and for the disastrous state of crucial services.

Strains on the American Military

The American military`s ability to deal with all of this — and supervise the construction of a new democracy — is declining by the week. Even with the current rotation, reducing American troop strength to 110,000 from 130,000, the Army, Marine, National Guard and Army Reserve forces cannot sustain the occupation.

Roughly one in three of the Army`s 480,000 active-duty soldiers are on duty overseas, and an even higher proportion of its combat brigades are either in the field or have just returned. Rotations are spaced too closely together — some of the troops that took part in the invasion of Iraq are to return there later this year — and that cuts into training and readiness. The strain on the Reserves and the National Guard is already enormous. While sending more American troops to Iraq is not the answer, the United States does need a larger active Army.

For Iraq, the only answer is greater peacekeeping and police help through the United Nations, from nations as varied as France, India, Bangladesh, Russia and the Arab countries. These nations can provide more than the token forces the United States is getting from most of its current allies, but are unlikely to help until their citizens see real United Nations authority, transforming a military occupation into a legitimate exercise in international nation-building.

Some members of Mr. Bush`s coalition are shaken by the electoral defeat of the Spanish government that joined the invasion despite the opposition of some 90 percent of its citizens. In Poland, President Aleksander Kwasniewski said yesterday that he might withdraw troops from Iraq next year earlier than planned, adding that Poland had been "misled" about Iraq`s weapons programs.

Repairing the Diplomatic Damage

Winning the cooperation of countries like France and Russia will require the Bush administration to be far more serious about turning over real responsibility in Iraq to the United Nations and NATO. The United Nations is, commendably, no longer so hesitant about taking the lead in Iraq.

The Bush administration has barely begun the job of repairing the damage from its virtually unilateral rush to war last year. What the public and foreign leaders have learned about the way it managed the run-up to the invasion is only worsening the situation.

Asking a political leader to take his country to war in the teeth of overwhelming popular opposition is tough enough. Add to that a public that feels misinformed about the reasons for the war, and you`ve got political combustion. Polls show that a plurality of Americans say it was worth a war simply to remove a vicious dictator — an argument that Mr. Bush offered after it became obvious that his original justifications for the war were vaporous. But in Europe, there remains overwhelming popular opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney was wrong on Wednesday when he accused Spain of abandoning the war against terrorism by talking about withdrawing its forces from Iraq unless the U.N. becomes more involved. It`s nonsensical to suggest that the Spanish people are appeasers, and doing so only isolates Washington further.

This page strongly opposed invading Iraq without international backing. The events since Mr. Bush decided to go ahead with only Britain as a major ally have further underscored the recklessness of this sort of adventurism.

It is not, as Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have argued in campaign speeches and commercials, a question of getting permission from the United Nations to do the right thing. It is a matter of listening to the reasonable objections of proven friends, like Germany, which was privately warning Washington about the quagmire that Iraq represented.

Stability for a Divided Iraq

The United States is now about 100 days away from June 30, when it hopes to turn Iraq`s government over to Iraqis. As welcome as the adoption of the interim constitution was, it underscored how much more remains to be done before the Iraqis can begin to hope for a stable, workable leadership to govern their wounded country. So far, the United States has not found the formula for accomplishing what has in the past always seemed impossible: getting Iraq`s majority Shiites, minority Sunnis and separatist Kurds to make real concessions and cooperate in governing Iraq. Days after compromising on the constitution, Shiite leaders were talking of amending it, and it took an ultimatum from Washington this week to make them back down.

Without any culture of trust and accommodation, any form of real elective democracy empowers the Shiites, reduces the influence of the Sunnis and once again leaves the Kurds, who have long wanted to break away from Iraq, at the mercy of people they do not trust. A Shiite-dominated Iraq may run into trouble with Iraq`s Arab neighbors, who generally identify with the Sunni Iraqis, who dominate the country`s military and ruling classes.

One temporary solution could be a prolonged period of Iraqi federalism imposed from the outside or an international trusteeship. Either, however, is likely to generate intense Iraqi opposition. Whatever model emerges, it must be guided by international bodies and not Washington alone.

In some ways, the prime-minister-in-waiting of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, did Mr. Bush a favor when he said he would withdraw Spain`s symbolic military force from Iraq if the United Nations` role did not significantly increase after June 30. He has, in effect, given the president time to plan and to get cooperation from those countries that can contribute real forces. We hope the president uses this time to plan his next steps better than he planned the occupation.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Vielleicht besser `The Price of Oil` von Don Rumsfeld

March 19, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Price of Freedom in Iraq
By DONALD H. RUMSFELD

WASHINGTON

This week, as we mark the one-year anniversary of the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, it is useful to recount why we have fought. Not long ago I visited South Korea, just as the Korean government was debating whether to send troops to Iraq. In Seoul, I was interviewed by a Korean journalist who was almost certainly too young to have firsthand recollection of the Korean War. She asked me, "Why should Koreans send their young people halfway around the globe to be killed or wounded in Iraq?"

As it happened, I had that day visited a Korean War memorial, which bears the names of every American soldier killed in the war. On it was the name of a close friend of mine from high school, a wrestling teammate, who was killed on the last day of the war. I said to the reporter: "It`s a fair question. And it would have been fair for an American to ask, 50 years ago, `Why should young Americans go halfway around the world to be killed or wounded in Korea?` "

We were speaking on an upper floor of a large hotel in Seoul. I asked the woman to look out the window — at the lights, the cars, the energy of the vibrant economy of South Korea. I told her about a satellite photo of the Korean peninsula, taken at night, that I keep on a table in my Pentagon office. North of the demilitarized zone there is nothing but darkness — except a pinprick of light around Pyongyang — while the entire country of South Korea is ablaze in light, the light of freedom.

Korean freedom was won at a terrible cost — tens of thousands of lives, including more than 33,000 Americans killed in action. Was it worth it? You bet. Just as it was worth it in Germany and France and Italy and in the Pacific in World War II. And just as it is worth it in Afghanistan and Iraq today.

Today, in a world of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and states that sponsor the former and pursue the latter, defending freedom means we must confront dangers before it is too late. In Iraq, for 12 years, through 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions, the world gave Saddam Hussein every opportunity to avoid war. He was being held to a simple standard: live up to your agreement at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war; disarm and prove you have done so. Instead of disarming — as Kazakhstan, South Africa and Ukraine did, and as Libya is doing today — Saddam Hussein chose deception and defiance.

Repeatedly, he rejected those resolutions and he systematically deceived United Nations inspectors about his weapons and his intent. The world knew his record: he used chemical weapons against Iran and his own citizens; he invaded Iran and Kuwait; he launched ballistic missiles at Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain; and his troops repeatedly fired on American and British aircraft patrolling the no-flight zones.

Recognizing the threat, in September 2002 President Bush went to the United Nations, which gave Iraq still another "final opportunity" to disarm and to prove it had done so. The next month the president went to Congress, which voted to support the use of force if Iraq did not.

And, when Saddam Hussein passed up that final opportunity, he was given a last chance to avoid war: 48 hours to leave the country. Only then, after every peaceful option had been exhausted, did the president and our coalition partners order the liberation of Iraq.

Americans do not come easily to war, but neither do Americans take freedom lightly. But when freedom and self-government have taken root in Iraq, and that country becomes a force for good in the Middle East, the rightness of those efforts will be just as clear as it is today in Korea, Germany, Japan and Italy.

As the continuing terrorist violence in Iraq reminds us, the road to self-governance will be challenging. But the progress is impressive. Last week the Iraqi Governing Council unanimously signed an interim Constitution. It guarantees freedom of religion and expression; the right to assemble and to organize political parties; the right to vote; and the right to a fair, speedy and open trial. It prohibits discrimination based on gender, nationality and religion, as well as arbitrary arrest and detention. A year ago today, none of those protections could have been even imagined by the Iraqi people.

Today, as we think about the tens of thousands of United States soldiers in Iraq — and in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world fighting the global war on terrorism — we should say to all of them: "You join a long line of generations of Americans who have fought freedom`s fight. Thank you."


Donald H. Rumsfeld is the secretary of defense.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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March 19, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Taken for a Ride
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." So George Bush declared on Sept. 20, 2001. But what was he saying? Surely he didn`t mean that everyone was obliged to support all of his policies, that if you opposed him on anything you were aiding terrorists.

Now we know that he meant just that.

A year ago, President Bush, who had a global mandate to pursue the terrorists responsible for 9/11, went after someone else instead. Most Americans, I suspect, still don`t realize how badly this apparent exploitation of the world`s good will — and the subsequent failure to find weapons of mass destruction — damaged our credibility. They imagine that only the dastardly French, and now maybe the cowardly Spaniards, doubt our word. But yesterday, according to Agence France-Presse, the president of Poland — which has roughly 2,500 soldiers in Iraq — had this to say: "That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that`s true. We were taken for a ride."

This is the context for last weekend`s election upset in Spain, where the Aznar government had taken the country into Iraq against the wishes of 90 percent of the public. Spanish voters weren`t intimidated by the terrorist bombings — they turned on a ruling party they didn`t trust. When the government rushed to blame the wrong people for the attack, tried to suppress growing evidence to the contrary and used its control over state television and radio both to push its false accusation and to play down antigovernment protests, it reminded people of the broader lies about the war.

By voting for a new government, in other words, the Spaniards were enforcing the accountability that is the essence of democracy. But in the world according to Mr. Bush`s supporters, anyone who demands accountability is on the side of the evildoers. According to Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, the Spanish people "had a huge terrorist attack within their country and they chose to change their government and to, in a sense, appease terrorists."

So there you have it. A country`s ruling party leads the nation into a war fought on false pretenses, fails to protect the nation from terrorists and engages in a cover-up when a terrorist attack does occur. But its electoral defeat isn`t democracy at work; it`s a victory for the terrorists.

Notice, by the way, that Spain`s prime minister-elect insists that he intends to fight terrorism. He has even said that his country`s forces could remain in Iraq if they were placed under U.N. control. So if the Bush administration were really concerned about maintaining a united front against terrorism, all it would have to do is drop its my-way-or-the-highway approach. But it won`t.

For these denunciations of Spain, while counterproductive when viewed as foreign policy, serve a crucial domestic purpose: they help re-establish the political climate the Bush administration prefers, in which anyone who opposes any administration policy can be accused of undermining the fight against terrorism.

This week the Bush campaign unveiled an ad accusing John Kerry of, among other things, opposing increases in combat pay because he voted against an $87 billion appropriation for Iraq. Those who have followed this issue were astonished at the ad`s sheer up-is-down-ism.

In fact, the Bush administration has done the very thing it falsely accuses Mr. Kerry of doing: it has tried repeatedly to slash combat pay and military benefits, provoking angry articles in The Army Times with headlines like "An Act of `Betrayal.` " Oh, and Mr. Kerry wasn`t trying to block funds for Iraq — he was trying to force the administration, which had concealed the cost of the occupation until its tax cut was passed, to roll back part of the tax cut to cover the expense.

But the bigger point is this: in the Bush vision, it was never legitimate to challenge any piece of the administration`s policy on Iraq. Before the war, it was your patriotic duty to trust the president`s assertions about the case for war. Once we went in and those assertions proved utterly false, it became your patriotic duty to support the troops — a phrase that, to the administration, always means supporting the president. At no point has it been legitimate to hold Mr. Bush accountable. And that`s the way he wants it.


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washingtonpost.com
Live from Iraq


Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 18, 2004; 2:00 PM


As the one-year anniversary of the formal end of the war in Iraq approaches, new violence hit downtown Baghdad yesterday. A bomb blast on Wednesday night outside a downtown Baghdad hotel killed around 17 people and Thursday brought more attacks: a gunman opened fire on a minibus carrying employees of a U.S. funded radio and TV station while another car bomb exploded in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

Washington Post foreign correspondent Karl Vick was online live from Iraq on Thursday, March 18 at 2 p.m. ET, to discuss the latest attacks, the mood on the ground and U.S. response to the latest violence.

Editor`s Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

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Karl Vick: Greetings from Baghdad on the ? well, on the Tigris. It`s right below my window, beyond the cookout that some TV crew is having. I suspect it`s Fox, just going by the amount of red meat.

A series of relatively small explosions?typically mortars, in a series like that -- rippled across the night air about an hour ago, followed seconds later by the wail of sirens from the Green Zone, as the green hunk of the capital taken over by the Coalitional Provisional Authority is known. But the wires are reporting explosions near a couple of hotels downtown, though no major damage appears evident.

Tomorrow`s the anniversary of the first air strikes of the war, but these fireworks are relatively routine recently so I`m not sure how much significance to give them. The fears about what morning will bring are acute, however.

Question time:



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Arlington, Va.: Do you think these latest attacks are evidence of interference from terrorists or indications that an Iraqi civil war is imminent?

Karl Vick: Impossible to say with certainty of course, but most people I talk to seem to regard them as the work of foreigners or foreign countries, and use the same word you do, "interference." Though many of these operations seem to be carried out by Iraqis, ordinary people insist that these are people being paid to do this or steered to it by fundamentalists or neighboring countries who they say want to see Iraq less than stable (but not in full-blown chaos).

Many Iraqis mention civil war as what they want to avoid. I feel no specific acute fear of it, but a general dread that the trends - on security, especially - are not encouraging.



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Nederland, Colo.: Besides their concerns about employment, infrastructure reconstruction, security etc., how much are Iraqis concerned or angry about Washington efforts to to "turn the embattled country into a major new profit center?" Lobbyists Set Sights on Money-Making Opportunities in Iraq, (Post, Oct. 2, 2003)

The Post reported our Sept. 19 decree to "allow foreign firms to enter and even dominate such key economic sectors as banking and manufacturing, which had been barred to outsiders ..." While many welcome foreign capital, how many resent foreign exploitation? How much does such resentment provide support for insurgence? Thank you.

Karl Vick: Speaking of foreigners, eh? I`ve been here less than two weeks on this trip, after spending a month or so on the ground last fall, so my knowledge is not what you`d call terribly, what, longitudinal? But so far I don`t hear a great many people voicing the specific concerns you mention. You did when the policy was first announced, in October I think, but it`s hard to say whether the initial reaction has evolved.

Truth is, business development isn`t getting a lot of attention on the street here. People are more concerned about whether they can go out without being blown to bits. You do hear some grumping about some members of the Governing Council street rumors have steering contracts to friends of theirs.

On the last point, I get no sense that any resentment particularly fuels support for the insurgence, however. Lord knows they`re not creating much of a business climate. The guy in Arbil who makes blast walls is cleaning up, though.


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Silver Spring, Md.: Are Iraqis talking, or did they talk, about last week`s bombings in Madrid? If so, what were their takes? Did they see it as related to what is going on in Iraq?

Karl Vick: Iraqis appear pretty thoroughly pre-occupied with their security concerns, from what I gather. I`ve heard no mention of Madrid volunteered, at least.

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Falls Church, Va.: Do you feel relatively safe reporting from Baghdad right now? What kind of protections does The Post have in place to keep you safe?

Karl Vick: Yes, though the key word is "relatively." The Post, like everyone operating in Iraq today, is intensely pre-occupied with security. I don`t know if it`s wise to go into detail about our precautions, but we sleep and work in quarters protected by high blast walls and pat-down searches. When we venture out, it`s for a specific purpose, and if we`re going out of town, onto the highways where most of the foreign civilians are being hunted, we`re in armored vehicles (discreet ones, though).

It`s a balance between protecting yourself and risking a bunker mentality. You don`t want to waddle out to do a lot of window shopping or anything -- though you can do that, in some neighborhoods, and it restoreth the soul. I had a lovely stroll through a northern Baghdad neighborhood today on my way to making an appointment with a cleric. Bought a nice Sistani tee-shirt in the local market. Concert black.

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College Park, Md.: Have you seen any of the Iraqi police force in action? Do you think they`re prepared to take over securing the entire country?

Karl Vick: Are they ready yet? By their own account, no way. They feel under-equipped, and to judge by the manner and actions of some, not impressively trained. A few -- a few -- remind me of these poor guys you see in Karachi, Pakistan. They`ve got the gun. They`ve got the body armor. And they`ve got a look on their face that tells them they don`t know what the hell they`re doing.

The Iraqi male as a rule is quite comfortable with a weapon, however, and the IP (Iraqi Police) you see manning roadblocks appear to know what they`re doing. I`m always happy to see them out there on the road, especially when they throw up impromptu traffic stops, as they often do. All of us working here were profoundly relieved to learn that the initial reports on the two CPA employees -- the DC area lawyer and the former military guy -- were incorrect. You might recall the first word was they`d been hit at a fake roadblock. We all gave a collective shudder at the idea of having to fear the one re-assuring thing you could encounter on an Iraqi highway.

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New York: Who do the rational-minded Iraqis think as the best person to lead the country, from or not from the governing council?

Karl Vick: It is a real source of frustration here that, a year into this, no such unifying personality has emerged. There are names on the Council who appear to have wide respect beyond their core constituency -- you heard good things about the (Shiite) Dawa party`s Dr. Jafari after he took the first turn in the rotating presidency.

But while polls show a plurality or better of Iraqis credit the GC, it`s still seen as a stepchild of Bremer.

Also, after months of talking about "all Iraq" the recent process of creating an interim law -- that`s to form the basis for a constitution -- served to divide the council into its constituent components: Kurd, Sunni and Shia. That`s where we seem to be at the moment.

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Georgetown, Washington, D.C.: Were you any where close to the bombing yesterday? What was the scene and were people surprised that a hotel was targeted?

Karl Vick: I wasn`t, no. I`d just gone across town to meet some people for dinner. The first I heard of it was when the reporter next to me answered her cell. It was her mum calling from London (they`re mums there), asking if she was near that hotel. "What hotel?"

Everyone else in the Post`s Baghdad bureau knew right away. The hotel was blocks from us, but the blast -- 1,000 pounds of plastique, the Americans say; what a huge frigging bomb -- shook our own quarters.

The puzzle is why the Lebanon Hotel was the target. It doesn`t make a lot of sense. It was a nice place -- newly refurbished marble lobby, gracious managers, poor folks -- but had virtually no security, so no thinking Westerner would lodge there. It may have been used by the UN in a previous Ipre-war) life, though, and perhaps the bombers got some really stale information. Or maybe it was a mistake, and the blasted thing just went off when they were on their way to something else.

Stranger things have happened. I`ll tell you one later.

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Annandale, Va.: Hmm, I`m confused, wasn`t it determined that the two were killed at the checkpoint by REAL Iraqi Police?

Karl Vick: Why, that`s becuase I confused you!

Yes, the guys arrested were real Iraqi police. But apparently they forced the victims` car off the road, or opened fire on it, or something -- rather than setting up a road block. So we`re back to not fearing road blocks.

I suppose we could still fear Iraqi police, but frankly the typical roadblock involves so many of the fellows that it`s unlikely they`d *all* be up to no good.

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San Jose, Calif.: Hello Karl,

The White House keeps insisting that Iraq is the front for the war on terrorism. Is this perception shared by Iraqi people? Certainly, the rest of the world believes that the war on terrorism is not the same as the war in Iraq.

Stay safe.

Karl Vick: Hola San Jose,

I have never heard Iraqis make the case for war that the administration did, no. And after spending three months last year in Iraq`s north, original home to Ansar al Islam -- a pretty much certified branch of al Qaeda at the time -- I emerged with no sense that Saddam was backing them. In fact I spent several hours with a guy (a prisoner of the Kurds) who claimed he was Iraqi intelligence and had been sent up there to try to figure out what the Ansar game was.

Iraqis saw this as a war of Bush v. Saddam. Or for oil, that`s another one you heard for a while.

Certainly it`s about terrorism now. Lordy, is it ever.

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Washington, D.C.: Have you had time to talk to any Joe Shmo U.S. soldiers there on the ground? What is their morale, their sense that what they`re doing is making a difference?

Karl Vick: I`ve only talked to a few this time around, but it`s such a blast when you get to. I love seeing the guys and gals. Part of it`s they make you proud and everything, their competence, the profound professionalism of the U.S. military in general.

But also, Americans abroad tend to be such fish out of water that it`s often inherently comedic, the incongruity. You put an M-16 in their hands or an M1 Abrams tank under them and the whole effect is heightened. There`s a deadpan quality that`s just surpassing.

Memory harkens to a street in a Kosovo village. Two GIs walking down the street, one with a liter jug of Pepsi, the other with groceries. I`m chatting with them. An old Albanian Muslim guy, one from the side we`d gone in to protect from the Serbs, walks up and kisses the black guy on the face. The American just looks at the beaming old man a minute.

"Whatever," he says.

As for part two: yeah, I think the Americans are told fairly frequently that, while their presence is fairly insulting on its face -- they`re not really "welcome" being occupiers and all -- most Iraqis prefer that they not leave just yet, as the security situation would really go south then, they say.

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Yankton, S.D.: Would you tell us something about the food? You mentioned the grilling going on just below your window. Are you more often eating in your lodgings? Have you visited any markets? Is food plentiful for the Iraqis? How is that the same or different than a year ago for Iraqi families?

(KV, I wrote for the Mpls Star Food section 80 to 82 -- I think your stint there was around the same time.)

Karl Vick: Yo Yankton,

That`s a great question from a foodie.

We have our own cook in the bureau, so we don`t eat out that much. But like most of central Asia, it`s a kebab-based cuisine. You got your meat, you got your steel rod, and you got your brazier. I particularly enjoy the shwarma, myself (your meat shaved off a rotating leg-type thing of ... lamb, I suppose it is). Then your hummus, baba ganoush, other meze dishes. It`s all fine, but you wouldn`t, ah, travel for it.

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Vienna, Austria: I am an expat living in Europe and the general feeling that we get from the media here is that the Iraqi citizens do not like having U.S. soldiers in their country -- that they resent the presence of the United States and never expected the chaos they are now experiencing. Is this your perception? Is this true?

Karl Vick: Yes, generally. But it`s the mixture of feelings I indicated above, plus a very very broad and growing infuriation that the security situation is not better. People hold the Americans responsible for the bombings and attacks, as I suppose they would, and are entitled to under the same international law by which American declared itself the occupying power.

Hard feeling especially among Iraqis who work for the Americans --and therefore are termed deserving targets by the zealots who regard them as traitors -- but do not get to ride to work in armor or sleep behind blast walls.

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Iowa: Aside from the recent bombings, can you speak to the ethnic tensions in Iraq between Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, etc.? What are you seeing/hearing?

Karl Vick: I`m deep into reporting a story on this topic right now, so I`m actually halfway informed.

Take it in two parts. On the Sunni-Shia sectarian question, ordinary people are saying they see through the efforts to drive a wedge between the two Muslim branches, and are not going to take the bait. There`s a considerable amount of intermarriage between Sunni and Shia; it`s not uncommon eve for a cleric from either sect to say his sister married someone from the other. These assurances are in many cases echoes of what the imams and shieks from both sects are telling worshippers. There`s a very broad and apparently steadfast determination not to demonize the other or ascribe attacks on their own mosques to anyone but foreign agents.

The Kurdish thing is another issue. I`m not hearing folks around Baghdad express much concern about the Kurdish appetite for its own autonomous zone, but some of that is probably out-of-sight, out-of-mind. They haven`t had to think about the Kurds as in the mix for the last dozen years or so, while Kurdish regions had their own little statelet up there under the northern no-fly zone, beyond the reach of Saddam`s tanks.

The interesting question is whether ordinary Kurds are satisfied with the limited autonomy their leaders are pushing for. Many have been thinking they`re on the verge of some kind of real independence, I gather.

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Mt. Lebanon, Pa.: How many hotels get blown up before the U.S. says: "OK, we`re done. We`re throwing in the towel. Iraq can go to the dogs. We`re outtahere!"? If not the number of hotels, how many more years of dead bodies viewed on American TV screens 24/7?

And how does this stick to a Bush legacy of: "War coming soon to a neighborhood near you?"

BTW, I`m betting Bush has his own home-grown insurrection come say... November?

Thanks much. Weary Vietnam Era Veteran

Karl Vick: I see question marks, but no real question. Thanks for posting, though.

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Wheaton, Md.: Is there a proven link between the terrorists in Iraq and other terrorists in the region, such as Hamas and Arafat? Do the regional terrorist groups appear to be working together?

Karl Vick: I know of no such proven links, or even alleged ones.

Just as an aside, this broad rubric of "terrorism" encompasses so much and is used so loosely, especially in American politics, that one can hardly blame folks for being confused. But in this part of the world distinctions are usually drawn between terror carried out against Israel -- which most Arabs and many other people in the world characterize as a horrible (and likely indefensible) component of a resistance movement -- and whatever business Osama and al Qaeda and their brothers in arms here consider themselves to be in. Very difficult to figure out what they`re for.

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Independence, Mo.: Mr. Vick:

I was struck with interest in your reply,
"Certainly it`s about terrorism now. Lordy, is it ever."

Some suggest that the American action removing Saddam actually created a vacuum in the country that gave rise to insurgents with terrorist ties. Do you share this view? If so, how would that justify our actions as a positive step in the war on terrorism?

Appreciate you thoughts. Stay safe!

Karl Vick: The vacuum theory may have merit, certainly.

And of course before the war much of the world -- and many many moderate Arabs, longtime friends of the US -- cautioned that making war on, defeating and occupying an Arab country might not be the best way to, ah, discourage earnest young Muslim men from the thought that America wants to dominate the Islamic world.

"You will create 100,000 Osama bin Ladens" was a phrase I heard so often I stopped writing it down.

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Karl Vick: That will have to do for today. Many thanks for the questions and good wishes I didn`t get to. Take care yourselves.



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© 2004 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive

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washingtonpost.com
Iraq Attacks Blamed On Islamic Extremists
U.S. Says Hussein Loyalists No Longer Dominate

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 19, 2004; Page A01


BAGHDAD, March 18 -- U.S. military commanders across Iraq say that a combination of foreign and indigenous Islamic extremists have eclipsed loyalists of Saddam Hussein`s Baath Party as the dominant organizers and financiers of attacks on American and Iraqi security forces and civilians.

The Islamic radicals have been deemed by the commanders to be largely responsible for not just a series of high-profile suicide car bombings that have killed more than 1,000 people, but also a spate of recent attacks on U.S. troops, foreign civilians and Iraqis working with American forces. In many cases, the commanders said, religious extremists have begun to exercise leadership over cells of low-level Baathist fighters whose superiors have been captured or killed, by offering money and weapons to conduct mortar strikes, drive-by shootings and assassinations.

On the eve of the Iraq invasion`s first anniversary, Islamic extremists have emerged as "the principal threat" to security in Baghdad, said Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the U.S. Army`s 1st Armored Division, which controls the capital. Officers based in restive areas outside Baghdad, including the commander of an Army battalion in Fallujah and the commander of a brigade in Baqubah, said the same trend has emerged in their areas.

In the intelligence operations room at the 1st Armored Division`s headquarters, wall-mounted charts identifying and linking insurgents depict the changing battlefield. Last fall, the organizational chart of Baathist fighters and leaders stretched for 10 feet, while charts listing known Islamic radicals took up a few pieces of paper. Now, the chart of Iraqi religious extremists dominates the room, while the poster depicting Baathist activity has shrunk to half of its previous size. Smaller diagrams identify what is known about foreign Islamic extremists who have set up operations in the capital.

Military officials said evidence and intelligence from informers and interrogations suggest that foreign fighters still constitute a relatively small component of the insurgency. Dempsey said he estimated there were only about 100 "foreign terrorists" in Baghdad, organized into about six cells. In Anbar province, which stretches across western Iraq and includes the strife-torn cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr. of the 82nd Airborne Division said he believed there were a total of 50 to 80 foreign fighters in eight to 10 cells.

Military officials said they suspected that the foreign fighters were making up for what they lacked in numbers by plugging into networks of Iraqi Sunni Muslim extremists who adhere to the same radical Wahhabi brand of Islam as Osama bin Laden. The officials believe the foreigners are bringing money, technical expertise and encouragement to get hundreds of Iraqis to plant roadside bombs, assassinate people collaborating with occupation forces and detonate explosive-packed vehicles.

"We see a large connection between them," said Lt. Col. Ken Devan, the 1st Armored`s senior intelligence officer, referring to indigenous extremists and foreign fighters.

Devan and other military officials said foreign fighters were trying to join several cells of indigenous religious extremists around the capital. The officials said they believed these cells drew inspiration from a handful of hard-line clerics in Iraq, but making precise connections has proved difficult.

"We know they`re there based on the intelligence we`ve got, but we don`t have, with any degree of granularity or precision, enough intelligence to be attacking them as our principal focus," Dempsey said.

Military intelligence officials said they believed three linked groups of foreign extremists were the most dominant actors in Iraq today: Ansar al-Islam, Ansar al-Sunna and an organization headed by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi.

Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group with links to al Qaeda, was based in the autonomous Kurdish area of northern Iraq before the war. Intelligence officials believe many Ansar al-Islam operatives have relocated south and have affiliated themselves with other extremists, although it is not clear how large a role they have played in the recent run of suicide bombings and even whether Ansar al-Islam still exists as an organization. Some military officials believe its operatives were responsible for the car bombings of the headquarters of both the United Nations and International Committee for the Red Cross in Baghdad, as well as several attacks on Iraqi police stations last year.

Ansar al-Sunna is a newer group of foreign and indigenous militants that is suspected of being linked to remnants of Ansar al-Islam. The group has asserted responsibility for several suicide bombings, including attacks on the offices of two Kurdish political parties in the northern city of Irbil on Feb. 1 that killed more than 100 people.

Lately, however, intelligence officers have shifted their focus to Zarqawi, once linked to Ansar al-Islam. U.S. officials allege that he wrote a 17-page letter claiming responsibility for two dozen bombings in recent months and outlining his plans for future attacks aimed at sparking civil war and disrupting a planned June 30 handover of sovereignty. Although Zarqawi has worked with al Qaeda, intelligence officials now believe he operates independently of bin Laden`s organization and has developed his own network in Iraq.

Senior U.S. officials in Baghdad have named Zarqawi as a prime suspect in several recent bombings, including that of a Baghdad hotel Wednesday night, but they have not presented any definitive evidence to link him or his organization to the blasts.

"Whether it was Zarqawi`s group, Ansar al-Islam, al Qaeda -- we don`t have definitive proof of that yet," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military`s deputy director of operations in Iraq, said of Wednesday`s bombing of the Mount Lebanon Hotel, in which seven people were killed. The death toll was revised downward Thursday based on new information from Iraqi officials.

The U.S.-led occupation authority has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the capture of Zarqawi. But some U.S. intelligence officials in Baghdad question whether he is as central to the bombings as spokesmen for the military and occupation authority have suggested.

"To think that Zarqawi is organizing all of these car bombings is a little much," said one U.S. intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He is probably just one of several ringleaders. There is no single organization that`s behind all this. It`s far more decentralized than that."

Another intelligence officer also cast doubt on the role of Zarqawi or bin Laden lieutenants as the chief organizers of the violence. "Are al Qaeda operatives here? Certainly. But are the remnants of al Qaeda directing the attacks here? We don`t have clear evidence to suggest that is the case," the officer said.

Devan, the 1st Armored`s intelligence director, also said the presence of al Qaeda operatives in Iraq was small.

The intelligence officers said the most significant impact of al Qaeda involvement may be funding foreign and Iraqi extremists, who in turn have paid low-level Baathists to conduct non-suicide attacks. The Baathists are willing to work for the Islamic extremists, military officials said, because many of their leaders, who had been paying them between $100 and $5,000 to mount attacks, have been arrested, killed or forced to run.

"The Baathist money has dried up, and the leadership is largely gone," Devan said. "The new money and leadership is coming from the extremists."

As a consequence, Dempsey said, "Baathist operatives and trigger pullers are now working, in many cases, for the religious extremists."

"It`s a marriage of necessity," he said. "The religious guys have the money. And both share the goal of trying to drive us out."

One of the clearest indications of the new alliance occurred last month in Fallujah, where military officials believe a combination of former Baath Party operatives and Islamic radicals attacked the police station, killing 23 people. "There was a collaboration," said Lt. Col. Brian Drinkwine, an 82nd Airborne battalion commander who is responsible for the city. "It appeared to be directed by the extremists, but many of the guys who attacked had a level of training that goes beyond your average Islamic extremist."

Military intelligence officers said identifying cells of religious extremists is proving to be much more difficult than tracing the flow of cash and orders among the Baathists. In Fallujah, for instance, Drinkwine had identified the chief Baathist financier by early fall. The number of attacks fell dramatically after the man was caught in January, he said.

"The Baathists had a clearer structure," he said. "It was easier to know who was in charge. But now, it`s a whole new structure -- and it`s much tougher to determine who the enemy is."



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Off the Mark on Cost of War, Reception by Iraqis


By Dana Milbank and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 19, 2004; Page A01


A year ago tonight, President Bush took the nation to war in Iraq with a grand vision for change in the Middle East and beyond.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq, his administration predicted, would come at little financial cost and would materially improve the lives of Iraqis. Americans would be greeted as liberators, Bush officials predicted, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein would spread peace and democracy throughout the Middle East.

Things have not worked out that way, for the most part. There is evidence that the economic lives of Iraqis are improving, thanks to an infusion of U.S. and foreign capital. But the administration badly underestimated the financial cost of the occupation and seriously overstated the ease of pacifying Iraq and the warmth of the reception Iraqis would give the U.S. invaders. And while peace and democracy may yet spread through the region, some early signs are that the U.S. action has had the opposite effect.

Much of the focus on prewar expectations vs. postwar reality has been on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. But while that was the central justification for the war in Iraq, the administration also made a wide range of claims about the ease of the invasion and the benefits that would result. Though comparisons between expectations and results are complex, it appears that the administration, based on limited human intelligence and conversations with a small corps of Iraqi exiles, was overly optimistic.

White House officials, who did not respond to requests for information for this report, acknowledge that the financial costs have been greater than expected but say they are pleased with the progress toward democracy, security and prosperity in Iraq.

Bush, who will deliver a speech today outlining the successes of the past year, gave a taste of his themes in an address in Kentucky yesterday to troops just back from Iraq. "A year ago, Iraq was ruled by the whims of one cruel man," Bush said. "Today, Iraq has a new interim law that guarantees basic rights for all: freedom of religion, the right to cast a secret ballot and equality under the law." Iraqis, he said, are "building a country that is strong and free, and America is proud to stand with them."

On April 23, 2003, Andrew S. Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, laid out in a televised interview the costs to U.S. taxpayers of rebuilding Iraq. "The American part of this will be $1.7 billion," he said. "We have no plans for any further-on funding for this."

That turned out to be off by orders of magnitude. The administration, which asked Congress for another $20 billion for Iraq reconstruction five months after Natsios made his assertion, has said it expects overall Iraqi reconstruction costs to be as much as $75 billion this year alone.

The transcript of that interview has been pulled from the USAID Web site, the agency said, "to reflect current statements and testimony on Iraq reconstruction." The earlier $1.7 billion figure was "the best estimate available at the time, based on very limited information about the conditions inside of Iraq."

Natsios was far from the only one to offer low-ball figures. Similarly, a report by the White House Office of Management and Budget in late March 2003, said: "Iraq will not require sustained aid." Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, in February 2003, dismissed reports that Pentagon budget specialists had put the cost of reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion during the first year -- in retrospect, relatively accurate forecasts. In testimony to Congress on March 27, 2003, Wolfowitz said Iraq "can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." In fact, the administration has already sought more than $150 billion for the Iraq effort.

In its predictions a year ago, the Bush administration similarly underestimated the resistance the United States would face in Iraq. "I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators," Vice President Cheney said in a March 16 interview.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz derided a general`s claim that pacifying Iraq would take several hundred thousand U.S. troops. And Rumsfeld, in February 2003, predicted that the war "could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."

The capture of Iraq did proceed rapidly, allowing Bush to proclaim on May 1 that "major combat operations" were over and to declare "victory" in the "Battle of Iraq."

But those upbeat assertions were undermined by an Iraqi resistance that proved much more difficult. Washington had not counted on the scope, capabilities and endurance of the resistance after formal hostilities had ended -- or that Iraqis might eventually turn on their liberators. By yesterday, 574 American and 100 other coalition troops had died in Iraq. As many as 6,400 Iraqi soldiers are believed to have died in combat, and the insurgency continues to claim the lives of Iraqi civilians.

The "coalition has been unable to ensure a safe and secure environment within critical areas of Iraq," concluded a Council on Foreign Relations task force led by former defense and energy secretary James R. Schlesinger and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Thomas R. Pickering.

"This lack of security has created widespread fear among Iraqis, inhibited growth of private sector economic activity, distorted the initial development of a robust and open civil society, and places important limitations on the normal routines of life for most Iraqis," said its report, "Iraq: One Year After."

Iraqis, who had high expectations that the United States could make them secure, have been disappointed, analysts say.

"Unfortunately, it`s been 11 months since the fall of Baghdad, and the U.S. still hasn`t fulfilled those expectations of [providing] basic security or services," said Kenneth Pollack, research director of the Brookings Institution`s Saban Center and a former National Security Council staff member in the Clinton and current Bush administrations. "At this point, Iraqis are beginning to think that, if those services have not been provided, it may be because we`re unable or unwilling to do so."

A poll of Iraqis released this week by ABC News found that 42 percent of Iraqis, and 33 percent of Arab Iraqis, said the war liberated Iraq, but that 41 percent of Iraqis, and 48 percent of Arab Iraqis, said it humiliated the country. The presence of U.S.-led forces in Iraq is opposed by 51 percent of Iraqis.

Administration forecasts that the invasion would improve Iraqis` lives were closer to the mark. On March 17, 2003, Bush promised to help "build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free." Secretary of State Colin L. Powell vowed days later: "We will show the Iraqi people a better life. We`ll deal with those segments of the population who have been . . . absolutely brutally deprived for years, and they will start to see a better life very quickly."

Thanks to the massive injection of foreign aid, an important transformation has begun in rebuilding an Iraqi society emaciated by a dozen years of tough economic sanctions and Hussein`s preference for personal luxuries over public necessities, analysts say.

Considerable economic activity has resumed in Baghdad and other major cities, while living standards are better than at any time since the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the country`s oil revenue is gradually climbing. "What`s impressive -- and maybe more credit goes to Iraqis than to us -- is that economic activity has picked up. Clearly, there`s money out there. People are going to jobs and working," said Henri Barkey, former State Department expert on Iraq and now chairman of Lehigh University`s International Relations Department.

The ABC News poll confirms this. Fifty-six percent of Iraqis said things are better than before the war, and 71 percent expect that their lives will be even better next year.

The administration`s forecast that the toppling of Hussein would start a wave of democracy and a disavowal of terrorism in the region has not yet happened. There has been progress; Libya, for example, has since relinquished its nuclear weapons program. But while the administration had often predicted that Hussein`s ouster could resolve the impasse between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the standoff between the two has worsened.

A poll released this week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that Muslim countries are highly skeptical that the ouster of Hussein will make the Middle East more democratic.

"Iraqi democracy will succeed -- and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation," the president said in October.

But Iraqi democracy has proved messy in the making. Almost immediately, divisions within the Bush administration led to a temporary breakdown over the postwar plan for Iraq. The Pentagon abruptly jettisoned the State Department`s plans for assembling a post-Hussein government and started from scratch -- a move from which analysts believe the United States has not recovered.

"Because we didn`t have anything concrete to put in place the day after, it left a vacuum," Barkey said. The early chaos led the administration to change course. A plan to hold an Afghan-like national conference to select an interim Iraqi authority was tossed out in favor of appointing a 25-person Iraqi Governing Council, largely exiles and dissidents allied with Washington.

Two transition plans designed by the United States and its allies in the Coalition Provisional Authority were rejected out of hand by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a Shiite cleric virtually unknown before the war. With about four months left before the U.S. occupation is due to end, there is still no plan for how to pick a new government.

"The challenges for U.S. policy in postwar Iraq, given the geopolitical stakes, the threat of ethnic conflict and armed resistance, and the political complexities of administering a legal occupation, were far more formidable than those that confronted U.S. officials in previous cases," from Haiti to the Balkans to East Timor in the 1990s, the Council on Foreign Relations report said.

Still, there is hope that democracy may yet take hold. "Iraqis are engaged in free and vigorous debate about their collective political future and the adoption of a Transitional Administrative Law represents a major success both for U.S. policy and for the people of Iraq," the report concluded.

Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this article.



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U.S. Aims to Calm Allies Apprehensive About Iraq


By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 19, 2004; Page A16


The White House worked to reassure its nervous European partners yesterday, as President Bush faced new criticism from Poland over the decision to launch the war that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party dictatorship.

Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski, in the latest challenge among allies to the rationale for the U.S.-led invasion, said he feels "uncomfortable due to the fact that we were misled with the misinformation on weapons of mass destruction."

Kwasniewski`s complaints about prewar intelligence added to a rough week for the Bush administration, which is working to highlight achievements in Iraq one year after the invasion. Bush will mark today`s anniversary with an address to dozens of diplomats from nations considered anti-terrorist allies.

Ever since last week`s terrorist attacks in Madrid and the electoral tide that swept away the Spanish government that supported the Iraq war, Bush and top foreign policy aides have been dialing European leaders to reassure them and keep their backing in the war against terrorists.

It is an effort to "keep people calm," an administration official said.

"There`s a lot of panic over the terrorist incidents in Madrid and the results of the Spanish election. `Does this mean the terrorists think they are winning? Does it mean they`ll try again?` " said the official, who described the calls on the condition of anonymity. "We want to give a strong message: the United States and Europe in solidarity against terrorism."

The portion of the anti-terrorism war now underway in Iraq is facing hard times. Iraq`s political future remains uncertain and a fresh rash of bombings and armed attacks have killed Americans and other civilians in recent days.

After Spanish voters ousted the conservative government that backed the invasion, the incoming antiwar prime minister called the U.S. occupation a "fiasco" and threatened to withdraw 1,300 troops. As other partners in Iraq assessed their own troop commitments, a public opinion poll demonstrated hardened anti-American views in Europe and Muslim countries.

"The Madrid result was horrible news for the Bush administration in every possible way," said Philip H. Gordon, a member of President Clinton`s National Security Council. "Spain was the poster child for the coalition. An edifice is coming crashing down before us."

In an interview to appear in today`s Le Monde, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said that "the Iraq war hasn`t led to a more stable world."

"Let`s stick to the facts," de Villepin said, according to a French government transcript. "Terrorism didn`t exist in Iraq before the war. Today, that country is one of the main centers of terrorism worldwide."

Administration officials have worked this week to send a message to voters and allies that confronting Saddam Hussein has made the world more secure.

"We`re going to continue to see violence as the Iraqi people move toward freedom, but it`s not going to intimidate Iraqis. It`s not going to intimidate the coalition. It`s certainly not going to intimidate the United States," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on CNN.

Rice spoke this week with leaders in Italy, France and Poland, the administration official said. Bush spoke with the prime ministers of Britain and the Netherlands, as well as the president of Greece. He plans to speak today with Kwasniewski and French President Jacques Chirac.

In a positive sign for the Bush administration, Kwasniewski said he believes Iraq is "a truly better Iraq" without Hussein. He said Poland will not withdraw its 2,400 troops early.

The Bush administration is not alone in Iraq, the president intends to remind his audience in the East Room today. He "will talk about how this is a time of testing and the terrorists are trying to shake our will," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

A senior European diplomat in Washington said the Madrid bombings and their political fallout made the Iraq coalition look weaker. But he drew a distinction between the widely shared fight against extremist violence and opinions about the American-led attempt to remake Iraq.

The diplomat said criticism of Spain by leading House Republicans and some Bush administration officials worsened the atmosphere by tying the anti-terrorism war to the debate over the wisdom of invading Iraq.

"Don`t throw into one basket what the Spanish decided on Iraq and what the Europeans believe about terrorism," the diplomat said. "We`ve always thought these were two issues."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in an interview about the Madrid attacks and terrorism to be aired today by Fox News, said history shows that nations are wrong to believe "they could improve their circumstance by acquiescing, by accommodating a bully or a terrorist. It simply doesn`t work. Weakness is provocative," Rumsfeld said, according to a Fox transcript.

Top congressional Republicans accused Spain and its voters of appeasing terrorists by ousting Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar three days after the bombings.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said Spain "succumbed, politically, to threats of terrorism, changed their government." Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said many people in Europe and the United States "prefer to ignore the fact that Iraq is the single most important battle that the war on terror will ever know."

Staff writers John Burgess in Berlin, Mike Allen in Washington and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.



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An Iraqi policeman shouts orders after a car bomb exploded outside a hotel used by British forces in the southern city of Basra. Three passersby were killed.
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10 Iraqis Are Killed In Spasm of Attacks
U.S. Troops Kill Television Journalist

By Karl Vick and Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 19, 2004; Page A15


BAQUBAH, Iraq, March 18 -- Ten Iraqis died in separate attacks around Iraq on Thursday and U.S. troops shot and killed an Iraqi television journalist two days before the first anniversary of the U.S. invasion that ousted the government of president Saddam Hussein.

The violence came a day after a massive car bomb exploded outside the Mount Lebanon Hotel in downtown Baghdad. U.S. officials revised the number of victims in the hotel bombing to seven killed and 35 wounded from an earlier report of 27 dead and 45 wounded. They said they based the change on information from Iraqi police and health officials. But interviews with relatives of victims indicated the toll could be higher.

In this unsettled city 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, witnesses reported that a powerfully built man hoisted a heavy machine gun out of the trunk of a parked car Thursday morning and strafed a busload of employees commuting to work at a regional television and radio station established by the U.S.-controlled occupation authority. Three Iraqi employees died and 10 were wounded.

In the southern city of Basra, a car bomb exploded outside a hotel used for briefings by British forces. Three Iraqi passersby died. The bomber was also killed, and an angry crowd stabbed and killed a man said to have gotten out of the car before it exploded, news services reported.

And in Fallujah, a seat of Sunni resistance west of the capital, a firefight between insurgents and U.S. troops meeting Iraqi administrators left two Iraqis dead, one a young boy. Eight soldiers were wounded by a mortar attack that apparently triggered the exchange.

After dark, a series of small explosions echoed across downtown Baghdad. Mortars fell in the compound known as the Green Zone that houses the headquarters of U.S.-led occupation. A witness also reported seeing rockets launched from near the German Embassy downtown.

Also in Baghdad, an employee of al-Arabiya, the Arabic-language satellite news channel, was killed by U.S. troops at a checkpoint, the channel reported. A second employee of the channel, based in the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, was reported critically wounded in the same incident.

"I stopped in front of the checkpoint and then I saw another car coming fast toward it and I thought it was going to explode," Ahmed Abdul Amiya, the driver of the al-Arabiya car, told the Reuters news agency. "I tried to race away. . . . and then the Americans started firing at random. They hit the first car and then they started shooting at our car."

The nationalities of those killed on Wednesday night at the Mount Lebanon Hotel remained unclear. One British citizen was seriously injured and another may have been killed in the bombing, according to the British Foreign Office. Hotel employees said the guests included citizens of Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Lebanon. The hotel`s Lebanese owner, Jihad Azzam, was seriously injured, hotel managers said.

"We are simply unsure of either the motivation or the target of the attack," said Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a military spokesman. The bomb, estimated by military officials as 1,000 pounds of plastic explosives, was huge by local standards. But the officials said that the blast was in the middle of the street rather than close to the hotel, suggesting the bomb may have detonated prematurely.

Some of those who survived Thursday`s attacks blamed U.S. authorities for not protecting them.

"They are not giving us security," said Mustapha Ibrahim Mustapha, 41, his face cut from flying glass in the machine-gunning of the TV employee bus in Baqubah. Survivors of the attack said U.S. forces guard the station, established by the occupation authorities to provide local radio and television service in the area. Officials said several bombs near the facility had been defused.

But station employees remained vulnerable en route to work. Witnesses reported that the attackers waited beside a dark blue Opel sedan on the highway where the employee minibus travels every day.

"They didn`t even cover their faces," said Hussein Mohammad, 26. The wounded television reporter, who has covered the scores of attacks on U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians around Baqubah, held his blood-stained palms six inches apart to show the size of the magazine on the machine gun that killed two colleagues, Nadia Nasrat Hikmat, a program host, and Majid Rashi al Masaudi, a technician. An Iraqi Civil Defense Corps officer on the bus, Mohammad Mujamae, also was killed.

"Everyone who lives in Iraq is targeted," said Hussein Mohammad , his face contorted in grief.

Random interviews conducted with people affected by the Mount Lebanon Hotel attack suggested the suddenly reduced casualty count could rise again.

Firas Hamadani, 48, a computer parts salesman dressed in a sharp business suit, sobbed quietly as he stood near the wreckage outside the hotel. Four of his friends were driving in a white Opal toward his house when they were caught in the explosion. He said two of them, ages 27 and 28, died.

At Ibn Nafis hospital, Ata Puturs, 17, was the only survivor from a house across the street from the hotel. Her grandfather, his wife and two sons were killed, according to friends of their close-knit Chaldean-Assyrian family, part of Baghdad`s Christian community.

Upstairs in the hospital, George Elias Yusef, 63, slept on his right side, shrapnel wounds visible across his upper arm and his back. A computer programmer during Hussein`s rule, Yusef had lost his job during the war and was hired as a night receptionist at the Mount Lebanon Hotel, said his wife, Samira Jazrawi, 50.

She said he survived only because he had been called to a guest`s room to fix the television set. "I thought he`d been killed," said Jazrawi, her eyes filled with tears. "Only God and the Virgin Mary saved his life, because he`s a religious man and he always fasts."

Chan reported from Baghdad. Special correspondent Emad Zainal contributed from Basra.




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Responding to Job Cuts




Friday, March 19, 2004; Page A22


THE CAMPAIGN rhetoric about "offshoring" and "Benedict Arnold companies" risks leading the nation toward mistaken policies, notably expensive restrictions on government procurement from companies that do some work abroad. But the rhetoric also stifles debate on a more deserving subject. Something is ailing the job market, and Congress needs to come up with a response that addresses the hardship while avoiding undue meddling that could harm the economy in the long run.

The extent of the jobs ailment is obscured by some surprisingly good news. Since the economy slipped briefly into recession in March 2001, workers who managed to keep their jobs have done better than in past downturns. In 2001 and 2002, real wages rose, because workers were growing more productive; low-paid workers shared in the advance, according to government data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute. Only in 2003 did real wages fall modestly, and even then tax cuts kept disposable income on an upward path.

The problem lies with workers who did not keep their jobs. Admittedly, the headline unemployment figure is 5.6 percent, below the average for the 1980s or the 1990s. But if you add in discouraged workers -- those who have ceased to be classified as part of the workforce in the past three years because they`ve stopped searching for jobs -- unemployment rises above 7 percent, and long-term unemployment is as high as it was in the recession of the early 1990s. The distress is most acute among blacks, Hispanics and younger workers. Even college graduates in the 25-to-35 age bracket, a group with newly minted skills, are suffering the lowest employment-to-population ratio since 1979.

The answer to this bleak news is not to fall into a protectionist panic. There`s no reason to believe that the economy won`t start generating new jobs, or that these new jobs will be inferior. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts, for example, that between 2002 and 2012, the number of positions in management, business, finance and the professions will grow from 43 million to 52 million; as the Cato Institute notes, jobs in computing and math-based professions are expected to increase from 3 million to 4 million, notwithstanding the competitive threat from Indian software firms. But in the short term, job growth has been much slower than expected. It may pick up next month, or it may pick up a year from now. Nobody can be certain, and meanwhile, people who have lost jobs are in trouble.

Society`s answer to this is unemployment insurance. In most states laid-off workers are eligible for 26 weeks of benefits, and in the past a federal program has extended the coverage for a further 13 weeks. But in December the federal program expired, and by the end of February some 760,000 workers` state coverage dried up, with nothing to replace it. Majorities in both the House and Senate have recently voted in favor of reinstating the federal program, but the Republican leadership in Congress has frustrated their efforts.

President Bush, who has been ducking the issue, should call on the leaders to drop this obstructionism. The traditional reason to be skeptical of unemployment benefits -- that they cosset workers who could find jobs if they really tried -- is weak when jobs are as scarce as they are. Federal unemployment insurance should be restored, at least temporarily.



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. . . Or Rejecting Manipulation?


By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, March 19, 2004; Page A23


Here`s what some Republican leaders and op-ed page warriors are saying: As soon as terrorist bombs went off in Spain, voters there had a moral obligation to vote for the incumbents who supported President Bush`s Iraq policies. To make any other choice was to vote for appeasement.

And so, when the votes were counted Sunday and Spain replaced the Popular Party with the Socialists, an entire nation was immediately painted as a bunch of chickens, this generation`s answer to Neville Chamberlain.

"Here`s a country who stood against terrorism and had a huge terrorist act within their country, and they chose to change their government and to, in a sense, appease terrorists," declared House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Rep. Henry Hyde, Hastert`s fellow Illinois Republican, put it even more plainly: "The voices of appeasement are being heard in Europe."

Thank goodness not everyone in the Republican Party is willing to shout "appeasement" as soon as voters in a democratic nation express some differences with our government. It took the ever-steady Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, to bring sanity to the discussion.

"I think the vote that propelled the Socialists into power in Spain, as I understand it, was a protest by the people against the handling of the terrorist event by the sitting government of Spain," Armitage said. The Spanish government "didn`t get what information did exist out to the public."

Indeed, Spanish voters had every reason to be furious. As Keith B. Richburg demonstrated in an excellent report in The Post, the government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar "undertook an intense campaign" to convince the world -- and his country`s electorate -- that last week`s bombings had been carried out not by al Qaeda but by the Basque separatist group ETA.

Why? Aznar`s hard line against ETA was an electoral asset to his chosen successor, Mariano Rajoy. Aznar`s decision to send troops to Iraq was an electoral liability. So it had to be ETA.

Richburg documented Aznar`s efforts to persuade allies and Spanish news editors to blame the attack on ETA. To point fingers anywhere else, said Angel Acebes, the interior minister, was "a miserable attempt to disrupt information and confuse people. . . . There is no doubt that ETA is responsible."

Long after the evidence began suggesting that al Qaeda or its offshoots were responsible, American officials played along with Aznar. As voters were going to the polls in Spain, Secretary of State Colin Powell told "Fox News Sunday" that "ETA is still a candidate for responsibility" while Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, was more circumspect in attributing suspicions of ETA to "the Spanish authorities." The charitable view is that Powell and Rice didn`t want to interfere with the Spanish elections -- or undercut an administration ally.

It`s reasonable to think that the terrorists of al Qaeda wanted to affect the Spanish elections. What`s hard to understand is why our own hawks are so eager to hand al Qaeda a victory by rushing to put down Spanish voters as wimps.

"I think humility is very much in order here," said Sen. Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has repeatedly defended Bush`s invasion of Iraq. "We`re making a gigantic mistake in characterizing Aznar`s party`s loss as a victory for al Qaeda. . . . I`m not sure that`s true, and all it does is reinforce the notion that there is a gigantic split between the Spanish population and America."

Instead of bashing the Spaniards, Biden suggests that the administration come to terms with why there is so much opposition to its policies in Europe and start rebuilding bridges. The president, Biden says, "should be getting on a plane and heading to Europe. He should say we need a united front in fighting al Qaeda. We need Europe, and Europe needs us."

Biden proposes internationalizing U.S. efforts in Iraq through NATO and "taking the American face off this" by appointing an internationally accepted high commissioner to preside over the transformation of Iraq.

For the moment, Spain`s incoming prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, didn`t make matters easier when he hinted in a radio interview Wednesday that he was rooting for John Kerry to defeat Bush. Americans, no less than the Spanish, prefer to make their own electoral decisions. But with so many supporters of the Bush administration trashing Zapatero voters as appeasers, the new prime minister`s preferences are not surprising.

The vote in Spain was not a vote for al Qaeda. It was, in part at least, a vote against the manipulation of terror for political purposes.

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Time for Solidarity With Europe


By Joe Lieberman

Friday, March 19, 2004; Page A23


Last week`s bombings in Madrid mark a critical turning point in our war against terrorism -- a crossroads as important as Sept. 11, 2001. When historians look back on March 11, 2004, will they see it as the time after which Europe and the United States locked arms against a common foe and went on to achieve greater security on both sides of the Atlantic? Or will they see it as the day al Qaeda drove a wedge between Europe and America and some Europeans decided that they could achieve an accommodation with fanatical Islamic terrorists? In other words, will Madrid be remembered as Pearl Harbor or as Munich?

For now the response of too many Spanish voters looks more like Munich. By electing a new government, the people of Spain implied that they not only reject U.S. policies in Iraq but also the need to join us in the war against terrorism. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows that similar opinions are shared in much of Europe. Majorities in France and Germany hold unfavorable views toward the United States and doubt our sincerity in the global war on terrorism.

I understand the Europeans` unease over American power and their anger at the one-sided ways the Bush administration has exercised that power. For example, when the Europeans invoked Article V of the NATO charter after Sept. 11 and pledged to send their troops to fight alongside ours in Afghanistan, the Bush administration rejected the offer and chose to go it alone. That was a mistake, and it sent an offensive and divisive message to our European allies.

But such decisions cannot be allowed to blind the Europeans to the interest they share with us in confronting the jihadists. In our domestic politics, it is critical that Republicans and Democrats not let the quest for partisan victory this November prevent us from working together now to achieve a national victory over the terrorist insurgency in Iraq. In the same way, it is important that our European allies not allow their opposition to many of the Bush administration`s foreign policies to separate them from America in defeating Islamic terrorists.

Lost in the growing transatlantic divide is an understanding that the same solidarity that enabled us to defeat communism is urgently needed to defeat terrorism. Last week`s attacks show that al Qaeda does not distinguish between Americans and Europeans -- and anyone in Europe who thinks a separate peace can be made with the terrorists has not heard or read the warnings of Osama bin Laden. We are all their enemies, because we share the same values of freedom and democracy that brought us together as an alliance.

In the wake of the Madrid bombings, our leaders and Europe`s must work to repair the breach. President Bush should seize the opportunity to turn this tragedy into solidarity by personally reaching out to the people of Spain, honoring their dead, and speaking to our common values and cause. The United States should also request that NATO`s North Atlantic Council convene to forge a united strategy for combating terrorism and to invoke Article V of the alliance`s charter -- to let the terrorists know that we regard this attack against Spain as an attack against us all. Bush might personally attend this meeting, which would be held in Brussels, to show our willingness not only to lead but also to listen. In response, Europe should take our outstretched hand and commit to working through NATO, not outside it.

Then, through our renewed alliance, nations, such as Spain, that sent troops to Iraq and those, such as France, that did not, might all see that the terrorist insurgents we are fighting in Iraq today come from the same fanatical movement as those who struck Madrid. Together we should ask the United Nations to pass another resolution paving the way for NATO to join the critical battle against terrorism in Iraq. If Europe is given a formal role in Iraq through the alliance, and not just a voluntary one through a coalition of the willing, the unilateral withdrawal of troops by any nation is highly unlikely.

At the height of the Cold War, President John F. Kennedy made clear that America stood with Europe in the fight against communism by asserting that he was one with the people of Berlin. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Europe echoed this sentiment, with a French newspaper proclaiming, "We Are All American." It is time for Americans and Europeans to reaffirm our solidarity by declaring "Somos todos Madrileños" -- we are all citizens of Madrid -- and go forward together to win the war against terrorism.

The writer is a Democratic senator from Connecticut.



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IRAQ: ONE YEAR LATER
Strained U.S.-European Relations Turn Pragmatic
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Times Staff Writer

March 19, 2004



He`s as ubiquitous as the Big Mac.

Europe can`t shake the bowlegged cowboy peeking out from a too-big Stetson, arms bent and ready to draw. This political caricature of President Bush endures, even as transatlantic relations have improved from the derision and backbiting that one year ago marked the beginning of the Iraq war.

A lot has happened in that year. While the U.S. has been preoccupied with securing Iraq, Europe, in many ways, has set its own course. Perhaps more than the U.S. itself, Europe understands that the Sept. 11 attacks changed U.S. priorities and that Washington`s old friends are often overshadowed by new strategic alliances.

The terrorist bombings in Madrid last week — possibly orchestrated by Islamic extremists to punish Spain for supporting the Iraq war — are forcing some European nations to reevaluate their partnerships with the U.S. The leader of the newly elected Socialist Workers Party in Spain has vowed to withdraw the nation`s 1,300 troops from Iraq, a prospect that would undermine U.S. efforts to build an international coalition.

The specter of terrorism and differences over world security are turning the Cold War-era transatlantic friendship into steely pragmatism. The continent has a two-dimensional view of the U.S. Although most people in London, Paris, Berlin and other capitals feel an affinity for Americans, that closeness does not extend to a White House seen as rash and militaristic at a time when globalization needs patience and diplomacy.

"The last four years have been hell," said Francois Heisbourg, a foreign policy expert at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. "The Bush administration`s view of things is, `You`re either a poodle or an enemy.` The Bushies don`t tend to forget."

Such widespread attitudes are softened by nostalgia many Europeans have for U.S. forces who liberated them more than half a century ago.

"If you go to the American cemetery in Cassino or the cemetery in nearby Anzio," said Italian waiter Dario Di Tiello, 40, speaking of his nation`s World War II battlefields, "you can see how many Americans are buried there, how many came to save us from hell. We always forget these things. For me, the American people were a great people, they still are a great people."

The spate of across-the-pond name calling — Euroweenies versus cultural bimbos — has largely subsided. But Europeans have been reminded that they are more different from Americans than they once thought. Attitudes toward gay marriage, capital punishment and other social issues reveal the chasm between a liberal-leaning Europe and a conservative-tilting America.

And the Bush administration`s weaving of religion through politics — especially when the president invoked God as he was going to war — unnerves European secularism.

"There`s an extraordinary element of fundamentalist type of religion in American life," said Roger Duclaud-Williams, a political science professor at the University of Warwick in Britain, adding that he was bemused that Janet Jackson`s flashed breast at the Super Bowl caused so much hand-wringing. "It`s a kind of Christian-based Puritanism for which our educated governing class doesn`t have much sympathy."

Europeans have tried to move beyond rancor when discussing Washington. Conversation is as dignified and proper as a tea party on the Thames. There are the occasional snide asides about Europe`s moral authority and the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been unearthed in Iraq. But when the brandy is poured in the anterooms, or pints are hoisted in pubs, Europeans swoon and giggle over John Kerry, the continent`s new poster boy.

"Kerry has Europe`s Vote," said a headline in the Economist.

The Financial Times Germany has written of Kerry: "His first cousin is a French mayor. His father was a diplomat. He spent school years in Switzerland. He thinks the death penalty is bad and thinks the Kyoto Protocol, intended to protect the global climate, is good. If the Europeans were allowed to vote for the U.S. president this coming November, a triumph for the Democratic challenger John Kerry would be assured. Never has a U.S. president been so disliked in Europe as George W. Bush."

Some Europeans are quick to add that Kerry would be a pleasant change of personality, but that terrorism and shifting world hotspots would prevent him from significantly altering U.S. foreign policy.

The Madrid bombings have given Europe a keener understanding of acting within one`s own interests and have raised challenging questions: Does supporting the U.S. mean bringing Islamic terrorism to European cities? If Spain withdraws troops from Iraq, what domestic pressures will Britain, Italy and Poland face to do the same?

"It comes down to fundamental differences in our societies," said Bernhard May, an analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations. "American society seems to be more inspired, a society with a mission. But Europe doesn`t want to go around the world telling people how to live.

"What really is going on now between Europe and America is a working out of a relationship for the post-Cold War era. We should have had this discussion back in the 1990s, but we didn`t. The fundamental question is, what kind of world order do we want?"

The iconic images of a gunslinger Texan helped change the political dynamics of the continent.

Antiwar fervor strengthened the Berlin-Paris axis. But it created animosity with countries that supported the war, such as Spain and Poland, and has strained the atmosphere as the European Union prepares to expand from 15 to 25 nations this year. Despite the EU`s goal of cohesion, the continent is increasingly discovering that it can be compared less to a chorus than to a jazz ensemble, with each player fighting for his own solo.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair — whose backing of Bush cost him in the polls — these days wants to be known as a statesman "at the heart of Europe." Many in Blair`s liberal-leaning Labor Party believe that staying cozy with Washington is political peril.

"We need to get George Bush out of the White House," Anthony Giddens, an unofficial Blair advisor, told a recent Labor Party gathering. Even members of the conservative Tories, who bonded so well with Ronald Reagan, see Bush as an impediment to transatlantic relations.

"Some of it`s jealousy, the frustration that after [Bill] Clinton we thought we`d have our own guy in the White House and then it didn`t turn out that way," said George Osborne, a Tory member of Parliament who supports Bush. "But the Bush frontier-style talk just doesn`t go down well among Tories."

Europe`s own problems often eclipse its worry about U.S. relations. The French and German economies are struggling. Health and social reforms are triggering voter anger. Immigration problems are roiling governments. Many wonder what will happen to the EU — once a privileged Western club — when it admits the Czech Republic and other former Soviet Bloc countries in May.

"The relations with the United States should not be our priority today," said Jean-Luc Turcouin, a French retiree. "We have to deal with our own national problems, the elections, the euro, the unemployment, the terrorism. This is what we should worry about."

But the U.S. is the new hyper-power, and Europeans acknowledge that the harsh rhetoric against Bush`s military policies should not jeopardize the transatlantic alliance. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, for example, has declined French President Jacques Chirac`s suggestion that Europe form a counterbalance to Washington. Analysts say the U.S. and Europe need each other, especially in the Middle East and in fighting terrorism.

For all the recent nastiness, Europe and the U.S. often complement each other. European diplomacy backed by a veiled threat of U.S. military prowess helped defuse the Iranian nuclear crisis and prompted Libya to renounce its chemical weapons programs. The continent and Washington are cooperating on a new role for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as strategic interests move eastward. And Paris — the major European capital most estranged from Washington — is working with the Bush administration in Haiti.

"We have come to the conclusion that we went too far in the divorce," said Dominique Moisi, an analyst at the French Institute for International Relations.

It may never be a love fest. Europe and America have had more than 200 years of skirmishes and spats. America has been cast as the ambitious upstart less concerned with high culture than with making a buck, Europe as a bit of a relic that speaks eloquently but is skittish when it comes to action. The Cold War put a veneer over the rifts as Europe and the U.S. faced a common enemy. Now there are more mercurial foes — as the recent Madrid bombing reaffirmed — and the bonds of friendship are being recast.

Moisi said Europe and the U.S. might grow closer in coming years through an ironic twist. Under Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, Moscow is growing autocratic and restive as Europe integrates and becomes more of an economic power. This trend concerns European officials, some of whom believe Cold War ghosts are stirring.

"You suddenly start to be worried," Moisi said, "and you start to want a blend of U.S. and European cooperation."

*


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Times staff writers Janet Stobart in London and Achrene Sicakyuz in Paris, and special correspondents Nancy Meiman in Rome and Bruce Wallace in London contributed to this report.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-pole…
THE WORLD
Poles `Misled` on Iraq, President Says
The U.S. war ally voices criticism of prewar assessments on weapons. South Korea balks at deploying 3,000 troops to the city of Kirkuk.
By Paul Richter
Times Staff Writer

March 19, 2004

WASHINGTON — In an unusual public criticism by one of the United States` staunchest allies, the president of Poland said Thursday that he had been "misled" about Iraq`s alleged stocks of banned weapons before the war.

Speaking to reporters in Warsaw, President Aleksander Kwasniewski said that Iraq "without Saddam Hussein is truly better than Iraq with Saddam Hussein," but observed that "naturally, I also feel uncomfortable, due to the fact that we were misled with the information on weapons of mass destruction."

His comments, provided in a government transcript, came amid growing anxiety among a number of key U.S. allies four days after Spanish voters tossed out the government that had sent troops to Iraq.

Among governments in Europe that supported the war, "there`s a rush for the exits," said Radek Sikorski, a former deputy foreign minister of Poland now at the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington. He predicted that politicians` concern about the Spanish election would drive many governments that have sided with the U.S. on Iraq to align themselves more closely with France and Germany, which had opposed the war. Other analysts have said such pressure may particularly be at play in Italy and Romania.

In an interview Thursday on PBS` "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz responded sharply to Kwasniewski`s comments.

"I don`t think he has a right to say they were misled," Wolfowitz said. There were intelligence failures in Iraq, Wolfowitz acknowledged, but "nobody was misleading anybody…. When somebody tells you their best estimate of a situation and it turns out to be wrong … that`s life."

Meanwhile, in another blow to the U.S. effort in Iraq, South Korea said today that it would not send 3,000 troops to the northern city of Kirkuk as planned and would look to place them in a safer city.

"Our objective in sending troops is to assist in the rebuilding of Iraq, not to get involved in aggressive actions such as the crackdown on terrorist groups," said a South Korean official, who asked not to be quoted by name.

The official said the main reason was the deteriorating security situation in Kirkuk. He conceded, however, that last week`s bombing in Madrid, which killed 202 people and may have been conducted by Islamic terrorists retaliating for Spain`s support of the Iraq war, might have had an "indirect effect" on the decision.

South Korean military officials said they informed the U.S. a few days ago of the change, which is expected to delay the deployment, scheduled to begin in April. The Pentagon had no official response to the decision, but one Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity said it was up to each nation to decide "what type, duration and scope of support" it would offer.



As for Poland, Warsaw now has 2,400 troops leading an international force of 9,600, including the Spaniards, that patrols a region of south-central Iraq.

Administration officials insisted Thursday that they did not believe Poland`s support was in doubt. Condoleezza Rice, Bush`s national security advisor, said on CNN that "there`s been no stronger ally than the Poles."

But another U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that if Kwasniewski had been quoted correctly, "it would be huge; it would be damaging. They`ve really been our best buddies through all of this."

In a meeting with Bush in January, Kwasniewski praised the president as a friend and said relations between the countries should be "as excellent as possible." Yet a survey last week by the CBOS polling organization in Poland found 42% of adults in favor of the current mission in Iraq, and 53% opposed.

In his comments, Kwasniewski said Poland might start withdrawing troops from Iraq early next year. An official at the Polish Embassy in Washington said Polish officials had said that troops could be pulled out in early 2005 if the mission is accomplished. But in the past, Polish officials said their troops might remain until mid-2005.

The official said Poland did not intend to retreat from its commitment in Iraq.

European allies` position on the war began to undergo review Sunday, when Spanish voters spurned the Popular Party of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and handed power to the Socialists, led by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a staunch opponent of the war.

The vote was thought to reflect both the Spanish public`s opposition to the war and its anger with the government`s handling of the train bombings.

On Monday, Zapatero announced his plan to withdraw Spain`s 1,300 troops by the end of June. A day later, Bush failed to persuade the prime minister of the Netherlands to extend Dutch troops` tour in Iraq beyond their commitment, which lasts until midyear.

The Poles have special reason to be nervous, because Spain`s shift toward France and Germany has left Warsaw without its close ally on some key intra-European issues, such as the proposed European Union constitution, said James M. Goldgeier, of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

Kwasniewski`s mixed message Thursday indicated that the Polish leader wants to maintain ties with the U.S. but balance them with stronger ties to Europe, Goldgeier said.

"It`s a natural kind of balancing game," he said, noting that Poland will formally enter the EU on May 1.

But Poles also have repeatedly complained that they have been an underappreciated ally.

When Kwasniewski visited Bush in January, the Polish leader asked for several kinds of help: military aid, access to prime contracts for Iraq reconstruction and a waiver of requirements that Poles obtain visas before entering the U.S.

But Kwasniewski was snubbed on several key demands, and in Poland the visit "was viewed as a failure," Sikorski said.

*


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Staff writers Barbara Demick in Seoul and John Hendren in Washington contributed to this report.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kennedy…
COMMENTARY
Bush`s Distortions Misled Congress in Its War Vote
By Edward M. Kennedy

March 19, 2004

A year ago, the United States went to war in Iraq because President Bush and his administration convinced Congress and the country that Saddam Hussein was an urgent threat that required immediate military action. The nation has paid a high price for that decision ever since.

The case for war was based on two key claims: that Hussein was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, and that he had close ties to the Al Qaeda terrorists responsible for the atrocities of Sept. 11. Both claims proved to be demonstrably false.

We can only speculate about the real reasons we went to war. What is known, however, is that, at the time the decision was being made in the summer of 2002, Osama bin Laden was still at large, the war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan had entered a troubled phase, our economy was reeling from recession, the president`s approval rating in the Gallup Poll had declined from its peak of 90% after Sept. 11 to 63% by Labor Day 2002, and control of the Senate and House was at stake in the critical congressional elections in November that year.

Karl Rove, the president`s political advisor, made it clear early on that the war on terrorism could be used politically. At a Republican National Committee meeting on Jan. 19, 2002, he said, "We can go to the country on this issue, because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America`s military might and thereby protecting America."

The decision on Iraq was made in August, but the administration announced it in September. As White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. explained on Sept. 7, "from a marketing point of view, you don`t introduce new products in August."

For maximum political impact, the administration insisted that Congress vote to authorize the war before adjourning that year for the November elections.

The president, as principal cheerleader for war, said on Sept. 25, 2002, "You can`t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." On Oct. 2, he said the issue "is a threat of unique urgency." On Oct. 7, he said, "facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." On Oct. 10, the House approved the war resolution 296 to 133; the Senate approved it 77 to 23 the next day.

Republicans voted overwhelmingly to authorize the war; the Democrats were deeply divided. A mushroom cloud. A threat of unique urgency. No distinction between Hussein and Al Qaeda. These were the administration`s reasons, and none of them was true. The GOP prevailed in the 2002 elections and regained control of Congress, but it was a hollow victory.

Presumably, the administration felt it could not persuade Congress to authorize the war on the basis of chemical and biological weapons alone, since Hussein`s arsenal had been successfully contained for years. The case for war depended on hyping the nuclear threat and ties to Al Qaeda. In fact, the intelligence community had poured cold water on both the nuclear threat and the Al Qaeda link before the war began. CIA Director George J. Tenet stated in a speech last month that the agency told the administration before the war that "Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon, and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009."

The ties to Al Qaeda were just as dubious. Before the war, the intelligence community found no cooperative relationship between Hussein and Al Qaeda. It had low confidence even in the prospect that, in desperation, Hussein might share chemical and biological weapons with Al Qaeda. In February 2003, FBI investigators said they had been baffled by the administration`s insistence on a solid link. "We just don`t think it`s there," said one official.

The truth was there to see, but the administration refused to see it. America went to war in a dishonest way that alienated key allies, divided and weakened the United Nations, outraged the world community, made us more hated in the world and made the war on terrorism more difficult to win.

The decision on war or peace is the most important decision any president ever makes. The prime minister of Spain paid a high price Sunday for supporting us in the war, and for misleading the Spanish people. President Bush is likely to pay a similar high price in November.


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Edward M. Kennedy, a Democrat, is the senior senator from Massachusetts.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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A milestone in a long war

Friday, March 19, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ


URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/19/EDGB95MPBI1.DTL


DANGEROUS, uncertain and divisive. The same words apply to Iraq today as they did a year ago when the war began.

The debate over the worth and direction of this fight has intensified and the stakes have piled ever higher. Twelve months ago, this country dazzled the world with its shock-and-awe military prowess.

American forces easily swept away a murderous and corrupt dictator who wasted his country`s wealth and human potential. But as the months went by, the costs climbed. We are now tied down in a bloody occupation that has killed more military personnel than the original conflict.

Superpower dominance has ebbed in other ways. The United States remains isolated from world opinion, strongly criticized among Washington`s traditional allies in Europe. Also unimpressed are Iraq`s neighbors in the Mideast, who were the target audience. The White House`s tiny, pro-war alliance is riddled with defections such as Spain and now possibly Poland.

The one-year mark is an appropriate time to honor those who died or were injured, both Iraqi civilians, American and other foreign troops. The fighting half a world away is a special burden on families here at home who worry every day about sons and daughters.

It`s time to demand answers about the future. A clear path forward must be explained and justified. The cost in lives, diplomatic credibility and money spent should be totaled up. This country needs new faith in a White House that squandered its political advantage with faulty intelligence and arrogant diplomacy.

The current tactics aren`t working. The Iraq war hasn`t made the world a safer place. Terrorism, not rooted in Iraq, continues. The Madrid massacre and continued bombings in Baghdad undercut claims of progress in ending this curse.

Belaboring this sorry record isn`t an answer. An abrupt pullout from Iraq would only further unhinge that fractured country.

What can be done to rebuild Iraq and stop terrorism? The answers will be hard for the White House to accept.

The United Nations needs a bigger role, not just an advisory one, in rebuilding Iraq. There has to be a true coalition that taps the world community, not merely Washington`s small alliance, to protect and reconstruct the country. This country doesn`t have the trust or experience to pull off a huge nation-building challenge alone.

A U.N. mandate won`t bring instant stability to Iraq. The forces of war are too advanced for that. The postwar era will be a lengthy and frequently disappointing challenge. But Washington can`t finish this conflict by itself.

President Bush last month dubbed himself a "war president.`` He`ll stay one, unless he owns up to his mistakes and invites the rest of the world to finish the job.

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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__________________

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PARAMOUNT OPTIONS BOOK OF JOB

Bible Pic to Star Adam Sandler

In the wake of Mel Gibson’s smash hit “The Passion of the Christ,” Paramount Pictures today announced that it had optioned the exclusive motion picture rights to The Book of Job as a vehicle for comedy superstar Adam Sandler.

Paramount grabbed The Book of Job after passing on The Book of Revelations, which one studio spokesman said “was way too expensive, special effects-wise.”

In announcing the “Job” pic, Paramount exec Colin Mish said that the storyline was perfect for a summer blockbuster and was “not a downer at all.”

“It’s about a nice guy who has all this bogus stuff happen to him,” he said. “As I read it I was like, whoever wrote this must have been thinking of Adam Sandler.”

To acquire the “Job” rights, Paramount reportedly ponied up $8 million to its author, God, who is represented by The William Morris Agency.

William Morris beat out several other top Hollywood talent agencies two weeks ago in the competition to represent God, whose literary properties have never been in greater demand.

“Signing God as a client was huge,” said one Morris rep. “It really made up for losing Chloe Sevigny.”

While in the past God has had a reputation in Hollywood for being difficult, Mr. Mish of Paramount had only positive things to say about working with Him thus far.

“I’d heard He was vengeful, but I haven’t seen a vengeful side of Him,” Mr. Mish said. “He did turn my assistant into a pillar of salt, but she was late with that cappuccino.”

**** BOROWITZ AT LUNA LOUNGE MONDAY MARCH 22 ****

Andy Borowitz performs next Monday night at 8:30 at Luna Lounge, 171 Ludlow St, NYC. $8 admission includes one free drink.

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Media Transparency | Cursor.org

The Apparat
http://www.mediatransparency.org/stories/apparat_p.html
George W. Bush`s back-door
political machine

It`s anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional, and is working to create a one-party America

© 2004 by Jerry M. Landay
for Mediatransparency.org

POSTED MARCH 18, 2004 --

On a Tuesday evening in mid-January, a right-wing Washington writer-for-hire named Clark Judge appeared on public radio`s Marketplace.

In a commentary heard by an estimated five million people, Judge complained that the philanthropist George Soros was engaged in an "unethical" effort to outwit legal restrictions on campaign contributions.

Judge huffed that Soros, along with the Democratic Party, was "ponying up" millions of dollars in funding to tax-exempt, liberal advocacy organizations to prevent the re-election of George W. Bush. He labeled Soros and the Democrats "prime abusers," for using barely legal tactics to evade the contribution ceilings of the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law.

Judge was correct when he implied that legal and IRS regulations that are supposed to curb political activities by tax-exempt non-profit organizations are riddled with loopholes. Judge went much farther, though, implying that Soros and the Democrats had cornered the market on cheating. He warned his listeners to "brace...for the biggest tidal wave of political sewage in American history" from these Soros-supported organizations.

The Pot and the Kettle

In political parlance, Judge was acting as a surrogate. He had no apparent connection with the Bush campaign. But he had struck a blow for Bush`s re-election on behalf of the political propaganda machine of the organized right. To the uninitiated, Judge`s credentials seemed to lend throw-weight to his attack: managing director of the White House Writers Group, an umbrella firm of former ghostwriters for Republican presidents and bureaucrats now at the service of anyone willing to pay.

But only those in the know would understand the flaws in Judge`s statements. He failed to mention that hundreds of tax-exempt organizations of the far right have been exploiting the twilight zone of campaign and IRS regulations for three decades -- receiving billions of dollars in grants and contributions to wage ideo-political warfare for far-right ideas, causes, and Republican candidates. Liberal political organizations resort to the same shortcuts, but they pale when compared to the scale and duration of right-wing mischief. Judge is one more cog in a vast machine that, in the judgment of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) has "played a critical role in helping the Republican Party to dominate state, local and national politics." It is now operating at full throttle to keep Bush in office.

Though its activists like to call themselves conservatives, there is nothing they wish to "conserve" beyond their power, status, and wealth. They are right-wing radicals who have stolen the GOP away from the true conservatives who once dominated it.

The Cohort

In its latest report, called The Axis of Ideology, the NCRP has identified at least 350 tax-exempt, ostensibly non-partisan organizations within the right-wing`s activist front, many operating at regional, state, and local levels. They have penetrated the three branches of the federal government, and dominate the political debate. They guide and oversee the agenda that directs White House action (or inaction). Two of these organizations housed the planners who invented the Iraq war.

Rob Stein, an independent Washington researcher, follows the money flow to the radical activist establishment. He estimates that since the early 1970s at least $2.5 to $3 billion in funding has been awarded to the 43 major activist organizations he tracks that constitute the core of the radical machine.

He terms the big 43 the "cohort" -- an "incubator of right-wing, ideological policies that constitute the administration`s agenda, and, to the extent that it has one, runs its policy machinery."

He calls the cohort "a potent, never-ending source of intellectual content, laying down the slogans, myths, and buzz words that have helped shift public opinion rightward." The movement`s propulsive energies are largely generated within the cohort.

Stein describes it as movement conservatism`s "intellectual infrastructure" -- multiple-issue, non-profit, tax-exempt, and supposedly non-partisan. The apparatus includes think tanks, policy institutes, media-harassment enterprises, as well as litigation firms that file lawsuits to impose their ideological templates on the law.

They mastermind the machinery of radical politics, policy, and regulations. They include campus-based centers of scholarship, student associations, and scores of publications. The shorthand of their faith is well known: less government, generous tax cuts for the privileged, privatization or elimination of Social Security and Medicare, rollbacks of environmental safeguards, major curbs on the public`s right to go to court, and a laissez-faire free market system unfettered by regulations or public-interest accountability. Bush campaigns to advance the ideological agenda of the right, and the radical front in turn campaigns for Bush.

Roots

In the early 1970s, when the movement was spawned, most of the seed funding came from a relative handful of private foundations established by far-right industrialists and inherited wealth.

They included, most notably, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, the John M. Olin Foundation of New York City, the quartet of foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife of Pittsburgh, the Smith Richardson Foundation (Vicks), the Castle Rock Foundation (Coors beer), and the Koch family foundations (energy).

Today, the right`s funding base has hugely expanded. The NCRP now identifies a total of 79 private foundations that make grants to right-wing political action groups. The NCRP estimates that those foundations granted some $253 million to the 350 activist organizations between 1999 and 2001 alone.

Scores of for-profit corporations add millions more to the funding stream. These include Time-Warner, Altria (Philip Morris), AT&T, Microsoft, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and other members of the pharmaceutical industry, the two titans of the military-industrial complex Boeing and Lockheed Martin, as well as telecommunications, banking, real estate, and financial interests. Precise information on corporate contributions to tax exempt organizations is scarce since the IRS does not require their public disclosure.

The NCRP report concludes that the right-wing domain these billions has built has "undoubtedly helped advance, market, and strengthen the conservative agenda in all policy realms," from international relations and so-called "preventive" war-making, to a raft of domestic issues.

Broadsiding Soros

Months before the 2004 Presidential campaign had officially begun this prodigious apparatus was already engaged in a massive, unofficial campaign to re-elect George W. Bush. As part of this campaign Clark Judge`s radio assault on Soros was classic political disinformation.

By itself one radio appearance may not seem indicative of a grand right wing conspiracy; however, it was in reality part of something much bigger: a well-coordinated campaign against Soros, aimed at undermining the funding machinery of an emerging progressive counter-movement.

In another such coordinated action right-wing attorneys have petitioned the Federal Election Commission, trying to hobble progressive activist groups from collecting so-called"soft money." James K. Glassman, a cheerleader for the budget-busting Bush tax cuts and a senior scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, in an article titled "The Soros Threat," labeled Soros "a great threat not just to the re-election of George Bush, but to our truly open society" -- a sly word play on Soros` longtime interest, the pro-democracy Open Society Institute.

Glassman also writes a nationally syndicated business column for the Washington Post, and earlier had gained notoriety by penning a book in 1999 urging readers to snap up lots of stocks -- just before the market crashed. Writer Nicholas Confessore accused Glassman of "Journo-lobbying" -- using his writings as an influence- peddling instrument on behalf of favored corporations.

From his perch at the Free Congress Foundation, Paul Weyrich, a Glassman ally and senior member of the radical right`s influence machine, was warning followers against the "little-known" anti-Bush coalition aided by Soros. The website GOPUSA.com, was swiveling its polemical sights from a faltering Howard Dean to Soros, describing him, a Jew, as "a descendant of Shylock."

Soros and his recipients -- including Americans Coming Together, MoveOn.org, and the newly established liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress -- are no match, in terms of dollars or mass, for the vast alliance spearheaded by the cohort.

Americans are familiar with some of the names, if not the background, of the cohort`s leading members -- the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Hoover Institution, the Federalist Society, the Reason Foundation, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the National Association of Scholars, to name just a few.

According to columnist/broadcaster Laura Flanders, right-wing ideologues have been setting up their own, extensive, tax-exempt front groups for years. Their purpose is to influence public opinion to aggressively push GOP rhetoric, candidates and issues.

This network labored to defeat President Clinton`s health plan, and later worked to impeach and remove him from office. They "stirred the scandal pot," says Flanders, "to turn the public against policies and social trends they opposed." With the onset of the 2004 presidential campaign, this machine is back in the scandal business on behalf of the Republican nominee.

A mighty megaphone

Just as Democratic Senator John Kerry emerged as his party`s leading contender for its presidential nomination in late January, he immediately became fair game for the right`s "scandal pot."

Much of what has ensued is reminiscent of Richard Nixon`s infamous "plumbers" unit, the dirty-tricks squad that operated out of the White House that destroyed his presidency.

The opening salvo of the 2004 plumbing season was to distribute photographs faked to show Jane Fonda and Kerry ostensibly appearing at the same peace rally.

Another mudslinging campaign was designed to entrap Kerry in a fabricated sex scandal. It began with a planted "story" on the Drudge Report, designed to be picked up by the British press, with the intention that it would "bounce back" into the American media. Ironically, the US media wouldn`t touch the story, but neither did it expose the right`s failed methods.

As if on cue, a bevy of conservative-front columnists from the Washington Post to the Champaign News-Gazette opened a coordinated attack against Kerry and his key supporters.

Leading the way was a website operated by the Heritage Foundation, Townhall.com, which prominently displays the work of the venomous Ann Coulter.

Coulter had earlier upbraided former Senator Max Cleland of Georgia, a war hero and paraplegic who lost three limbs in the Vietnam War.

Cleland had committed the sin (to Coulter) of publicly questioning the military record of George W. Bush. Coulter attacked with characteristic malice and hyperbole. She wrote that Cleland was "lucky" to have had his limbs blown off. She went on to assault liberals who "have suddenly become jock-sniffers for war veterans."

Cleland was already aware of how the right`s attack machine works. He had lost his Senate seat in Georgia in 2002 after the Republicans ran ads juxtaposing his face with those of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Also, the chairman of the GOP faxed doctored Congressional testimony to the press to create the false impression that Wesley Clark had supported the Iraqi war.

A "tidal wave of sewage," indeed.

Besides hosting Ann Coulter, Townhall.com serves as a web portal for more than 70 nationally syndicated columnists of the radical right, ranging from former Gingrich spokesman Tony Blankley to former Jesse Helms speech writer George Will. There is no comparable website on the left. The hailstorm of polemics generated by Townhall.com serves as the daily grist for the hundreds of talk-show hosts who have tilted the American airwaves sharply rightward.

A John Kerry spokesman described the result:

"From Rush Limbaugh to Sean Hannity to Laura Ingraham to Saxby Chamblis to the RNC, you can`t turn on a TV or a radio without seeing a systematic, coordinated attack on John Kerry."
The positioning of these right wing operatives within the "mainstream" media surely puts the lie to the old "liberal media" canard, which despite its demonstrable falsity is still standard kant for the conservative propaganda
mill. This myth serves to divert attention from the stunning dominance of the right wing in media.

A look at the 15 most widely syndicated newspaper columnists makes the point: Nine -- 56 percent -- are solidly right-wing. Of the remaining six, only three are solidly liberal -- Molly Ivins, Nat Hentoff, and Ellen Goodman.

The far right machine also controls the microphone. The top 27 syndicated on-air hosts are right-wing. There is not one liberal voice among them. Journalists and personalities of the right reach millions of people through hundreds of radio and television stations, and cable channels.

The impact of this machine on the 2004 national political campaigns will be hard to calculate. It has only just begun.

Spokespersons for the radical front have already fanned out as ready-to-air guests on talk and interview programs, transmitting the identical pro-Republican line of the week. They pen hundreds of boiler-plate op-ed pieces daily, which newspaper editors are often happy to run, possibly because they are offered for free. The radical front links web sites to mobilize barrages of e-mails, letters, and phone calls promoting Republican causes.

For a graphic idea of the reach of the propaganda operation, just one organization, the Heritage Foundation, notes in its 2002 Annual Report that more of its experts were seen on national television within that single year than during the entire 1990s. In 2002 alone, Heritage analysts were featured on more than 600 television broadcasts, more than 1,000 radio broadcasts, and in some 8,000 newspaper and magazine articles and editorials.

Political commentator David Gergen has noted that the integrated propaganda organs of the far right have created "a new politics in America," with its "ability to mobilize and interact with core constituencies on issues ranging from immigration to tax policy to welfare reform."

The machine`s efforts, which are misperceived by the populace as divorced from the GOP and the Bush White House, allow the President to appear above the fray at photo-ops and fund-raisers, while the unofficial machine augments his firepower and campaign bank accounts.

The rise of right-wing power

While it is true that liberal operatives, dedicated organizations, and funding sources exist in some numbers, the current right-wing juggernaut of hard cash and sharp edged political power really has no equal in American history.

Researcher Rob Stein says the key difference is that the left employs no organizational cohesiveness. Efforts are fragmented, disconnected, and, for the most part, focused on single issues. The lack of coordination
is compounded by opposition control of the White House.

The potency of right wing politics and opinion molding lies in the architecture of the movement. That is, its constituent organizations think and act strategically. Agendas, priorities, and propaganda are directed from the center. Members are disciplined and dedicated to the narrow theology of the right.

The disparate streams of conservative thought and action -- social, economic, religious, libertarian, and corporate -- set aside major differences and march to a single drummer -- with the tempo set at weekly tactical conferences in Washington.

This cohesion has undeniably had a large impact on the American body politic. The far right coalition now effectively controls the three branches of the federal government, overriding the checks-and-balances against rampant political power built into the Constitution. Conservatives now also set the terms of the national political debate through their dominance of the unofficial "fourth estate," the media.

The model that appealed to pioneer right-wing
organizers for this type of social/political/legal campaign was, ironically, located to the left -- Ralph Nader and his Raiders -- a band of activists united for consumer rights in the early 1970s.

Nader`s campaigns against corporate excesses eventually galvanized businessmen to an aggressive defense of the capitalist system, which they felt was in danger. Conservatives feared that the war in Vietnam had rendered America a paper tiger. The failure to liberate the American hostages in Teheran in 1979 became an emblem of the collapse of American might.

Domestic tranquility had been shattered by racial unrest, assassinations, and burning cities. "The glory hath departed," intoned the Rev. Jerry Falwell on CBS, as he organized his Moral Majority to "save" the nation. America, he preached, had lost its power, lost its values, lost its virtues. And he blamed the liberal movement for all the ills. With the Nixon landslide against McGovern in 1972, the right also sensed its moment. The Reagan victory in 1980 confirmed it.

The ultra-conservative William Simon, a financier, Treasury Secretary, and then president of the Olin Foundation, decided it was time to bring conservative wealth, manpower, and organizational ability to bear on the creation of a "counter intelligentsia" to roll back the "despotism" of the "Liberal Establishment."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce widely distributed an influential memo by a Richmond attorney named Lewis Powell, who would subsequently become a Supreme Court justice, calling for a conservative assault against what he viewed as the central echelons of liberal power -- the campus, the media, the courts, and politics.

Out of this tempest emerged what Sidney Blumenthal has called the "counter-establishment." A host of right wing intellectuals would staff "new institutes, writing policy papers and newspaper editorials ... serving as political advisers, lending the power of the word" to a movement to lead the counter-charge.

Many of these intellectuals were defectors from Communism, disillusioned by the excesses of the system, their personal quest for status and power unrequited. They were joined by disaffected liberals, ambitious operatives hungry for the power to make things happen. Both were familiar with the byzantine state machinery that ran the former Soviet Union.

On their relatively short march from the radicalism of the far left to that of the far right, they transferred their experience in marketing one set of absolutist ideas to another dogma already at home within the American community of privilege.

Right-wing radicalism offered not only a formidable ladder with which to scale the ramparts of power, but the money to make it happen. A new "host of conservative institutions" rooted and flourished. It took three decades for this burgeoning power to elevate George W. Bush to the White House. It now labors to keep him there.

The Soviet apparat

The architectural shape of the right-wing counter-establishment resembles the apparatus that ran the Soviet Union. The Russians called it the "apparat" -- a vast bureaucratic web of power that housed the organs, official and unofficial, of the ruling Communist Party.

It included the administrative departments that fictively ran the Soviet government. In fact, the party ran it all. Its ruling Politburo and Central Committee were paramount. The Soviet apparat was headed by a privileged ruling class, the nomenklatura, manned by a faceless army of bureaucrats, the apparatchiki.

The structure of the apparat was triangular, comprised of the party, the organs of state security, and the military establishment. The leadership elite in the Kremlin presided over all of it.

The organs of propaganda and media were also housed within the apparat, together with the Comintern, which oversaw the Communist parties of other countries. It included scores of activist front operations. They carried out agitprop - incitement and manipulation of opinion among the masses. These popular-front operations appeared independent, but were linked covertly to the apparat in Moscow.

The American apparat

The American apparat of the far right can be viewed as a variant of the Soviet model - amorphous in overlapping functions at the top but monolithic in its aims. It is an external government that guides the federal government. In a stunning sense, it is counter-revolutionary and anti-Constitutional.

The American apparat has learned from the failures of the Iran-Contra and Watergate operations, which functioned within the government, and were thus subject to governmental oversight and correction. Not so the apparat. With its operations spread over a spectrum external to government, it attracts neither official nor media attention. It operates invisibly -- in the open.

The NCRP writes, "There is considerable organic alignment and cohesion on the right." Conservative funders and non-profits are all on the same page, dedicated to the broader goals of radical politics.

The American apparat functions as a broad strategic, policy-formulating, and coordinating machine. Like the Soviet apparat, it is triangular in structure. The main leg can be viewed as the nomenklatura -- the central command of the cohort. Subordinate to it is the second leg -- the major units of government, including the White House and the Congressional majority. The President governs as the creature of the apparat, along with his cabinet.

Vice-President Cheney bridges the two as a senior member of the nomenklatura. So does Karl Rove, the White House political operator, along with the leaders of the Republican Congressional wing -- Senate and House majority leaders Bill Frist and Tom DeLay.

The third leg can be viewed as the Republican political wing. In the party realignment of 1992, the national Republican apparatus was taken over by the apparat, and reduced to an appendage. The national party is now principally a tool for the disbursement of campaign largesse; and it supervises the machinery of elections and coordinates state party functions.

Edwin Feulner, Jr., president of the Heritage Foundation, the fountainhead of the cohort and the single largest recipient of right-wing philanthropy money ($44 million between 1985 and 2002), is a senior member of the apparat. The Heritage Foundation laid down the primary policy blueprint for the incoming Reagan Administration in 1980. It was called Mandate for Leadership: Turning Ideas Into Action. Eighty percent of its recommendations were deemed accomplished by the end of the Reagan era. Heritage has produced similar action blueprints for succeeding Republican presidents, including the administration of George W. Bush.

After Bush II`s selection by the Supreme Court, the Heritage Foundation also served as personnel clearing house and hiring hall for senior government positions. Elaine Chao, the former Heritage Foundation fellow who supervised the hiring, is now Secretary of Labor.

Social and religious conservatives exert profound bottom-up influence on the apparat and White House. They spring from the bedrock, where the voters are. Only elections can overturn the apparat`s hold on political power.

The American apparat must be responsive to its popular base, especially the mandates of such populist organizations as the National Rifle Association, American Family Institute, and Family Research Council, with their roots in the grass roots. We have witnessed the President`s sensitivity to the base, especially on such issues as gun ownership, opposition to immigration and abortion, resistance to gay marriage, and so-called "activist judges."

Like its Soviet counterpart, the American apparat is also a closed society, largely unelected and unaccountable to the body politic, and casts its penumbra upon the White House. As in the former USSR, there is little discussion or debate. Loyalty is absolute -- "you are either with us or you are with our enemies." Under Bush and Cheney, brisk exchanges of view, the engine of policy formation in prior administrations, are discouraged. Cabinet meetings are scripted for a president unprepared for spontaneous exchanges (as revealed in documents posted by Ron
Suskind, that were used to research his best-selling The Price of Loyalty).

The endgame for the apparat is a one-party state in which elections project only a vestigial appearance of democratic process. It is run, in effect, by the ruling oligarchy, whose members are beholden only to the apparat.

The leave-us-alone coalition

Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is day-to-day operations director of the apparat`s tactical machine.

Every Wednesday at the Washington headquarters of ATR, more than a hundred representatives of major right-wing organizations throng the conference room. Present are White House and Congressional staffers, lobbyists, industry representatives, right-wing think tankers, hard-right editors, and litigators. Attendance is by invitation only. Norquist calls the Wednesday gathering his "Leave Us Alone" coalition, an anti-government line that conceals the real goal of creating a corporate socialist state.

"Here," writes Michael Sherer in Mother Jones magazine,"Strategy is honed. Talking points are refined. Discipline is imposed ... Norquist plays the role of national ward boss, delivering the coalition that has rallied around the president`s policy agenda." Norquist consults regularly with the White House, notably Karl Rove and "Scooter" Libby, Vice-President Cheney`s chief of staff, and, in turn, channels the worldview of the apparat to them.

Sherer took note of Norquist`s view of his populist base: "My ideal citizen [is] the self-employed, home-schooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit -- because he doesn`t need the goddamn government for anything." Here`s where Norquist`s standard-issue buzz-phrases find fertile pasture: "out of sync with America," "card-carrying liberal from Massachusetts," "the extreme elements of his party," "pro-abortion and pro-gay." As the adage goes, control the rhetoric and you control the debate.

Boosting the Bush agenda

Amidst a sea of voters who largely agree with liberal positions on social issues, the apparat has created a great equalizer, its multi-million-dollar propaganda megaphone.

The Heritage Foundation, a leading promoter of the Bush tax cuts, spearheads the President`s plan to make them permanent. In op-ed articles and interviews, Heritage scholars use sleight-of-hand to defend the deep deficit caused by the tax cuts; they attribute it to the "runaway growth" of discretionary domestic programs. Actually, discretionary, non-security-related spending amounts to less than 3.4 percent of GDP, inconsequential compared to the whopping cost of Bush tax cuts and war.

Economists for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) reinforce the line. They present a welter of statistics to counter Democratic calls for tax rollbacks. Newspaper editors tend to view NBER numbers as non-partisan. In fact, NBER delivers customized numbers to sell the right-wing agenda. Its CEO, Professor Martin Feldstein of Harvard, headed the White House Council of Economic Advisers under Ronald Reagan. NBER has received more than $10 million in support since 1985 from right-wing foundations.

An examination of NBER by The New York Times found that its oft-quoted economic analyses are highly partisan, and that "Feldstein has shown little taste since the 1980s for straying from the Republican Party line."

Early in 2004, the Washington Legal Foundation`s Daniel Popeo placed ads on the op-ed page of The New York Times, defending the Bush administration`s assault on civil liberties as the price of waging its "war on terror." Popeo`s ads criticized "ideologues" on the left for putting civil liberties ahead of "Americans` right to live free from terror."

Meantime, the libertarian Cato Institute was promoting a four-day "Social Security University" for legislators and their staffs on Capitol Hill -- a major effort to win Congressional support for the privatization of Social Security as the best medicine for the "coming insolvency." Cato has led the White House campaign for "private savings accounts," the cornerstone of the right-wing effort to transform Social Security from a durable pension program into a long-term source of commissions for Wall Street brokers. Cato`s proposed "reform" would cost the government an estimated $1 trillion to implement over the next decade.

Defending Bush in Iraq

The doctrinal blueprint for the Iraq War was drawn prior to the 2000 election by neoconservatives Dick Cheney and Richard Perle, as senior fellows at the American Enterprise Institute, together with colleagues at the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Both are hard-line organs of the apparat. In February, news stories detailed the misuse of intelligence data by the Bush administration to justify its war on Iraq. Right-wing bankroller Rupert Murdoch`s Weekly Standard responded with a cover article by neoconservative war boomers Robert Kagan and William Kristol of PNAC justifying "the Right War for the Right Reasons" against the "serial aggression" of Saddam Hussein.

Further, they went on to blame the Clinton administration for the tragic events of 9/11. At the same time, the Foundation to Defend Democracy (FDD), yet another think tank of the apparat, was defending neoconservative hard-line positions on Iraq and North Korea.

The FDD had been launched after 9/11 by Clifford May, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee, to promote Bush doctrinal policies. FDD fellows are pushing their messages with regularity and vigor as contributors to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and other influential publications.

The apparant`s Club for Growth is underwriting TV spots for the Bush campaign. So is Citizens United, a front for agitator David N. Bossie, last heard from as the congressional aide who got fired for doctoring audio tape in a failed attempt to incriminate the Clintons in the Whitewater affair. Citizens United is also responsible for the infamous "Willie Horton" ads aired on TV in 1988 to help elect Bush`s father.

Crossing the line

Right-wing organizations regularly stray across the no-politics restrictions placed on tax-exempt organizations. Mother Jones magazine relates that Grover Norquist`s tax-exempt ATR applied nearly $5 million funneled from the Republican National Committee into attack ads and direct-mail solicitations in the 1996 presidential campaign.

Norquist is openly soliciting contributions for ATR from wealthy GOP donors in 2004 to end-run McCain-Feingold limits: "I am aggressively letting people who might want to be involved ... know what we do," he said.

The line between many of these tax-exempt advocacy groups and the Republican Party is as porous for politicians as it is for money. The organizations of the apparat are incubators for putative political candidates on the rise, and bestowers of generous sinecures for Republican politicians between jobs. After serving loyally as House majority leader, Dick Armey moved effortlessly into the well-paid job of co-chairman of Citizens for a Sound Economy.

The Center of the American Experiment (CAE), a regional clone modeled on the Heritage Foundation, operates essentially as a personnel agency of the Minnesota Republican Party. It has been used repeatedly as a springboard for Republican politicians.

In 2002 it scored a trifecta, helping elect three Republicans to high office: Norm Coleman as a U.S. Senator, Tim Pawlenty as Minnesota Governor, and John Kline as a U.S. Congressman. Now key members of the CAE populate top positions in the Pawlenty administration.

Abusing and using the media

The apparat`s media-attack organizations are charged with keeping journalists in line, mobilizing the base to wage harassment campaigns against media organizations and reporters they dub as too "liberal." Journalists who dare criticize the Administration are priority targets for abuse. For that reason, among others, Americans learn almost nothing from mainstream media about the apparat, whose media-attack operations effectively silenced Hillary Clinton`s charges of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" operating against her husband`s administration.

In an essay critiquing the news media for its massive failures in the run up to the Iraq war, Michael Massing wrote in The New York Review of Books that reporters who wrote articles unfavorable of Bush received "tons" of hate mail and threats questioning their patriotism. Massing wrote:

"Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and The Weekly Standard, among others, all stood ready to pounce on journalists who strayed, branding them liberals and traitors -- labels that could permanently damage a career."
Three core media-attack groups operate at the center of the apparat: Reed Irvine`s Accuracy in Media (AIM), David Horowitz` Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC), and L. Brent Bozell`s Media Research Center (MRC). All three are now mobilizing behind the Bush re-election campaign.

Earlier this year, MRC, which takes on the task of "neutralizing liberal media bias," issued a broadside to its rank-and-file against CBS anchor Dan Rather, for tossing what it alleged were soft questions at Democratic primary candidates -- a marked contrast, it maintained, to the "rough" treatment Rather allegedly dishes out to Republicans.

Earlier, Accuracy in Media had joined The Weekly Standard in trying to shift responsibility for 9/11 away from the White House and onto the Clinton administration.

Have progressives finally got it?

It has taken 30 years for the progressive left to pay serious heed to the apparat. In the run-up to 2004, progressives have belatedly begun weaving an advocacy web of their own to join in a vigorous battle of ideas for voter allegiance.

Last year, John Podesta, formerly Bill Clinton`s White House chief of staff, established the first latter-day, purely liberal think tank to promote "progressive ideas" for "a strong, just, and free America," the Center for American Progress (CAP). The Center`s daily Progress Report, a web chronicle of political developments, has become one of Washington`s must-read journals. According to Matt Bai in The New York Times, Podesta`s goal is:

"An organization to rethink the very idea of liberalism, a reproduction in mirror image of the conservative think tanks that have dominated the country`s political dialogue for a generation."
CAP is also a recipient of funding from George Soros. After giving away more than $5 billion to promote democratic institutions in Russia and Eastern Europe, Soros realized that his own adopted country is losing cherished freedoms.

He has dedicated more than $15 million to counter the momentum of the Bush administration and its apparat. Soros was motivated by what he termed the "supremacist ideology" of the far right, which kindled childhood memories of the Nazi occupation of his native Hungary. "America, under Bush," he has said, "is a danger to the world. And I`m willing to put my money where my mouth is."

Soros has created a philanthropic model for other progressive donors. Until now, they have largely been ineffective in their patronage, diluting contributions across a broad swath of single-issue advocacy groups on a short-term basis. The organizations of the apparat have been under no such strictures. Its benefactors have made long-term investments in multi-issue advocacy organizations, whose agendas promote the broad ideological agenda of the radical right.

Progressive donors must study -- and improve upon -- their methods. That includes creating a centralized approach to united action -- a mode of operation to which liberals, until now, have been congenitally allergic.

In an op-ed article in The New York Times, Robert Reich, the secretary of labor under Clinton, argued that progressive activism must extend beyond the race for the White House, and beyond campaign season. "The conservative movement," he writes,

"has developed dedicated sources of money and legions of ground troops who not only get out the vote, but also spend the time between elections persuading others to join their ranks ... It has a system for recruiting and electing officials nationwide who share the same world view, and will vote accordingly."
Reich calls for the creation of a broadly-based activist front on the left -- a "populist movement to take back democracy from increasingly concentrated money and power."

As individuals, most liberals and many independent voters share a set of humanistic values that have defined America for most of its modern history. Win or lose in November, liberals must now revive that America, charting a return to power in a concerted, long-run campaign to unseat the anti-Constitutional, one-party apparat.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the author:

Jerry Landay has written extensively on the activities of movement conservatism. He is a former news correspondent for ABC and CBS, and is associate professor emeritus at the University of Illinois.

[Joerver]

His wardrobe malfunctions
Ellis Henican





March 19, 2004

Is he the president?

Or an AWOL model from a G.I. Joe fashion show?

George W. Bush can`t seem to decide.

You`d figure that Bush would think twice before playing "soldier dress-up" for another military media event. Let`s face facts here: It really didn`t go too well the last time.

Who can forget that famous "Mission Accomplished" swoop-down on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln? That goofy day, the freshly made-over president stepped out of the cockpit in a full Top Gun aviator`s suit. He even had a helmet under his arm.

Talk about premature self-congratulation! Soon enough, the well-dressed PR stunt turned into a well-dressed PR debacle. Bush and Karl Rove have been trying to live that one down ever since.

And now look.

Here was Bush again yesterday, commemorating America`s first year (of five? 10? 20?) occupying Iraq. Instead of a cramped aircraft carrier, the White House advance team arranged an even grander photogenic backdrop - Fort Campbell, Ky., home of the Army`s 101st Airborne Division and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

These are people who`ve been doing real fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan - and losing real lives.

But just before the big guy stepped into the fort`s open amphitheater to address the flag-waving troops, he tossed off the dark suit jacket he`d worn on the plane from Washington - and slipped into an olive-green flight jacket.

Tom Cruise, eat your heart out!

It`s "Top Gun II"!

The jacket had the 101st`s screaming-eagle insignia emblazoned on the left sleeve. Out front was a snappy set of flight wings and the embroidered words, "George W. Bush, Commander in Chief."

Who knew Fort Campbell had a wardrobe room?

It`s all kind of strange when you think about it, this presidential military costume drama. No one believes the president is really a secret soldier. Why does he insist on dressing like one?

And why just military events?

Bush doesn`t climb into minister`s robes when he`s invited to address a church group. He doesn`t show up on an aluminum walker at the AARP.

So what`s with all the soldier garb when he stands before a crowd in uniform?

Oh, you know what. His advisers believe that, to gullible voters at least, the clothes do make the man, that these particular clothes make the president look macho. He keeps describing himself as a "war-time president," doesn`t he? So why not dress like one?

But it`s an odd political logic. And it may well backfire again.

It can`t be smart, in Bush`s case, to keep reminding voters about this president`s own dicey traipse through military life.

The president`s Democratic opponent, John Kerry, heroically commanded troops in Vietnam. Bush spent his war years in the Texas Air National Guard, avoiding Vietnam service, buzzing the beaches of Galveston Bay.

He was buzzing those beaches, anyway, until he abruptly quit flying one day, moved to Alabama and went to work in the congressional campaign of a family friend. That may be nothing to be ashamed of. But is it really the kind of thing you`d want to highlight in the middle of a tough campaign?

Then, there are the lessons of history.

History teaches - and not just Bush`s history - that presidents ought to tread warily into the dress-up game. Politically motivated fashion shows have a way of going tragically awry.

Michael Dukakis is the gold standard for embarrassment here. His ill-fated tank ride in the 1988 campaign - shrunken beneath a combat helmet, waving to the cameras as the tank rode by - was supposed to project manliness and leadership. It projected dorkiness instead.

Richard Nixon`s advisers figured they`d make their man appear cool and natural - more Kennedyesque - by inviting photographers to snap him walking on a California beach.

But the images of Nixon strolling across the sand in a suit, tie and hard leather shoes didn`t say either cool or natural. They said "cadaver with five o`clock shadow on beach."

It`s a possibility Bush and Rove should be mindful of.

They may be thinking Tom Cruise.

They`d better not deliver Gomer Pyle.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

[Joerver]

___________________________[/url]

Und hier die passende Musik dazu mit der Lyrik.
http://easylink.playstream.com/ctsg/progressive/blsp/stephan…

You Ain`t a Cowboy
By Stephan Smith
Chorus:
You ain`t a cowboy because you wear the clothes,
no one here is fooled by what yer up to.
You can`t stop this. The harder that you try,
The harder it`s gonna roll all over you.


Now buddy `ro, I wrote down a song for you,
it`s gonna get you read right, and awful blue.
Yer gonna trade in your boots for some walkin` shoes
when I`m done learnin you how us real cowboys do.
Don`t be scared, I ain`t even gonna use yer name
when I pick apart your act and bring yer whole life to shame.
You ain`t nothin but a oil tycoon.
You ate yer whole life from a silver spoon.
The whole country knows you`re an aristocrat goon,
but still you ain`t got the sense to know when it`s high noon?
Yer daddy bought you a ranch, you thought it was cool.
You drank mint juleps by the swimmin` pool
and flunked school, while the hired hands did all the work.
You carried on and partied like a frat-boy jerk.
Y`see, we rode the herd while you got the free ride.
What yer kind represents makes my poor grandma cry.


Chorus:
You ain`t a cowboy because you wear the clothes,
no one here is fooled by what yer up to.
You can`t stop this. The harder that you try,
The harder it`s gonna roll all over you.


When being a ranger became your wet dream,
the closest you could come was buy a baseball team?
Then they bought you your way in the old Whitewash House,
the first cowboy ever that was afraid of a mouse.
You out and bought you a hat and some boots
to add to yer collection of photo-op suits.
And, sure, you looked cute in yer new suit of clothes,
but what was that white line going up yer nose?
Why if you so much rode a horse for a half mile ride
you`d cry home to mommy about yer little raw hide.
You never were a soldier, but you wore the uniform
to look like you`ve got the guts to go out in a storm.
Meanwhile our kids go do your dirty work,
while you and your oil buddies get raises and perks.
Still, you don`t get why no one here¹s fooled.
Why, if I said "ho` the do`," would you get a garden tool?


Chorus:
You ain`t a cowboy because you wear the clothes,
no one here is fooled by what yer up to.
You can`t stop this. The harder that you try,
The harder it`s gonna roll all over you.


Now here`s one that`ll bring you on down to your knees:
to tell an oilman from a real southerner, please!
All you have to do is put your nose in the breeze.
Only one of em`ll make you haul off and sneeze...
The other one`ll make you lock your wife and children in the house.
You remember when they flew you out onto that boat
and your PR firm decided to inflate your coat?
I guess that was so you could float. Or by chance,
was that so millions of children would look at your pants?
Now I`s tellin ya this cause we all get a wail
when an oilman tells you he swaths and he bails.
But don`t look so sad bud, your check`s in the mail.
In the meantime, try some vinegar on yer kale.
Now friends, that`s all I`ve come here to say.
I`ve ridden that hot air Texas tornado away.


Chorus:
You ain`t a cowboy because you wear the clothes,
no one here is fooled by what yer up to.
You can`t stop this. The harder that you try,
The harder it`s gonna roll all over you.


copyright 2004 by Stephan Smith

http://www.stephansmith.com/smith_cowboy_lyrics.html

[Joerver]

_____________[/url]

[Joerver]

Friday, March 19, 2004

Yankeedoodle zum Jahrestag!
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy

It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was part of a good platoon.
We were on manoeuvers in Louisiana,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain said, "We`ve got to ford the river",
That`s where it all began.
We were knee deep in the Big Muddy,
And the damn fool kept yelling to push on.

The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you sure,
This is the way back to the base?"
"Sergeant, I once crossed this river
Not a mile above this place.
It`ll be a little soggy but we`ll keep slogging.
We`ll soon be on dry ground."
We were waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fool kept yelling to push on.

"Captain, sir, with all this gear
No man`ll be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don`t be a Nervous Nellie,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination;
Follow me, I`ll lead on."
We were neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fool kept yelling to push on.

All of a sudden, the moon clouded over,
All we heard was a gurgling cry.
A second later, the captain`s helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!
I`m in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.


We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn`t know that the water was deeper
Than the place where he`d once been.
For another stream had joined the Muddy
A half mile from where we`d gone.
We were lucky to get out of the Big Muddy
When the damn fool kept yelling to push on.

Well, you might not want to draw conclusions
I`ll leave that to yourself
Maybe you`re still walking, maybe you`re still talking
Maybe you`ve still got your health.
But every time I hear the news
That old feeling comes back on;
We`re waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools kept yelling to push on.

Knee deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling to push on
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling to push on
Waist deep! Neck deep! we`ll be drowning before too long
We`re neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling to push on

Note to Readers

No update today. Instead I decided to post the lyrics to Pete Seeger`s "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy." It seems appropriate after listening to Lieutenant AWOL running his mouth about "unity" on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. For non-American readers, the "Big Muddy" is what we call the Mississippi River. I`ll update tomorrow.


86-43-04. Pass it on.




# posted by yankeedoodle : 11:45 AM
Comment (0)

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"D-Day"

Bush und Schröder kommen in die Normandie

Paris - Frankreichs Präsident Jacques Chirac hat mitgeteilt, dass US-Präsident George W. Bush am 6. Juni zum 60. Jahrestag der alliierten Landung in die Normandie reisen wird. Er, Chirac, freue sich über die Zusage, sagte er am Freitag in Paris. Bush habe Chirac in einem Telefongespräch über seine Teilnahme an den Feierlichkeiten informiert, hieß es.

Die Geste gilt als Zeichen der Annäherung zwischen Washington und Paris. Das Verhältnis hatte sich wegen des Irak-Krieges stark abgekühlt, weil Frankreich zusammen mit Deutschland die Front der Kriegsgegner anführte.

Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder ist zu den Feiern zum "D-Day" auf die Initiative Chiracs hin eingeladen worden. Damit wird Schröder in Caen und dem Küstenort Arromanches erneut mit Bush zusammentreffen.

Die Landung der Alliierten in der Normandie am 6. Juni 1944 war einer der Wendepunkte im Zweiten Weltkrieg.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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March 19, 2004
President Bush`s Remarks

The following is the text of President Bush`s speech marking the anniversary the start of military action in Iraq, as transcribed by FDCH e-Media, Inc.

Good morning, and thanks for coming. Laura and I are pleased to welcome you all to the White House. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. Members of my National Security Council are here, members of the administration, members of our armed forces, members of the United States Congress. Thank you for being here. Ladies and gentlemen. I particularly want to thank the members of the diplomatic corps who are here, thank the ambassadors for coming today. We are representing 84 countries, united against a common danger, and joined in a common purpose.


We are the nations that have recognized the threat of terrorism, and we are the nations that will defeat that threat. Each of us has pledged before the world, we will never bow to the violence of a few. We will face this mortal danger and we will overcome it together. As we meet, violence and death at the hands of terrorists are still fresh in our memory. The people of Spain are burying their innocent dead. These men and women and children began their day in a great and peaceful city, yet lost their lives on a battlefield, murdered at random and without remorse. Americans saw the chaos and the grief and the vigils and the funerals, and we have shared in the sorrow of the Spanish people. Ambassador Ruperez, please accept our deepest sympathy for the great loss that your country has suffered. The murders in Madrid are a reminder that the civilized world is at war. And in this new kind of war, civilians find themselves suddenly on the front lines.


In recent years, terrorists have struck from Spain to Russia, to Israel, to East Africa, to Morocco, to the Philippines and to America. They`ve targeted Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Yemen. They`ve attacked Muslims in Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. No nation or region is exempt from the terrorist campaign of violence. Each of these attacks on the innocent is a shock and a tragedy, and a test of our will. Each attack is designed to demoralize our people and divide us from one another. And each attack much be answered, not only with sorrow, but with greater determination, deeper resolve, and bolder action against the killers. It is the interest of every country and the duty of every government to fight and destroy this threat to our people.


There is a dividing line in our world, not between nations and not between religions or cultures, but a dividing line separating two visions of justice and the value of life. On a tape claiming responsibility for the atrocities in Madrid, a man is heard to say, We choose death while you choose life. We don`t know if this is the voice of the actual killers, but we do know it expresses the creed of the enemy. It is a mindset that rejoices in suicide, incites murder and celebrates every death we mourn. And we who stand on the other side of the line must be equally clear and certain of our convictions. We do love life, the life given to us and to all. We believe in the values that uphold the dignity of life: tolerance and freedom and the right of conscience. And we know that this way of life is worth defending. There is no neutral ground -- no neutral ground -- in the fight between civilization and terror, because there is no neutral ground between good and evil, freedom and slavery, and life and death. The war on terror is not a figure of speech. It is an inescapable calling of our generation. The terrorists are offended not merely by our policies, they`re offended by our existence as free nations. No concession will appease their hatred. No accommodation will satisfy their endless demands. Their ultimate ambitions are to control the peoples of the Middle East and to blackmail the rest of the world with weapons of mass terror.


There can be no separate peace with the terrorist enemy. Any sign of weakness or retreat simply validates terrorist violence and invites more violence for all nations. The only certain way to protect our people is by united and decisive action. In this contest of will and purpose, not every nation joins every mission or participates in the same way. Yet every nation makes a vital contribution, and America is proud to stand with all of you as we pursue a broad strategy in the war against terror. We`re using every tool of finance, intelligence, law enforcement and military power to break terror networks, to deny them refuge and to find their leaders. Over the past 30 months, we have frozen or seized nearly $200 million in assets of terror networks. We`ve captured or killed some two-thirds of Al Qaida`s known leaders, as well as many of Al Qaida`s associates in countries like the United States or Germany or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Thailand. We`re taking the fight to Al Qaida allies, such as Ansar al-Islam in Iraq, Jemaah Islamiah in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Our coalition is sending an unmistakable message to the terrorists, including those who struck in Madrid: These killers will be tracked down and found. They will face their day of justice.


Our coalition is taking urgent action to stop the transfer of deadly weapons and materials. America and the nations of Australia and France and Germany and Italy and Japan and the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore and Norway have joined in the Proliferation Security Initiative, all aimed to bind together to interdict lethal materials transported by air or sea or land. Many governments have cooperated to expose and dismantle the network of A.Q. Khan, which sold nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. By all of these efforts, we are determined to prevent catastrophic technologies from falling into the hands of an embittered few. Our coalition is also confronting the dangerous combination of outlaw states, terrorist groups and weapons of mass destruction. For years, the Taliban made Afghanistan the home base of Al Qaida. And so we gave the Taliban a choice: to abandon forever their support for terror or face the destruction of their regime.


Because the Taliban chose defiance, our coalition acted to remove this threat, and now the terror camps are closed and the government of a free Afghanistan is represented here today as an active partner in the war on terror. The people of Afghanistan are a world away from the nightmare of the Taliban. Citizens of Afghanistan have adopted a new constitution guaranteeing free elections and full participation by women. The new Afghan army is becoming a vital force of stability in that country. Businesses are opening. Health care centers are being established. And the children of Afghanistan are back in schools -- boys and girls. This progress is a tribute to the brave Afghan people and to the efforts of many nations. NATO, including forces from Canada, France, Germany and other nations, is leading the effort to provide security. Japan and Saudi Arabia have helped to complete the highway from Kabul to Kandahar, which is furthering commerce and unifying the country. Italy is working with Afghans to reform their legal system and strengthening an independent judiciary. Three years ago, the people of Afghanistan were oppressed and isolated from the world by a terrorist regime. Today, that nation has a democratic government and many allies, and all of us are proud to be friends of the Afghan people. Many countries represented here today also acted to liberate the people of Iraq. One year ago, military forces of a strong coalition entered Iraq to enforce United Nations demands, to defend our security, and to liberate that country from the rule of a tyrant.


For Iraq, it was a day of deliverance. For the nations of our coalition, it was the moment when years of demands and pledges turned to decisive action. Today, as Iraqis join the free peoples of the world, we mark a turning point for the Middle East and a crucial advance for human liberty. There have been disagreements in this matter among old and valued friends. Those differences belong to the past. All of us can now agree that the fall of the Iraqi dictator has removed a source of violence, aggression and instability in the Middle East. It`s a good thing that the demands of the United Nations were enforced, not ignored with impunity. It is a good thing that years of illicit weapons developed by the dictator have come to the end. It is a good thing that the Iraqi people are now receiving aid instead of suffering under sanctions. And it`s a good thing that the men and women across the Middle East looking to Iraq are getting a glimpse of what life in a free country can be like. There are still violent thugs and murderers in Iraq, and we`re dealing with them. But no one can argue that the Iraqi people would be better off with the thugs and murderers back in the palaces. Who would prefer that Saddam`s torture chambers still be open? Who would wish that more mass graves were still being filled? Who would begrudge the Iraqi people their long-awaited liberation? One year after the armies of liberation arrived, every soldier who has fought, every aid worker who has served, every Iraqi who has joined in their country`s defense can look with pride on a brave and historic achievement.


They`ve served in freedom`s cause. And that is a privilege. Today in Iraq, a British-led division is securing the southern city of Basra. Poland continues to lead the multi-national division in south-central Iraq. Japan and the Republic of Korea -- of South Korea have made historic commitments of troops to help bring peace to Iraq. Special forces from El Salvador and Macedonia and other nations are helping to find and defeat Baathist and terrorist killers. Military engineers from Kazakhstan have cleared more than a half a million explosive devices from Iraq. Turkey is helping to resupply coalition forces. All of these nations and many others are meeting their responsibilities to the people of Iraq. Whatever their past views, every nation now has an interest in a free, successful, stable Iraq. And the terrorists understand their own interest in the fate of that country. For them, the connection between Iraq`s future and the course of the war on terror is very clear. They understand that a free Iraq will be a devastating setback to their ambitions of tyranny over the Middle East. And they`ve made the failure of democracy in Iraq one of their primary objectives. By attacking coalition forces, by targeting innocent Iraqis and foreign civilians for murder, the terrorists are trying to weaken our will. Instead of weakness, they`re finding resolve.

Not long ago, we intercepted the planning document being sent to leaders of Al Qaida by one of their associates, a man named Zarqawi. Along with the usual threats, he had a complaint. Our enemy, said Zarqawi, is growing stronger, and his intelligence data are increasing day by day. This is suffocation. Zarqawi`s getting the idea. We will never turn over Iraq to terrorists who intend our own destruction. We will not fail the Iraqi people, who have placed their trust in us. Whatever it takes, we will fight and work to assure the success of freedom in Iraq. Many coalition countries have sacrificed in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the fallen soldiers and civilians are sons and daughters of Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, the United Kingdom and the United States. We honor their courage. We pray for the comfort of their families. We will uphold the cause they served. The rise of democratic institutions in Afghanistan and Iraq is a great step toward a goal of lasting importance to the world. We`ve set out to encourage reform and democracy in the greater Middle East as the alternatives to fanaticism, resentment and terror. We`ve set out to break the cycle of bitterness and radicalism that has brought stagnation to a vital region and destruction to cities in America and Europe, and around the world.

This task is historic and difficult. This task is necessary and worthy of our efforts. In the 1970s, the advance of democracy in Lisbon and Madrid inspired democratic change in Latin America. In the 1980s, the example of Poland ignited a fire of freedom in all of Eastern Europe. With Afghanistan and Iraq showing the way, we are confident that freedom will lift the sights and hopes of millions in the greater Middle East. One man who believed in our cause was a Japanese diplomat named Katsuhiko Oku. He worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Mr. Oku was killed when his car was ambushed. In his diary he described his pride in the cause he had joined.

The free people of Iraq, he wrote, are now making steady progress in reconstructing their country, while also fighting against the threat of terrorism. We must join hands with the Iraqi people in their effort to prevent Iraq from falling into the hands of terrorists. This good, decent man concluded, This is also our fight to defend freedom. Ladies and gentlemen, this good man from Japan was right. The establishment of a free Iraq is our fight. The success of a free Afghanistan is our fight. The war on terror is our fight. All of us are called to share the blessings of liberty and to be strong and steady in freedom`s defense. It will surely be said of our times that we lived with great challenges. Let it also be said of our times that we understood our great duties and met them in full. May God bless our efforts.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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An anti-war protester, left, argues with a police officer during a demonstration in downtown San Francisco today.
March 19, 2004
March in San Francisco Starts Weekend of Anti-War Protests
By DEAN E. MURPHY

SAN FRANCISCO, March 19 — Several hundred people marched through San Francisco`s financial district during the morning rush hour today to protest the one-year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.

The action, led by the anti-war group Direct Action to Stop the War, kicked off a weekend of demonstrations across the country by people opposed to the Bush administration`s policies in Iraq. The biggest protests are expected Saturday here and in New York.

The San Francisco police said the demonstration was progressing peacefully, with eight people arrested for blocking sidewalks as the group assembled outside the headquarters of the Bechtel Corporation about 9 a.m.

A security guard at Bechtel said the company had encouraged employees to arrive early so as to avoid the protesters. About 25 people sat in a line on the sidewalk outside the building, hands locked together in a challenge to the police.

One of the people in the line, Cissy Sims, a retired gardener and a member of the anti-war group Code Pink, said she the expected more people would be arrested as the day progressed..

"I am angry at the administration for spending tax dollars on war and imperialism and spreading suffering," Ms. Sims said. "I think the world is less safe today as far as terrorism."

Last year during the early days of the war, thousands of people were arrested as they blocked intersections and disrupted commerce in a scene that one police official described as anarchy. This time, scores of police officers dressed in riot gear stood on the periphery of the demonstration, and officers kept most of the marchers within crosswalks on busy Market Street.

"Stay on the sidewalk!" one officer shouted, as the pedestrian signal turned from green to red. The leader of a protest group from Seattle, marching with musical instruments, began sounding his whistle and waving the marchers off the street.

Though one organizer with a loud speaker encouraged participants to take "autonomous action" and engage in "civil disobedience," the police described the crowd as largely cooperative and most demonstrators seemed intent on making a peaceful statement of their opposition to the war.

"We want to show the world there is not total acquiescence in the United States in support of Bush," said Dr. Michael Kozart, a physician at San Francisco General Hospital who marched under a banner, "Health Care not Warfare." "We are exercising our constitutional right to free speech. There has been a criminalization of dissent in this country."

At Pine Street, some marchers shouted profanities at a man who stood on the sidewalk yelling, "Support the war!" The man, John Price, a meat cutter in San Francisco, said he had served in the Navy during the first Gulf War and wanted to offer a counterpoint to the anti-war action.

"They like to suggest that what happens in San Francisco represents the United States, but it doesn`t," said Mr. Price. "Anytime in this town when I voice my opinion, I am treated like a warmonger and a hater of mankind. People who support the war believe in law and order not giving the police a hassle."

Organizers of today`s protest said the goal was to draw attention to the effects of the war and the United States presence in Iraq on the people both in Iraq and the United States. Speakers at a rally before the march said money spent on the military action has meant less money was available for health care, education and housing.

"The tide is turning against George Bush," said one of the speakers, Sister Bernice Galvin of the San Francisco group Religious Witness with Homeless People. "The tide is turning against the Bush war. Today and tomorrow, we will hit the streets and keep this tide turning."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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March 20, 2004
Clinton Aides Plan to Tell Panel of Warning Bush Team on Qaeda
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, March 19 — Senior Clinton administration officials called to testify next week before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks say they are prepared to detail how they repeatedly warned their Bush administration counterparts in late 2000 that Al Qaeda posed the worst security threat facing the nation — and how the new administration was slow to act.

They said the warnings were delivered in urgent post-election intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 for Condoleezza Rice, who became Mr. Bush`s national security adviser; Stephen Hadley, now Ms. Rice`s deputy; and Philip D. Zelikow, a member of the Bush transition team, among others.

One official scheduled to testify, Richard A. Clarke, who was President Bill Clinton`s counterterrorism coordinator, said in an interview that the warning about the Qaeda threat could not have been made more bluntly to the incoming Bush officials in intelligence briefings that he led.

At the time of the briefings, there was extensive evidence tying Al Qaeda to the bombing in Yemen two months earlier of an American warship, the Cole, in which 17 sailors were killed.

"It was very explicit," Mr. Clarke said of the warning given to the Bush administration officials. "Rice was briefed, and Hadley was briefed, and Zelikow sat in." Mr. Clarke served as Mr. Bush`s counterterrorism chief in the early months of the administration, but after Sept. 11 was given a more limited portfolio as the president`s cyberterrorism adviser.

The sworn testimony from the high-ranking Clinton administration officials — including Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton`s national security adviser — is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

They are expected to testify along with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who will answer for the Bush administration, as well as George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence in both administrations.

While Clinton officials have offered similar accounts in the past, a new public review of how they warned Mr. Bush`s aides about the need to deal quickly with the Qaeda threat could prove awkward to the White House, especially in the midst of a presidential campaign. But given the witnesses` prominence in the Clinton administration, supporters of Mr. Bush may see political motives in the testimony of some of them.

The testimony could also prove uncomfortable for the commission, since Mr. Zelikow is now the executive director of the bipartisan panel. And the Clinton administration officials can expect to come under tough questioning about their own performance in office and why they did not do more to respond to the terrorist threat in the late 1990`s.

The White House does not dispute that intelligence briefings about the Qaeda threat occurred during the transition, and the commission has received extensive notes and other documentation from the White House and Clinton administration officials about what was discussed.

What is at issue, Clinton administration officials say, is whether their Bush administration counterparts acted on the warnings, and how quickly. The Clinton administration witnesses say they will offer details of the policy recommendations they made to the incoming Bush aides, but they would not discuss those details before the hearing.

"Until 9/11, counterterrorism was a very secondary issue at the Bush White House," said a senior Clinton official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Remember those first months? The White House was focused on tax cuts, not terrorism. We saw the budgets for counterterrorism programs being cut."

The White House rejects any suggestion that it failed to act on the threats of Qaeda terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The president and his team received briefings on the threat from Al Qaeda prior to taking office, and fighting terrorism became a top priority when this administration came into office," Sean McCormack, a White House spokesman, said. "We actively pursued the Clinton administration`s policies on Al Qaeda until we could get into place a more comprehensive policy."

Mr. Zelikow, the director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a co-author of a 1995 book with Ms. Rice, has been the target of repeated criticism from some relatives of Sept. 11 victims. They have said his membership on the Bush transition team and his ties to Ms. Rice pose a serious conflict of interest for the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law-enforcement actions before the attacks.

Mr. Clarke said if Mr. Zelikow left any of the White House intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 without understanding the imminent threat posed by Al Qaeda, "he was deaf."

Mr. Zelikow said in an interview that he has recused himself from any part of the investigation that involves the transition, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. He said his participation in the Qaeda intelligence briefings was already well known. "The fact of what occurred in these briefings is not really disputed," he said.

Ms. Rice has refused a request to testify at the hearings next week, saying it would violate White House precedent for an incumbent national security adviser to appear in public at a hearing of what the White House considers a legislative body. She has given a private interview to several members of the commission.

The commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was created by Congress in 2002 over the initial objections of the Bush administration.

Ms. Albright and Mr. Cohen declined to be interviewed about their testimony. Mr. Berger refused to discuss details of his testimony, saying only, "I intend to talk about what we did in the Clinton administration, as well as my recommendations for the future."

In the past, Mr. Berger has said that he and his staff organized the intelligence briefings in December 2000 at which Ms. Rice, Mr. Hadley and Mr. Zelikow were warned in detail about the Qaeda threat and that on his departure, he advised Ms. Rice that he believed the Bush administration would be forced to spend more time on dealing with Al Qaeda than on any other subject.

In his testimony, Mr. Clarke is also expected to discuss what he believed to be the Bush administration`s determination to punish Saddam Hussein for the Sept. 11 attacks even though there was no evidence to tie the Iraqi president to Al Qaeda.

The issue is addressed in a new book by Mr. Clarke, and in an interview to promote the book on "60 Minutes" on CBS-TV scheduled for Sunday, Mr. Clarke said that the White House considered bombing Iraq in the hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, even when it became clear that Al Qaeda was responsible.

"I think they wanted to believe there was a connection, but the C.I.A. was sitting there, the F.B.I. was sitting there, saying, `We`ve looked at this issue for years — for years, we`ve looked, and there`s just no connection,` " Mr. Clarke said. He recalled telling Defense Secretary Rumsfeld that "there are a lot of good targets in a lot of places, but Iraq had nothing to do" with the Sept. 11 attacks.

The White House has insisted that it acted aggressively throughout 2001 on the warnings to deal with the threat from Qaeda terrorists, and that there was an exhaustive staff review throughout the spring and summer, with a proposal ready for President Bush in early September to step up the government`s efforts to destroy the terrorist network.

The Clinton administration witnesses may face difficult questions at the hearings about why they did not do more to deal with Qaeda immediately after the Cole attack and the discovery the previous winter that Qaeda terrorists had come close to coordinated attacks timed to the Dec. 31, 1999, festivities for the new millennium.

"There was no contemplation of any military action after the millennium plots, and there should have been," said Bob Kerrey, a Democratic member of the commission and a former senator from Nebraska.

"The Cole is even worse, because that was an attack on a military target," he said. "It was military against military. It was an Islamic army against our Navy. Just because you don`t have a nation-state as your adversary doesn`t mean you should not consider a declaration of war."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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March 19, 2004
Q&A: U.S.-Europe Relations

From the Council on Foreign Relations, March 19, 2004

Charles A. Kupchan, director of Europe studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and director of a Council independent task force that on March 19 released a new report, "Renewing the Atlantic Partnership," says the election of a Spanish prime minister who has pledged to loosen ties with the United States will have long-term implications for the U.S. coalition in Iraq.

Kupchan, a former National Security Council official in the Clinton administration, says the loss of Spain as a U.S. ally in Iraq reopens "the question about the strength of European support for the war." Will other supporters of the war in Iraq, such as Britain`s Tony Blair and Italy`s Silvio Berlusconi, "face difficulties ahead because they were out in front of their publics who generally were opposed to the war?" he asks.

The task force, a bipartisan group of Americans and Europeans, came down firmly on the side of strengthening the transatlantic relationship and on the need to overcome differences in many areas.

Kupchan was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on March 17, 2004.

What kind of fallout can we expect from the March 11 terrorist attack in Madrid and the subsequent election of a Socialist Party prime minister who says he is going to weaken ties with the United States? Is this going to exacerbate the strains in the so-called Atlantic partnership?

I think it certainly upsets the apple cart in Iraq, inasmuch as the coalition that was formed to support the war has been pretty cohesive and steady from the toppling of Saddam Hussein through the bombing in Madrid. The bombings in Madrid and the subsequent defeat of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and his Popular Party essentially reopen the question about the strength of European support for the war. Are politicians like Aznar, such as [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair, such as [Italian Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi going to face difficulties ahead because they were out in front of their publics who generally were opposed to the war? We are entering a new phase in the postwar period in which the transatlantic relationship will be somewhat unsettled and in which the alignments within Europe and across the Atlantic are going to be reconfigured.

What core questions did the task force consider?


Our charge was to ask three questions. One: What are the sources of the recent troubled discord across the Atlantic? Two: How important is the transatlantic relationship? And three: If it is important, what can be done to revitalize the partnership?

The three answers to those questions in brief are that the discord goes back well before the differences over Iraq and is rooted in the end of the Cold War, September 11, and changes in European and American priorities. In that sense, the transatlantic alliance does have to make some considerable adjustments. On the question of the importance of the alliance, the group came down firmly on the side of seeing the Atlantic partnership remain as important to both sides as it was during the Cold War.

On the question of revitalizing the partnership, I would say there were the following main conclusions. One: The importance of the relationship needs to be appreciated by leaders on both sides and imparted to the publics so that the relationship has the same pride of place that it did during the Cold War. Two: There needs to be a new agreement on the purposes of European unity, that European strength should be complementary to the United States, and the United States should continue to see European integration as in America`s interest.

And finally, the importance of NATO`s enlarging its responsibilities outside of Europe. It is playing a key role in Afghanistan. The task force believes that NATO is the natural successor to the current military structure in Iraq.

The thrust of the report urges transatlantic reconciliation. On the other hand, there are some voices in Europe saying that Europe should deal with terrorism itself. Are the Madrid events going to exacerbate the differences on how to deal with terrorists?


The task force attempted to speak for a moderate, pragmatic, bipartisan coalition that exists on both sides of the Atlantic. There was a unanimity among Americans of different political persuasions and unanimity across the Atlantic with the five European members of the task force that the Atlantic alliance remains critical to the interests of both sides and that voices on this side of the Atlantic that argue that America can and should go it alone and voices on the other side that suggest that Europe should go it alone are both misguided.

The developments in Spain and the emergence of a Socialist government that is going to loosen its ties to the United States certainly opens the question of a new round of transatlantic discord. The group`s views is that Spain`s becoming more pro-European, throwing its weight behind European integration, that sort of tilt, is not in itself troublesome. What is troublesome is the idea that Spain has to choose whether it is with America or with Europe. The group felt strongly that is a choice that doesn`t need to be made, and shouldn`t be made.

Traditionally, Spain has been with the Europeans.


I think the best outcome as one looks down the road is that the European impulse that Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero [the prime minister-elect] is talking about--that is, aligning more closely with Europe--can be very consistent with a strong Atlantic tie as long as that more capable and more integrated Europe does not define itself in opposition to the United States. That remains a big question mark. You have politicians in Europe who call for the European Union (E.U.) to emerge as a counterweight [to the United States]. That type of language automatically and justifiably elicits concerns on this side of the Atlantic.

The results of the latest Pew Research Center`s survey of attitudes toward the United States demonstrate continuing anti-U.S. sentiment. Right now, President Bush`s personal standing in the world seems extremely low. How much are personalities responsible for the transatlantic rift?


One of the issues that we debated long and hard in the group is just this question: How much of the trouble across the Atlantic is structural, that is, rooted in the end of the Cold War, the events of 9/11, and how much of it is circumstantial? I think everyone in the group essentially believed that there were certain moments or diplomatic steps that may have contributed to the troubles on both sides, but that the broader picture is one in which the transatlantic relationship is facing deeper structural challenges. That has to do with the disappearance of the threat that brought us together, i.e., the Soviet Union, America`s shifting strategic priorities away from Europe toward the Middle East and Asia, and Europe`s undertaking integration and its decreasing reliance on the United States for its security. All of these are very powerful forces that set the stage for the divisions that emerged both in the lead up to the war, and certainly over the war itself. It is important to keep in mind that, even though the Iraq crisis gets center stage, the story of turbulence across the Atlantic starts well before the Iraq war.

If Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts were elected president, would he face the same situation as President Bush, or would he have a "honeymoon period"?


I think that he would, to some extent, have more of a clean slate, in the sense that unlike the current administration, he doesn`t have the personal relationship that became somewhat polarized over the war in Iraq. I do think that, since the war in Iraq has come to an end, both the European governments and the Bush administration have charted courses that to some extent put the relationship back on a more sound footing. For example, the Bush administration initially was going to take a very hard line on the so-called axis of evil, but it is now sitting at the negotiating table with Iran and North Korea. It initially thought it did not want NATO or a broad multilateral effort in Iraq. Now it is pressing for NATO to take on more responsibility in the region. In general, there is a move in Washington, that has been picked up in Europe, that the United States wants to try to restore its image as a team player.

Prime Minister-elect Zapatero has said that if the United Nations endorses an international force in Iraq, Spain might keep its troops there. Will the United States press for a U.N. resolution?


The broader question of what happens after June 30 [when sovereignty is scheduled to shift to an interim Iraqi government] is not even close to being settled. And that`s not just in terms of whether there will be another United Nations resolution or a new mandate. It goes to the heart of what will be the status of coalition forces and the role of coalition forces in Iraq after the ostensible return of sovereignty. I think the Spanish election broadens the debate on all of these fronts because it raises the prospect of the potential departure of important members of the coalition if there isn`t some sort of broader U.N. role.

Can you elaborate?


The governments that are critical here, and they are the Dutch, the Polish, and the Italian, came out quite readily after the election results in Spain to say that they have no intention of following suit and threatening to take their troops out. In that sense, it appears that developments in Spain could be unique. Furthermore, there are no imminent elections in Britain, Poland, or Italy.

But that having been said, what happened in Spain [the March 11 terror bombing and the March 14 election] sets in motion some political dynamics that we are unable to get a good handle on. The Spanish election reopened the question of the Iraq war. In this country, some commentators said, "Spain is being weak in the face of terrorism, Spain has backed down under the threat of al Qaeda." I think the outcome of the election is more the product of two other reactions. One was the sense that the Aznar government had withheld information and had said it was ETA [the radical Basque nationalists] and not al Qaeda when it had evidence to the contrary. The other was that the bombing itself made the Iraq war perhaps the key issue in the campaign.

In that sense it turned into somewhat of a referendum on the Iraq war. Keep in mind that 90 percent of the Spanish electorate opposed Spanish backing of the war, and so these events brought all of this back into play. The question is: Will a similar reopening of these issues take place in a country like Italy? We just don`t know yet.

What do you think is likely to happen in June at the annual get-togethers of NATO and the G-8? Will some Middle East initiative be developed, or is that being shelved?


I think the Middle East initiative will get a reasonable amount of play from both sides. It is something that the Europeans and Americans feel has to be an important part of the long-term struggle to bring pluralism to the Middle East, and the E.U. and the U.S. State Department have been generating their own plans. I do think that a broader transatlantic effort in the greater Middle East is one of the things that will help put America and Europe back in the realm of common tasks and perspectives.

The E.U. and the United States are both signatories to the so-called road map for Israeli-Palestinian peace, which lately hasn`t been discussed much. How much pressure do you think the Europeans want the United States to bring upon Israel, and in turn, how much pressure does the United States want the Europeans to bring on the Palestinians?


You are raising a very important point, and that is the transatlantic community thinks it is right to embark on an ambitious plan for political and economic reform in the Middle East, but should not pretend that that can allow it to duck some of the more imminent and divisive issues. At the top of that list would be the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Second on that list would be Iran and how to deal with its nuclear weapons program. I think in the case of the Middle East conflict, the two sides do need to try and come together. In general, the Europeans tend to see the United States as being one-sided in favor of Israel and Americans tend to see Europeans as one-sided in favor of the Palestinians. That puts America and Europe at times at cross purposes. The bargain that we discussed in the task force is a Europe that becomes more sensitive to Israel`s security needs and an America that becomes more forward-leaning on helping in a concrete way to define and work toward a Palestinian state.



Copyright 2004

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Dies ist der Report zu dem Artikel in # 13905.
Interessant ist, dass unter den Mitgliedern von CfR auch der Chefredakteur der Zeit Joffe auftaucht, der seit einiger Zeit das ehemalige liberale Blatt `Die Zeit` in ein NeoCon Kampfblatt umzubaut.
Der Erfolg ist eine unter 500 000 gefallene Auflage.

http://www.cfr.org/pdf/Europe_TF.pdf
Renewing the
Atlantic Partnership
Report of an Independent Task Force
Sponsored by the
Council on Foreign Relations
Henry A. Kissinger and Lawrence H. Summers,
Co-Chairs
Charles A. Kupchan, Project Director
GIULIANO AMATO
REGINALD BARTHOLOMEW
DOUGLAS K. BEREUTER
HAROLD BROWN
RICHARD R. BURT
THIERRY DEMONTBRIAL
THOMAS E.DONILON
STUART E. EIZENSTAT
MARTIN FELDSTEIN
JOHN LEWIS GADDIS
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
G. JOHN IKENBERRY
JOSEF JOFFE
ROBERT KAGAN
HENRY A. KISSINGER
Co-Chair
CHARLES A. KUPCHAN
Project Director
SYLVIAMATHEWS
ANDREWMORAVCSIK
ANDRZEJ OLECHOWSKI
FELIX G. ROHATYN
BRENT SCOWCROFT
ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER
LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS
Co-Chair
DANIEL K.TARULLO
LAURA D’ANDREA TYSON
STEPHEN M.WALT*
TASK FORCE MEMBERS
*The individual has endorsed the report and submitted an additional view.

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Berichtigung zu #13906 `umbaut` ist gemeint in meinem Text.

March 20, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
We Don`t Want to Be Alone
By ANTONIO MUNOZ MOLINA

MADRID

It has been an uneasy week for the citizens of Madrid. Not because we are new to the fears and destruction of terrorism. We have long known how fragile human life is and how easily disaster can be sowed in the places that seem safest. And yet, we have often felt alone. Many times, it seemed as if the world had more sympathy for our longtime scourges, the Basque separatists of ETA, than for the victims of their terrorist attacks.

But this time, our dead are on the front pages of the world`s newspapers. Our election last Sunday, which would have normally been a global footnote, suddenly took on international relevance. With this came scrutiny by those who fail to understand Spain, yet seek to judge us.

A friend called me from New York and told me that perhaps the electoral defeat of Prime Minister José María Aznar`s Popular Party, which supported President Bush and the war in Iraq, was a triumph for Al Qaeda and terrorism. I think that Spanish voters were not bowing to Al Qaeda but instead punishing the Aznar government`s arrogance in ignoring their wishes — as well as its subordination to the rude, inept and bellicose leadership of President Bush.

They were also punishing the government for its contempt for the common spaces of international sovereignty. We are members of the European Union and the United Nations, and we are proud of that status, especially after decades of isolation under Francisco Franco. The March 11 attacks did not frighten us into voting out the Popular Party, but they did reawaken our desire, long repressed by the Aznar government, to stand with the international community.

Many have rushed to compare our March 11 with New York`s Sept. 11. In some ways, the two cities are alike, in the earthly variety and rough cordiality of their citizens and in the speed and noise of their controlled disorder. But where the jolt of destruction arrived fresh in New York, it had no novelty in Madrid. During the Spanish Civil War, Madrid was besieged by Franco`s army and attacked by German and Italian planes. Because Madrid was loyal to the Spanish Republic, it lived through the postwar period as a long occupation. And from its outset after Franco`s death in 1975, democratic Spain has suffered from the constant threat and cold cruelty of ETA — even as the world has viewed ETA members romantically as "activists" and "guerrillas" instead of as the terrorists they really are.

I have nevertheless had the unsettling feeling these past days, since the election, that many Spaniards, jubilant over the Socialist victory, have forgotten the larger, external threat of Al Qaeda. It is as if the slaughter of March 11 were merely one more episode in Spain`s internal politics. The day before the elections there was an urgent desire to know who was to blame for the carnage. Mr. Aznar`s government was accused of covering up information. No one accepted the argument that caution and secrecy were needed in the pursuit of the most vicious criminals in the recent history of Europe.

Then, once the results of the elections became known, the identity of the terrorists seemed secondary, even forgotten: it was no longer useful as a tool against the ruling party. These days in Madrid, one has the disturbing impression that for many prominent leftists, the enemy was the Popular Party, not terrorism. Their belief seems to be that with the Aznar government gone, terrorism will vanish without our having to do anything other than showing a unconditional wish for peace. Even the signs of mourning — the black crepe flags and candles — are disappearing much too quickly, as if a hurried will of forgetfulness is overtaking us.

We are facing a new terrorism, not the old enemy that has tormented us from within for so long. I wonder if we realize the seriousness of the threat. A war continues to be waged, even though we do not want to see it, even if Mr. Aznar is no longer at the helm of government and our soldiers return tomorrow from Iraq.


Antonio Muñoz Molina is the author of "Sepharad," a novel. This article was translated by Catherine Rendón from the Spanish.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Published on Friday, March 19, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Step 1: Look in the Mirror

by Kathy Kelly

Following the March 11, 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid, Secretary of State Colin Powell told ABC TV’s “This Week” that he hoped Europeans, recognizing that no one is immune, would dedicate themselves to “going after” terrorist organizations with military force, intelligence, and law enforcement. He said that all of us have to get together to defeat organizations determined to kill and destroy innocent people. He urged Spain not to step back from the war on terrorism.

I think a crucial step forward in coming to grips with terrorism requires that we ask ourselves why individuals, some of them young, rational people with their whole lives ahead of them, would hate the US and its allies so much that they would commit acts of massive destruction and end their own lives as well.

Shortly after US troops began occupying Iraq in April, 2003, a large contingent of western media people arrived in Baghdad. One young journalist said a more seasoned correspondent had told her to talk with me when she was ready to do a humanitarian story. One of the first stories she pursued was about a baby who’d been born in one of Saddam Hussein’s prisons. I suggested she might also explore stories about the hundreds of thousands of children who died because of economic sanctions. “Oh,” she said, “That was Saddam Hussein’s fault.” I mentioned that UN documents directly attributed the deaths of over 500,000 children under age 5 to the effects of economic sanctions. Her response was immediate: “Well, except now everyone knows that the UN was in bed with Saddam Hussein.”

US think tanks helped brief US journalists before they headed over to the war zone. Perhaps the complex US/UN relations during thirteen years of economic sanctions couldn’t have fit into convenient briefings. With deadlines to meet, electrical outages to cope with, and editors seeking stories about Saddam’s cruelties, who could expect this young, energetic reporter to delve into old analysis of yesteryear’s news?

But if US people are ever going to understand what would motivate people to end their lives in the course of committing gruesomely destructive acts, we’ll have to “step back” from what the mainstream media dishes out to us, and strive for empathy, --try to understand why terrorists believe it’s imperative to resist US domination. One way to develop empathy would be to revisit the history of Iraq under economic sanctions and military bombardment.

The logic of this history, on the part of the US leadership, seems to have been: “We had to starve you so that we could stop bombing you, and then we had to bomb you so that we could stop starving you.”

The entire façade of bureaucratic delays that made up the UN’s efforts in Iraq in the last years of the sanctions was absurd. Did any of the UN workers who struggled to provide minute documentation that Iraq wasn’t building bombs out of parts for water treatment plants, for example, really believe that the US cared about their work? After 5 years of “oil for food,” it was clear that the U.S. was simply interested in finding excuses to maintain sanctions. Despite repeated denials, and incredibly detailed levels of “monitoring” and documentation, by UN officials across every agency working in Iraq, the US continued to pretend that the Iraqi government could have solved the problems by distributing hoarded medicines and was solely responsible because it refused to use the money and medicine it had available. The truth was that no amount of medicine could have saved the lives of children, then, and still won’t be adequately effective, because Iraq’s infrastructure is so badly debilitated that even now infant mortality at the neonatal clinic in the Yarmuk Hospital in Baghdad is twice that of last year. And at Baghdad`s Central Teaching Hospital for Children, where gallons of raw sewage wash across the floors, the hospital’s doctors say "the hospital drinking water is contaminated" and “80 percent of patients leave with infections they did not have when they arrived.”(NYT "“Chaos and War Leave Iraq’s Hospitals in Ruins" Jeffrey Gettleman, February 14 2004)

Many of the accounts about ways that Saddam Hussein’s regime engaged in smuggling and arranged “kickbacks” under the oil-for-food program were widely reported while Saddam Hussein’s regime was still in power. We should be scandalized by that regime’s choice to live luxuriously when they could have helped save the lives of innocent children. And we should be equally scandalized that the US used the UN to wage economic warfare against Iraq knowing full well that the sanctions would brutally and lethally punish innocent people, including children, who had no control over their government.

In Baghdad, a few days before the Shock and Awe war began, a woman whom I’ve known for seven years whispered “Believe me, Kathy, we want this war. All the people, they are tired of this life where we work so hard and still cannot feed our children.” A March 9, 2004 letter from her explains how betrayed and battered she now feels. “Today, we faced a horrible day. My partner, the engineer, was attacked by shooting. He was wounded by three shots and is in the hospital. We are not sure if he will live. This is Iraq today. This is what we pay for Mr. Bush and his freedom. We can’t move from place to place without shooting and bombing. We are like hostages in our own land. There is no safety, no jobs, no good water, no electricity. Everything is bad here. We are hopeless. We can’t protect our children.”

I wonder if people who flock to see Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” understand that the brutality Jesus suffered was the punishment for those convicted of insurrection against military occupation. Military occupation then and now is not much different. Imagine anyone in Iraq, Israel or Palestine, whether civilian or military, occupier or occupied, who survives a bombing, --their limbs shattered, organs ripped open, flesh torn. Imagine arms aching for loved ones who’ll never return. Or imagine someone armless and yearning, like the woman whom Faith Fippinger wrote of who had given birth to a baby just before a US bomb tore off her arms during the Shock and Awe campaign. Other women helped the armless woman nurse the infant by crouching behind her and holding the baby to her breast.

I recently read about a woman who carried her sister-in-law’s newborn baby to a hospital where she had been advised that an incubator would be available. When she arrived, she learned another woman had arrived before her and the incubator was taken. A nurse tried to console the distraught woman, but her companion, the mother’s sister, was willing to try an alternative. Using a manual ventilator, she followed a nurse’s instructions: “…squeeze and let go, squeeze and let go, as long as she could. Shortly before dawn, after standing by the baby and working the respirator for eight hours, Mehdi’s arms gave out…” (Washington Post “Iraqi Hospitals on Life Support” March 5, 2004). The baby died of respiratory failure.

I don’t know anyone in Iraq who wasn’t relieved to see Saddam Hussein deposed. I’d like to be heartened by those who say they advocated warfare against Iraq because they wanted to save Iraqis from an abusive despot. But, I can’t help but wish that this profound care for Iraqi people could have been activated during the long years when Iraqis endured the most comprehensive state of siege ever imposed in modern history.

Why do some people in the Islamic world hate us so much? It’s a quick discussion. We take over and dominate other people’s societies. We set up client states in their regions and rely on these client states to house US bases and, as in the case with Israel, to punish neighboring states if they don’t submit to US aims. We foster double standards, condemning invasion and occupation when it suits us, (e.g., the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) and yet undertaking or supporting murderous sanctions, invasions and occupations, while claiming to support and enhance democratic states. The role of the US and its client state, Israel, as occupiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine evokes rage and retaliation. Hideous and violent terrorist attacks will continue as long as we insist on taking other people’s precious and irreplaceable resources for cut rate prices. We should either begin paying fair prices, or find new ways to live in which we’re not so dependent on these resources.

How could we live differently, with less consumption and waste? Let me answer for myself. I consume far more than my fair share of jet fuel, electrical energy, and water each year. It’s time to start rationing myself. The old adage, “Live simply so that others can simply live” comes to mind.

I’ll have a refresher course in simple living during the late spring and summer of this year when I’ll be an inmate in a US federal prison for four months. The prison-industrial complex is a cruel extension of US war-making against the poor in our country, but I hope this prison sentence, for nonviolent trespass on US military installations, will serve me as an incubation period, a time of adjustment while living with less, and a time to hatch new ideas about how to live more simply after I leave the prison. I hope all of us will find ways to slow down, find more leisure time, and in our times of rest reflect very seriously on Secretary of State Colin Powell’s encouragement that we “get together to defeat organizations determined to kill and destroy innocent people.” I hope we can get together to nonviolently defeat US militarism, at home and abroad.

Kathy Kelly ([e-mail]) is a co-coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness. She and dozens of activists who participated in civil disobedience at Fort Benning, GA and at the ELF nuclear weapon facility in northern WI have recently been sentenced to prison. For more information, visit www.vitw.org, www.soaw.org or www.nukewatch.org

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Published on Friday, March 19, 2004 by O`Dwyers PR Daily
We Aren`t the World
by Nancy Snow

There comes a time when we heed a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
Oh, and it`s time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all.`
– "We Are the World (USA for Africa)"

Do you want the bad news or the really bad news?

First the bad news.

The United States, same country that organized its most creative (remember Lionel Richie, Cyndi Lauper, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, and Bruce Springsteen) in response to a 1985 famine in Africa, is not the same by reputation in 2004.

After you read this, you may start looking for your old disco records: "Oh. I love the nightlife, I got to boogie in the disco `round, oh yeah." Just add, while the world comes tumbling down.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project`s latest poll of eight countries shows that resentment toward the U.S. has strengthened since the start of the Iraq war one year ago. President Bush is less popular than Osama Bin Laden in Jordan, Pakistan, and Morocco. The survey showed high approval ratings in all three countries for suicide bombings against the Israelis and Americans in Iraq.

The survey of 8,000 people was conducted in late February in four European countries (France, Germany, Great Britain, and Russia) and four Muslim-majority countries (Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey). It showed an amazing amount of anti-religious bias over religious tolerance. Christians and Jews fair poorly in Pakistan, Morocco and Turkey, while nearly a third of Americans signaled an anti-Muslim bias. In Europe, the anti-Muslim sentiment was higher in places like Germany and Russia.

The European and Muslim-majority states had something in common-a growing dislike for the United States and its leadership in the world.

Madeleine Albright, the former Clinton administration secretary of state who chairs the project, said that "credibility of the United States is sinking." Even in Europe, public opinion toward the U.S. after Iraq is skeptical and a majority thinks Bush and Blair lied about the motivations for war with Iraq. In Germany and France, overwhelming majorities want the European Union to serve as a counterweight, perhaps even a wedge, between the U.S. and the world.

Albright gave a nod to Bin Ladenism for having the communications capacity "to do something that 40 years of communism was unable to do, which is to divide Europe from the United States."

She offered a quick "Diplomacy 101" lesson: "It`s nice to be feared by your enemies, but it`s not nice to be feared by your friends." She added, however, "it`s nice to be popular, but it`s not a popularity contest. It`s a matter of making sure that many other countries come along with your policies."

Or is it? Therein lies the rub. The world doesn`t want U.S. policies, if what they only see are policies of unilateralism over multilateralism, military intervention over international cooperation, the arrogance of American power over humble self-examination of our power projections.

In his book, "The Price of Empire," Senator J. William Fulbright wrote that "countries that achieve great power have long had a tendency to identify themselves with the deity or with high standards of virtue, and, on the basis of this identification, to develop a form of messianism, a conviction that it is their duty to take their message to other people." His namesake Fulbright exchange program was designed to downplay the American tendency toward messianic mission. Better to understand one`s own ideological limitations and learn how to mutually understand others through their own perceptions and belief systems.

It was what he called the Fulbright difference in international relations-the opportunity to come together not always as affectionate friends but at least to build a sense of common humanity and shared purpose. International Fulbright scholars would treat Senator Fulbright like a rock star in his day. He represented the message that the U.S. is indeed part of the world, not its emperor.

Which brings me to the really bad news? The Pew Global Attitudes Survey, coupled with the State of the News Media 2004 survey, show that the United States` position in the world vis-a-vis our global politics and communications is truly despairing, but worse, offers no signs that we will see any significant change from the current direction. A State Department spokesman Gregg Sullivan responded to the Pew survey with a "slow and steady wins the race. That`s the approach we are going to take." And White House spokesman Jim Morrell said that "the president doesn`t base his decisions on polls. He bases his decisions on the best interests of the safety and security of the American people."

It isn`t good enough to know we are in such a sorry state. Why aren`t we, the American people, trying to right this ship by rethinking our country`s directions and projections? There are times when government doesn`t have all the answers. Can we, to use the words of President Lincoln, "think anew and act anew" in our public diplomacy programs so that we emphasize the best human relations programs we have to offer the world through the arts, culture and education over mass media broadcasts by "the free one"? Must we make sure that other countries come along with our policies or can we approach the world with a set of new eyes and ears? Are we still trying to make the world in our own image? Can the hard sell become the soft tell?

Lincoln warned this nation at one time that "we must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our own country." We aren`t the world and the world is no longer as enthralled with us as we are of ourselves. Anybody have a tune to go along with that?

Nancy Snow`s latest book is "Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech and Opinion Control Since 9/11." She is assistant professor of communications at CSUF and adjunct professor of communications at the University of Southern California. She serves as senior research fellow in USC`s Center on Public Diplomacy. She can be reached online at www.nancysnow.com.

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washingtonpost.com
Annan Calls for Probe into U.N.`s Iraqi Oil Program


By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page A17


UNITED NATIONS, March 19 -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan proposed to the Security Council Friday night that he establish an "independent high-level inquiry" into allegations of corruption in a former U.N.-administered humanitarian program that used Iraqi oil revenue to feed Iraqis.

Annan`s proposal, contained in a letter to the 15-nation council, is intended to address a series of media reports alleging that foreign dignitaries, including senior U.N. official Benon Sevan, illegally profited from the multibillion-dollar oil-for-food program. It reflected mounting concern among senior U.N. officials that a preliminary probe into misconduct by the U.N. internal auditor would be insufficient to lay the matter to rest.

Sevan, the former head of the program, has denied any wrongdoing through a U.N. spokesman, and Annan has said that he has yet to see hard evidence of corruption within the agency`s ranks. But Annan believes that an outside investigation, either by a private auditor or a panel of eminent individuals, will help clear the United Nations, U.N. officials said.

"I don`t think we need to have our reputation impugned," Annan told reporters Friday morning. "It is highly possible that there`s been quite a lot of wrongdoing, but we need to investigate and get to see who is responsible."

Annan and other senior U.N. officials said the investigation would focus initially on U.N. staff, but they expressed hope that the probe could also look at foreign countries and companies. Annan said that the inquiry would require the support of the Security Council and U.N. member states. But U.N. officials indicated that he would press ahead with an investigation even without the council`s full backing.

"The allegations that have appeared in the press focused on the activities of companies and, to a certain extent, governments," Annan`s chief spokesman, Fred Eckhard said. He said Annan wants to "see a comprehensive and independent investigation."

The Security Council launched the oil-for-food program in December 1996 so Iraq could raise funds for food and other humanitarian goods. Under the program, Iraq sold more than $67 billion in oil before it was shut down after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Saddam Hussein`s former government pocketed more than $10.1 billion in smuggled oil revenue and illicit proceeds between 1997 and 2002, according to testimony from the General Accounting Office before a House subcommittee on Thursday.

The Security Council, which had oversight responsibility for the program, informally rebuffed an appeal by Annan to adopt a resolution that would compel states to cooperate with investigators.

"We should not create the expectation that the council will agree on a comprehensive investigation," one council diplomat said. "Is the council going to allow these investigators to go to Russia, China, the United States and France" to question government officials and businesses? "Frankly, I think that`s a matter the council won`t agree on."



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Und dann will die USA Demokratie und Menschenrechte in die Regionen bringen.

washingtonpost.com
Injustice in Afghanistan

Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page A22


UNDER PRESSURE from the Supreme Court and many foreign governments, the Bush administration at last has begun to take steps toward providing a review process for the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. But it has yet to address the less publicized but possibly more serious problems surrounding its detention of foreign nationals elsewhere in the world. Under the guise of the war on terrorism, the U.S. military and CIA are holding hundreds, if not thousands, of suspects in Iraq, Afghanistan and possibly other locations under conditions of extraordinary secrecy and without any formal legal process. Many of the detentions are a necessary and normal part of ongoing military operations, and many of those detained are terrorists or others who might accurately be described as "illegal combatants." Nevertheless, as a new report by Human Rights Watch on Afghanistan has documented, the Bush administration`s practice of refusing to follow the Geneva Conventions or any other rule of law has led to abuses that are an affront to fundamental American values.

The 60-page report on U.S. practices in Afghanistan during the past two years details questionable or possibly criminal behavior by American personnel, including the use of excessive force during arrests and systematic mistreatment of some detainees. It shows that U.S. interrogators have used practices, such as prolonged shackling and sleep deprivation, that the State Department`s annual human rights report describes as torture when they are used by other countries. Perhaps most disturbing, it documents how numerous Afghan civilians have been held for periods of up to a year or more without charge, "virtually incommunicado without any legal basis for challenging their detention or seeking their release."

U.S. authorities have never disclosed how many prisoners are being held or where, nor have they permitted visits by family members or lawyers to those detained. No charges have been brought against any of the prisoners. "Simply put," the report concludes, "the United States is acting outside the rule of law."

The Pentagon also appears to be avoiding accountability for those abuses that have come to light. Of particular concern are the unexplained deaths of three detainees in U.S. custody, including two men whose deaths at Bagram Air Base in December 2002 were ruled homicides by medical investigators. When the cases were disclosed through a leak to the New York Times more than a year ago, U.S. spokesmen said an investigation was underway. But no results of the probe have been announced. The silence is shameful: It could be taken to suggest that suspects can be killed in U.S. custody with impunity.

The Bush administration should be acting aggressively to demonstrate, both to Americans and Afghans, that this is not the case. It should also take steps to regularize its handling of detainees abroad, disclose where they are, and ensure that they are being treated humanely and in accord with the Geneva Conventions. Though it must move forcefully against terrorists or remnants of the Taliban, the United States must also demonstrate that it is possible to wage this war while respecting basic standards of justice and human rights. For now, its actions in Afghanistan are sending the world a different message.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
A Day For Marching


By Medea Benjamin

Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page A23


Thousands of Americans today will mark the first anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by marching against the war. Why, if the war is officially over and Saddam Hussein has been captured, will residents of some 200 American cities join others around the world and take to the streets? Those of us who have traveled to Iraq to witness firsthand the effects of this occupation have returned with some profound reasons.

We are marching for Jesus Suarez, a Marine who died when he stepped on an American cluster bomb in Iraq on March 27, and for the more than 500 U.S. servicemen and women who have died in Iraq. Suarez left behind a young wife, a 1-year-old son and bereaved parents who are angered by the injustice of his death.

"Iraq didn`t have weapons of mass destruction and wasn`t connected to the September 11 tragedy. George Bush lied, and my son died," said a tearful Fernando Suarez at an unofficial memorial for the fallen soldiers outside Dover Air Force Base, where the bodies of U.S. soldiers are brought home and which is off limits to scrutiny by the media.

We are marching because we don`t want any more of our soldiers to die. We want the United States out, and the United Nations in.

We are marching for Yanar Mohammad, head of the Organization of Women`s Freedom in Iraq, and others who are aghast at how the U.S. invasion has undermined women and strengthened the hand of conservative Islamists. Iraqi women were stunned when the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council recently tried to nullify Iraq`s 1959 family code, considered among the most progressive in the Middle East, and place such vital issues as marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance under Muslim religious jurisdiction.

"Yes, we wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but the U.S. has appointed people to power who would like to institutionalize and legalize the oppression of women," Mohammad said at a Baghdad protest on March 8, International Women`s Day. "This is not liberation."

We are marching to support the call from Iraqi women for significant representation in the new Iraqi government.

We are marching for Bushra Said and the thousands of innocent Iraqis who have been killed, wounded or hurt by the occupying forces. Said, a young mother, was widowed when U.S. soldiers, driving by in their tanks, pumped eight bullets into the chest of her husband, Mazen Nouradin, as he waited to hail a taxi to go to work. The soldiers, always nervous from being under attack, had heard shots and fired randomly into the street. The bereaved Said asked U.S. authorities for an explanation, an apology, help with the funeral, and financial assistance for her children. She has received nothing.

We are marching because more than 10,000 innocent Iraqis have died since the U.S. invasion and many thousands more have been wounded, and because we believe the U.S. government must count, acknowledge and provide assistance to them.

We are marching for Fala Hassan and the staff of the Qadissiya Hospital in Sadr City. The staff told our U.S. delegation that children in the hospitals were dying because of shortages of basic medicines and equipment such as catheters, IVs and oxygen cylinders. The staff complained bitterly that even at the height of U.N. sanctions, when shortages were rampant, the hospitals were not as barren as they are today.

We are marching for Issam Achmed, an unemployed engineer, and the thousands upon thousands of skilled Iraqis who want to rebuild their country but are not given the opportunity. According to Achmed, one of the main reasons the United States has done such a bad job of fixing basic infrastructure destroyed by the war is that the reconstruction is in the hands of U.S. companies such as Halliburton and Bechtel instead of Iraqis themselves.

We are marching because we believe that the United States has a responsibility to pay for rebuilding Iraq, but that Iraqis, not American companies with friends in the administration, are best positioned to do the work.

We are marching for our children and our families, who have been put at risk by the growing anti-American sentiment stemming from George W. Bush`s doctrine of preemptive strikes, his arrogant use of force and his contempt for international law. We are marching because we don`t want to continue to squander billions of our tax dollars on war when the funds are needed to provide the public with health care, decent schools and new forms of energy that can eliminate our dependence on other nations` oil.

Finally, we are marching to say that come November, the American people must hold their leaders accountable for taking us into this illegal, unnecessary and disastrous war.

The writer is co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange and the women`s peace group CodePink.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American Order
By G. John Ikenberry
From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2004

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/

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The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. Chalmers Johnson. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004, 400 pp.$25.00

The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. By Chalmers Johnson. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004, 400 pp. $25.00

Colossus: The Price of America`s Empire. By Niall Ferguson. New York: Penguin Press, 2004, 368 pp. $25.95.

Fear`s Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy. By Benjamin R. Barber. New York: Norton, 2003, 192 pp. $23.95.

Incoherent Empire. By Michael Mann. New York: Verso, 2003, 284 pp. $25.00.

After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order. By Emmanuel Todd. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, 192 pp. $29.95.

The debate on empire is back. This is not surprising, as the United States dominates the world as no state ever has. It emerged from the Cold War the only superpower, and no geopolitical or ideological contenders are in sight. Europe is drawn inward, and Japan is stagnant. A half-century after their occupation, the United States still provides security for Japan and Germany -- the world`s second- and third-largest economies. U.S. military bases and carrier battle groups ring the world. Russia is in a quasi-formal security partnership with the United States, and China has accommodated itself to U.S. dominance, at least for the moment. For the first time in the modern era, the world`s most powerful state can operate on the global stage without the constraints of other great powers. We have entered the American unipolar age.

The Bush administration`s war on terrorism, invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, expanded military budget, and controversial 2002 National Security Strategy have thrust American power into the light of day -- and, in doing so, deeply unsettled much of the world. Worry about the implications of American unipolarity is the not-so-hidden subtext of recent U.S.-European tension and has figured prominently in recent presidential elections in Germany, Brazil, and South Korea. The most fundamental questions about the nature of global politics -- who commands and who benefits -- are now the subject of conversation among long-time allies and adversaries alike.

Power is often muted or disguised, but when it is exposed and perceived as domination, it inevitably invites response. One recalls the comment of Georges Clemenceau, who as a young politician said of the settlement ending the Franco-Prussian War, "Germany believes that the logic of her victory means domination, while we do not believe that the logic of our defeat is serfdom." At Versailles a half-century later, he would impose just as harsh a peace on a defeated Germany.

The current debate over empire is an attempt to make sense of the new unipolar reality. The assertion that the United States is bent on empire is, of course, not new. The British writer and labor politician Harold Laski evoked the looming American empire in 1947 when he said that "America bestrides the world like a colossus; neither Rome at the height of its power nor Great Britain in the period of economic supremacy enjoyed an influence so direct, so profound, or so pervasive. ..." And indeed, Dean Acheson and other architects of the postwar order were great admirers of the British Empire. Later, during the Vietnam War, left-wing thinkers and revisionist historians traced the same deep-rooted impulse toward militarism and empire through the history of U.S. foreign policy. The dean of this school, William Appleton Williams, argued in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy that the nation`s genuine idealism had been subverted by the imperial pursuit of power and capitalist greed.

Today, the "American empire" is a term of approval and optimism for some and disparagement and danger for others. Neoconservatives celebrate the imperial exercise of U.S. power, which, in a modern version of Rudyard Kipling`s "white man`s burden," is a liberal force that promotes democracy and undercuts tyranny, terrorism, military aggression, and weapons proliferation. Critics who identify an emerging American empire, meanwhile, worry about its unacceptable financial costs, its corrosive effect on democracy, and the threat it poses to the institutions and alliances that have secured U.S. national interests since World War II.


THE "E" WORD

No one disagrees that U.S. power is extraordinary. It is the character and logic of U.S. domination that is at issue in the debate over empire. The United States is not just a superpower pursuing its interest; it is a producer of world order. Over the decades -- with more support than resistance from other nations -- it has fashioned a distinctively open and rule-based international order. Its dynamic bundle of oversized capacities, interests, and ideals constitutes an "American project" with unprecedented global reach. For better or worse, other states must come to terms with or work around this protean order.

Scholars often characterize international relations as the interaction of sovereign states in an anarchic world. In the classic Westphalian world order, states hold a monopoly on the use of force in their own territory while order at the international level is maintained through the diffusion of power among states. Today`s unipolar world turns the Westphalian image on its head. The United States possesses a near-monopoly on the use of force internationally; on the domestic level, meanwhile, the institutions and behaviors of states are increasingly open to global -- that is, American -- scrutiny. Since September 11, the Bush administration`s assertion of "contingent sovereignty" and the right of preemption have made this transformation abundantly clear. The rise of unipolarity and the simultaneous unbundling of state sovereignty is a new and volatile brew.

But is the resulting political formation an empire? And if so, will the American empire suffer the fate of great empires of the past: ravaging the world with its ambitions and excesses until overextension, miscalculation, and mounting opposition hasten its collapse?

The term "empire" refers to the political control by a dominant country of the domestic and foreign policies of weaker countries. The European colonial empires of the late nineteenth century were the most direct, formal kind. The Soviet "sphere of influence" in Eastern Europe entailed an equally coercive but less direct form of control. The British Empire included both direct colonial rule and "informal empire." If empire is defined loosely, as a hierarchical system of political relationships in which the most powerful state exercises decisive influence, then the United States today indeed qualifies.

If the United States is an empire, however, it is like no other before it. To be sure, it has a long tradition of pursuing crude imperial policies, most notably in Latin America and the Middle East. But for most countries, the U.S.-led order is a negotiated system wherein the United States has sought participation by other states on terms that are mutually agreeable. This is true in three respects. First, the United States has provided public goods -- particularly the extension of security and the support for an open trade regime -- in exchange for the cooperation of other states. Second, power in the U.S. system is exercised through rules and institutions; power politics still exist, but arbitrary and indiscriminate power is reigned in. Finally, weaker states in the U.S.-led order are given "voice opportunities" -- informal access to the policymaking processes of the United States and the intergovernmental institutions that make up the international system. It is these features of the post-1945 international order that have led historians such as Charles Maier to talk about a "consensual empire" and Geir Lundestad to talk about an "empire of invitation." The American order is hierarchical and ultimately sustained by economic and military power, but it is put at the service of an expanding system of democracy and capitalism.

Fundamentally, then, the debate over the new American empire hinges on how extensive and deeply rooted these characteristics are -- and whether its assertion of power since September 11 constitutes a fundamental break with this liberal past.


THE GLOBAL RACKET

In The Sorrows of Empire, Chalmers Johnson advances the disturbing claim that the United States` Cold War-era military power and far-flung base system have, in the last decade, been consolidated in a new form of global imperial rule. The United States, according to Johnson, has become "a military juggernaut intent on world domination."

Driven by a triumphalist ideology, an exaggerated sense of threats, and a self-serving military-industrial complex, this juggernaut is tightening its grip on much of the world. The Pentagon has replaced the State Department as the primary shaper of foreign policy. Military commanders in regional headquarters are modern-day proconsuls, warrior-diplomats who direct the United States` imperial reach. Johnson fears that this military empire will corrode democracy, bankrupt the nation, spark opposition, and ultimately end in a Soviet-style collapse.

In this rendering, the American military empire is a novel form of domination. Johnson describes it as an "international protection racket: mutual defense treaties, military advisory groups, and military forces stationed in foreign countries to `defend` against often poorly defined, overblown, or nonexistent threats." These arrangements create "satellites" -- ostensibly independent countries whose foreign relations revolve around the imperial state. Johnson argues that this variety of empire was pioneered during the Cold War by the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and the United States in East Asia. Great empires of the past -- the Romans and the Han Dynasty Chinese -- ruled their domains with permanent military encampments that garrisoned conquered territory. The American empire is innovative because it is not based on the acquisition of territory; it is an empire of bases.

Johnson`s previous polemic, Blowback, asserted that post-1945 U.S. spheres of influence in East Asia and Latin America were as coercive and exploitative as their Soviet counterparts. The Sorrows of Empire continues this dubious line. Echoing 1960s revisionism, Johnson asserts that the United States` Cold War security system of alliances and bases was built on manufactured threats and driven by expansionary impulses. The United States was not acting in its own defense; it was exploiting opportunities to build an empire. The Soviet Union and the United States, according to this argument, were more alike than different: both militarized their societies and foreign policies and expanded outward, establishing imperial rule through "hub and spoke" systems of client states and political dependencies.

In Johnson`s view, the end of the Cold War represented both an opportunity and a crisis for U.S. global rule -- an opportunity because the Soviet sphere of influence was now open for imperial expansion, a crisis because the fall of the Soviet Union ended the justification for the global system of naval bases, airfields, army garrisons, espionage listening posts, and strategic enclaves. Only with the terrorist attacks of September 11 was this crisis resolved. Bush suddenly had an excuse to expand U.S. military domination. September 11 also allowed the United States to remove the fig leaf of alliance partnership. Washington could now disentangle itself from international commitments, treaties, and law and launch direct imperial rule.

Unfortunately, Johnson offers no coherent theory of why the United States seeks empire. At one point, he suggests that the American military empire is founded on "a vast complex of interests, commitments, and projects." The empire of bases has become institutionalized in the military establishment and has taken on a life of its own. There is no discussion, however, of the forces within U.S. politics that resist or reject empire. As a result, Johnson finds imperialism everywhere and in everything the United States does, in its embrace of open markets and global economic integration as much as in its pursuit of narrow economic gains.

Johnson also offers little beyond passing mention about the societies presumed to be under Washington`s thumb. Domination and exploitation are, of course, not always self-evident. Military pacts and security partnerships are clearly part of the structure of U.S. global power, and they often reinforce fragile and corrupt governments in order to project U.S. influence. But countries can also use security ties with the United States to their own advantage. Japan may be a subordinate security partner, but the U.S.-Japan alliance also allows Tokyo to forgo a costly buildup of military capacity that would destabilize East Asia. Moreover, countries do have other options: they can, and often do, escape U.S. domination simply by asking the United States to leave. The Philippines did so, and South Korea may be next. The variety and complexity of U.S. security ties with other states makes Johnson`s simplistic view of military hegemony misleading.

In fact, the U.S. alliance system -- remarkably intact after half a century -- has helped create a stable, open political space. Cooperative security is not just an instrument of U.S. domination; it is also a tool of political architecture. But Johnson neglects the broader complex of U.S.-supported multilateral rules and institutions that give depth and complexity to the international order. Ultimately, it is not clear what the United States could do -- short of retreating into its borders or ceasing to exist -- that would save it from Johnson`s condemnation.


PAX AMERICANA

In Colossus, Niall Ferguson argues that the United States is indeed an empire and has been for a long time. To Ferguson, however, it is a liberal empire that upholds rules and institutions and underwrites public goods by maintaining peace, ensuring freedom of the seas and skies, and managing a system of international trade and finance. The United States is the imperfect but natural inheritor of the British system of global governance; it is open and integrative and inclined toward informal rule. Accordingly, Ferguson`s worry is not that the world will get too much American empire but that it will not get enough. U.S. leaders, for all their benign intent, have unusually short attention spans and tend to go "wobbly."

In Ferguson`s view, the United States shares many characteristics with past empires. Like Rome, it has remarkably open citizenship. "Purple Hearts and U.S. citizenship were conferred simultaneously on a number of the soldiers serving in Iraq last year, just as service in the legions was once a route to becoming a civis romanus," Ferguson writes. "Indeed, with the classical architecture of its capital and the republican structure of its constitution, the United States is perhaps more like a `new Rome` than any previous empire -- albeit a Rome in which the Senate has thus far retained its grip on would-be emperors." The spread of America`s language, ideas, and culture also invites comparison to Rome at its zenith.

But Ferguson is even more taken by parallels with the British Empire. U.S. presidents, from Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, have put their power to work promoting the great liberal ideals of economic openness, democracy, limited government, human dignity, and the rule of law -- a "strategy of openness" that is remarkably similar, Ferguson argues, to the aspirations of the British Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. After all, it was a young Winston Churchill who argued that the aim of British imperialism was to "give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to place the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain. ... "

Most of Colossus retells the familiar story of the rise of U.S. global dominance as an exercise in liberal empire. What is distinctive about American imperialism, according to Ferguson, is that it has been pursued in the name of anti-imperialism. For each phase of U.S. history, Ferguson nicely illuminates the tensions between republican ideals and the exercise of global power and shows how those tensions are often resolved. The Cold War -- and George Kennan`s doctrine of containment -- provides the ultimate example of this fusion of anti-imperialism and hard power. Security, openness, democratic community, political commitment, and the mobilization of U.S. power went together. The core of U.S. global rule involved the enforcement of rules of economic openness, but the United States was also willing to act forcefully to integrate countries into the liberal order.

Ferguson`s most interesting claim is that the world needs more of this liberal American empire. This argument stems in part from the uncontroversial claim that the current international order needs enlightened leadership and that only Washington can provide it. (Ferguson holds little hope that Europe will ever overcome its preoccupation with the internal contradictions of its enlargement.) It is especially the wider system of sovereign but failed states that needs imperial supervision by Washington. In vast swatches of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East national self-determination has led to much grief. Ferguson argues without qualification that "the experiment with political independence -- especially in Africa -- has been a disaster for most poor countries." To Ferguson, the extension of liberal empire into these regions (even involving some form of colonial rule) is necessary. What precisely these imperial arrangements would look like, however, remains unclear.

When Ferguson says that he is "fundamentally in favor of empire," he is to some extent pulling a conceptual sleight of hand. What Ferguson means by "liberal empire" scholars have previously called "liberal hegemony": a hierarchical order that is still very different from traditional forms of empire. By virtue of its power, the liberal hegemon can act on its long-term interests rather than squabble over short-term gains with other states; it can identify its own national interests with the openness and stability of the larger system. The United States thus shapes and dominates the international order while guaranteeing a flow of benefits to other governments that earns their acquiescence. In contrast to empire, this negotiated order depends on agreement over the rules of the system between the leading state and everyone else. In this way, the norms and institutions that have developed around U.S. hegemony both limit the actual coercive exercise of U.S. power and draw other states into the management of the system.

Ferguson`s case for the virtues of American empire hinges on his claim that in the aftermath of the Soviet Union`s collapse, the world could have gone one of two ways: international order organized around independent nations or an American imperium. He maintains that a world of decentralized, competing states, many of which are not democracies, would result in chaos. This may be true; he is certainly right that stability and open markets are not easily sustained without the support of powerful states. But the notion of liberal empire conflates very different types of U.S.-led order. One in which Washington coerces other states into obedience is very different from a system of multilateral rules and close partnerships. The challenges of peace and economic development that Ferguson identifies are best pursued by advanced democracies working together. Ultimately, such a cooperative order would require that Washington transcend the atavistic habits of empire rather than pursue a more complete realization of it.

In the end, Ferguson finds invoking the image of empire useful for political reasons. Unlike the British, Americans do not believe that they operate an empire. As a result, the United States makes a flighty and impatient imperial power (in contrast to the British, who acquired a cultural mentality for global rule). Ferguson thinks that speaking honestly about the reality of American empire will foster understanding of its duties and obligations.

Yet precisely the opposite is true. The United States does not need to view the world as its Raj and deploy a colonial service to the vast periphery; it needs to find ways to exercise its power in sustained, legitimate ways, working with others and developing more complex forms of cooperative international governance. It is also extremely doubtful that the American people would accept such a massive imperial undertaking: last September, as soon as President Bush revealed the price tag for occupying Iraq, public support plummeted immediately.


IMPERIAL INSECURITY

Benjamin Barber`s Fear`s Empire presents a case against the recent unilateral impulses in U.S. foreign policy. According to Barber, empire is not inherent in U.S. dominance but is, rather, a temptation -- one to which the Bush administration has increasingly succumbed. In confronting terrorism, Washington has vacillated between appealing to law and undermining it. Barber`s thesis is that by invoking a right to unilateral action, preventive war, and regime change, the United States has undermined the very framework of cooperation and law that is necessary to fight terrorist anarchy. A foreign policy oriented around the use of military force against rogue states, Barber argues, reflects a misunderstanding of the consequences of global interdependence and the character of democracy. Washington cannot run a global order driven by military action and the fear of terrorism. Simply put, American empire is not sustainable.

For Barber, the logic of globalization trumps the logic of empire: the spread of McWorld undermines imperial grand strategy. In most aspects of economic and political life, the United States depends heavily on other states. The world is thus too complex and interdependent to be ruled from an imperial center. In an empire of fear, the United States attempts to order the world through force of arms. But this strategy is self-defeating: it creates hostile states bent on overturning the imperial order, not obedient junior partners.

Barber proposes instead a cosmopolitan order of universal law rooted in human community: "Lex humana works for global comity within the framework of universal rights and law, conferred by multilateral political, economic, and cultural cooperation -- with only as much common military action as can be authorized by common legal authority; whether in the Congress, in multilateral treaties, or through the United Nations." Terrorist threats, Barber concludes, are best confronted with a strategy of "preventive democracy" -- democratic states working together to strengthen and extend liberalism.

Barber`s overly idealized vision of cosmopolitan global governance is less convincing, however, than his warnings about unilateral military rule. Indeed, he provides a useful cautionary note for liberal empire enthusiasts in two respects. First, the two objectives of liberal empire -- upholding the rules of the international system and unilaterally employing military power against enemies of the American order -- often conflict. As Barber shows, zealous policymakers often invoke the fear of terrorism to justify unilateral exercises of power that, in turn, undermine the rules and institutions they are meant to protect. Second, the threats posed by terrorism and weapons of mass destruction are not enough to legitimate America`s liberal empire. During the Cold War, the United States articulated a vision of community and progress within a U.S.-led free world, infusing the exercise of U.S. power with legitimacy. It is doubtful, however, that the war on terrorism, in which countries are either "with us or against us," has an appeal that can draw enough support to justify a U.S.-dominated order.


BALANCING ACT

Michael Mann also warns of a dangerous, and ultimately unsustainable, imperial turn in U.S. foreign policy. This "new imperialism," he argues in Incoherent Empire, is driven by a radical vision in which unilateral military power enforces U.S. rule and overcomes global disorder.

Mann believes that this "imperial project" depends on a wildly inflated measure of American power; the United States may have awesome military muscle, but its political and economic capabilities are less overwhelming. This imbalance causes Washington to overemphasize the use of force, turning the quest for empire into "overconfident and hyperactive militarism." Such militarism generates what Mann calls "incoherent empire," which undermines U.S. leadership and creates more, not fewer, terrorists and rogue states.

In his distinguished scholarly work on the history of social power, Mann, a sociologist, has argued that four types of power drive the rise and fall of states, nations, empires, regions, and civilizations: military, political, economic, and ideological. Applying these categories to the United States, Mann concludes that it is, in a jumble of metaphors, "a military giant, a back-seat economic driver, a political schizophrenic, and an ideological phantom."

Mann acknowledges that the United States is a central hub of the world economy and that the role of the dollar as the primary reserve currency confers significant advantages in economic matters. But the actual ability of Washington to use trade and aid as political leverage, he believes, is severely limited, as was evident in its failure to secure the support of countries such as Angola, Chile, Guinea, Mexico, and Pakistan in the Security Council before the war in Iraq. Moreover, Washington`s client states are increasingly unreliable, and the populations of erstwhile allies are inflamed with anti-Americanism. American culture and ideals, meanwhile, hold less appeal than they did in previous eras. Although the world still embraces the United States` open society and basic freedoms, it increasingly complains about "cultural imperialism" and U.S. aggression. Nationalism and religious fundamentalism have forged deep cultures of resistance to an American imperial project.

Mann and Barber both make the important point that an empire built on military domination alone will not succeed. In their characterization, the United States offers security -- acting as a global leviathan to control the problems of a Hobbesian world -- in exchange for other countries` acquiescence. Washington, in this imperial vision, refuses to play by the same rules as other governments and maintains that this is the price the world must pay for security. But this U.S.-imposed order cannot last. Barber points out that the United States has so much "business" with the rest of the world that it cannot rule the system without complex arrangements of cooperation. Mann, for his part, argues that military "shock and awe" merely increases resistance; he cites the sociologist Talcott Parsons, who long ago noted that raw power, unlike consensus authority, is "deflationary": the more it is used, the more rapidly it diminishes.


EMPIRE UNRAVELLING

The French essayist Emmanuel Todd believes that the long-term decline predicted by Mann and Barber has already started. In a fit of French wishful thinking, he argues in After the Empire that the United States` geopolitical importance is shrinking fast. The world is exiting, not entering, an era of U.S. domination. Washington may want to run a liberal empire, but the world is able and increasingly willing to turn its back on an ever less relevant United States.

Todd`s prediction derives from a creative -- but ultimately suspect -- view of global socioeconomic transformation. He acknowledges that the United States played a critical role in constructing the global economy in the decades after World War II. But in the process, Todd argues, new power centers with divergent interests and values emerged in Asia and Europe, while the United States` own economy and society became weak and corrupt. The soft underbelly of U.S. power is its reluctance to take casualties and to pay the costs of rebuilding societies that it invades. Meanwhile, as U.S. democracy weakens, the worldwide spread of democracy has bolstered resistance to Washington. As Todd puts it, "At the very moment when the rest of the world -- now undergoing a process of stabilization thanks to improvements in education, demographics, and democracy -- is on the verge of discovering that it can get along without America, America is realizing that it cannot get along without the rest of the world."

Two implications follow from the United States` strange condition as "economically dependent and politically useless." First, the United States is becoming a global economic predator, sustaining itself through an increasingly fragile system of "tribute taking." It has lost the ability to couple its own economic gain with the economic advancement of other societies. Second, a weakened United States will resort to more desperate and aggressive actions to retain its hegemonic position. Todd identifies this impulse behind confrontations with Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Indeed, in his most dubious claim, Todd argues that the corruption of U.S. democracy is giving rise to a poorly supervised ruling class that will be less restrained in its use of military force against other democracies, those in Europe included. For Todd, all of this points to the disintegration of the American empire.

Todd is correct that the ability of any state to dominate the international system depends on its economic strength. As economic dominance shifts, American unipolarity will eventually give way to a new distribution of power. But, contrary to Todd`s diagnosis, the United States retains formidable socioeconomic advantages. And his claim that a rapacious clique of frightened oligarchs has taken over U.S. democracy is simply bizarre. Most important, Todd`s assertion that Russia and other great powers are preparing to counterbalance U.S. power misses the larger patterns of geopolitics. Europe, Japan, Russia, and China have sought to engage the United States strategically, not simply to resist it. They are pursuing influence and accommodation within the existing order, not trying to overturn it. In fact, the great powers worry more about a detached, isolationist United States than they do about a United States bent on global rule. Indeed, much of the pointed criticism of U.S. unilateralism reflects a concern that the United States will stop providing security and stability, not a hope that it will decline and disappear.


RULERS OR RULES?

Is the United States an empire? If so, Ferguson`s liberal empire is a more persuasive portrait than is Johnson`s military empire. But ultimately, the notion of empire is misleading -- and misses the distinctive aspects of the global political order that has developed around U.S. power.

The United States has pursued imperial policies, especially toward weak countries in the periphery. But U.S. relations with Europe, Japan, China, and Russia cannot be described as imperial, even when "neo" or "liberal" modifies the term. The advanced democracies operate within a "security community" in which the use or threat of force is unthinkable. Their economies are deeply interwoven. Together, they form a political order built on bargains, diffuse reciprocity, and an array of intergovernmental institutions and ad hoc working relationships. This is not empire; it is a U.S.-led democratic political order that has no name or historical antecedent.

To be sure, the neoconservatives in Washington have trumpeted their own imperial vision: an era of global rule organized around the bold unilateral exercise of military power, gradual disentanglement from the constraints of multilateralism, and an aggressive effort to spread freedom and democracy. But this vision is founded on illusions of U.S. power. It fails to appreciate the role of cooperation and rules in the exercise and preservation of such power. Its pursuit would strip the United States of its legitimacy as the preeminent global power and severely compromise the authority that flows from such legitimacy. Ultimately, the neoconservatives are silent on the full range of global challenges and opportunities that face the United States. And as Ferguson notes, the American public has no desire to run colonies or manage a global empire. Thus, there are limits on American imperial pretensions even in a unipolar era.

Ultimately, the empire debate misses the most important international development of recent years: the long peace among great powers, which some scholars argue marks the end of great-power war. Capitalism, democracy, and nuclear weapons all help explain this peace. But so too does the unique way in which the United States has gone about the business of building an international order. The United States` success stems from the creation and extension of international institutions that have limited and legitimated U.S. power.

The United States is now caught in a struggle between liberal rule and imperial rule. Both impulses lie deep within the American body politic. But the dangers and costs of running the world as an American empire are great, and the nation`s deep faith in the rule of law is undiminished. When all is said and done, Americans are less interested in ruling the world than they are in creating a world of rules.



www.foreignaffairs.org is copyright 2002--2004 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All rights reserved.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-clar…
THE WORLD
Bombing Iraq Discussed on 9/12, Ex-Aide to Bush Says
From Associated Press

March 20, 2004

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration considered bombing Iraq in retaliation almost immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a former senior counter-terrorism advisor in the White House said.

Richard Clarke, the president`s counter-terrorism coordinator at the time of the attacks, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld complained on Sept. 12 — after the administration was convinced that the Al Qaeda terrorist network was to blame — that "there aren`t any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq."

A spokesman for Rumsfeld said he couldn`t comment immediately.

Clarke makes the assertion in a book, "Against All Enemies," which will go on sale Monday. He told CBS News that he believed the administration sought to link Iraq with the attacks because of long-standing interest in overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection" between Iraq and the Al Qaeda attacks in the United States, Clarke said in a broadcast Friday evening. "There`s just no connection. There`s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting Al Qaeda."

There have been earlier published accounts of the administration`s suspicion during the week after the 2001 attacks that Iraq might have been involved, but none by a direct participant in such senior-level meetings and none that suggested attacking Iraq was discussed the day after.

For example, a discussion among President Bush and Cabinet leaders at Camp David on Sept. 16 included remarks about whether it would be prudent to attack Iraq.

Clarke retired in 2003 after 30 years in government service.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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IRAQ: ONE YEAR LATER
Freer, Not Happier
Saddam Hussein is gone, but Iraqis feel they`re living under a new oppressor: chaos marked by violence, uncertainty and fear.

March 20, 2004

To hear the residents of this country ravaged by war, terrorism, occupation and resistance tell it: It was the worst of times. It is the worst of times.

The people of Iraq are sick of all the chaos, the violence, the lack of security — and most of the time their sour, depressed state overwhelms any fragment of hope or relief in their daily lives. Yet many also believe that their futures will be better.

"The main problem is, we were expecting something, and we found it was an illusion," gallery owner Ala Salim said. "There are no elections. There is no government. People cannot go out at night. Naturally people are unnerved."

Saddam Hussein is gone. The hated Mukhabarat secret police no longer control the country with their vast bureaucracy of oppression. Newspapers and prayer leaders shout a variety of opinions, and people buy satellite TV dishes, imported used cars and home appliances with abandon. Shiite Muslims practice their religion without fear of the state. No one is compelled to mouth paeans to the leader. Freedoms previously undreamed of are taken for granted.

Yet few are happy. The freedom feels like anarchy and abandonment. Instead of being oppressed by a tyrant, people are oppressed by a welter of criminals, insurgents, petty bullies and encroaching theocrats. Some are fighting back — for Islam, for power, for vengeance or just in blind fury. Others have adopted a kind of fatalism, refusing to be cowed, determined to work for democracy even at the risk of being killed as "collaborators" of the U.S.

American and British forces are active in their pursuit of insurgents but spend little time fighting crime or on routine patrols. On guard against attacks — which number about 20 a day — they engage less and less with the population.

For security, Iraqis in the grip of crime rely on their own weapons and families, or plead for help at the bunker-like stations of their newly reconstituted police. Merchants now sell a gamut of defensive items, from Kalashnikov rifles to surveillance cameras to electric prods. But the police themselves are underequipped and frightened. In some places, they show signs of falling back into habits of corruption and connivance with the underworld.

One year ago, Iraqis looked at the gathering storm against Hussein`s regime with a mixture of dread and hope.

At the time, Jalil Khadim and his family were too afraid to speak of their hatred of Hussein but gave voice to their fear that one of them might not emerge alive from the U.S. bombing. His four young children were so afraid then that his wife, Souhad Raad, who broke down in tears during that interview, was stockpiling Valium to see them through.

A year later, sitting in the same cramped living room (but now without electricity), they had come through the war unscathed, and the anxiety level was the same.

Raad said she was thinking of taking Mina, 6, out of school because an explosive device had been found nearby. Jalil said he goes to his shop to eke out a living for only three hours a day, because he is afraid to leave his family alone.

Raad said the home of friends of her parents had been invaded by robbers, who tortured the elderly couple and their children for eight hours in the mistaken belief that they were a family of money changers. "They cut their ears and beat them," she said.

"Please write down, we need a president," she pleaded. "We are not safe. We are afraid."

Accustomed to warnings, half-measures and eleventh-hour diplomatic standoffs, few people believed before the war that U.S. and British forces would actually carry out their threat to invade the country and depose the dictator. After it happened, few anticipated that life after Hussein would be so difficult.

Arasat al Hindiya Street was once considered Baghdad`s most glamorous, with the city`s best restaurants and boutiques. Today, most of them are shuttered. A few have been shattered by bombs. Garbage blows down the sidewalks at night. People are afraid to walk here.

Salim, 45, an artist and sculptor, runs the Eastern Living art gallery with his wife. But the customers don`t come anymore. On a recent afternoon, it was as quiet as a mausoleum.

"Unless civilization will prevail, there will be no good work in Iraq," Salim said ruefully. "This street, for example — it was alive. Now … "

If scattered statistical evidence is true, Iraq now has a murder rate worse that New York`s at its height and a kidnapping rate worse than Colombia`s. Many prominent or affluent people have gone into hiding or left the country.

As one drives through the once clean streets of the capital, hulks and shells of buildings are everywhere — destroyed when? During the war? During the looting? By terrorist explosions? Fallen into neglect during 12 years of sanctions? It is all ugly. Consumer goods spill off sidewalks and into Baghdad`s streets, evidence both of a newly liberated market and the lack of municipal control over merchants.

Occupation officials routinely refer to the city as bustling, a sign that times are improving. But Iraqis don`t feel that way. Almost every family has a death or some other horror to tell from the past year, and residents routinely arm themselves and watch the street outside their windows for lurking strangers.

Hussein has been conquered, but not the fear in Iraqi hearts.

*

About these articles

These articles were written and reported by Times staff writers John Daniszewski, Alissa J. Rubin, Patrick J. McDonnell, Mark Magnier and J. Michael Kennedy in Baghdad and Bob Drogin in Washington. Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella in Baghdad also contributed.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-gove…
IRAQ: ONE YEAR LATER
Transition, but to What?
Building a democracy doesn`t come easily in a country unfamiliar with the concept -- and where the word of factional leaders is what counts.

March 20, 2004

Earlier this month, U.S. officials hailed the belated ratification of an interim Iraqi Constitution as the first serious step toward greater stability.

But the elaborate ceremony highlighted a major problem that looms on the not-too-distant horizon: Although Iraq now has a law by which a transitional government could operate, there is no agreement on what kind of government will take power June 30, when the U.S. has promised to hand over authority to Iraqis.

The snag is just the most recent example of the trouble the U.S. has had in making good on its ambitious promise to create a self-governing, democratic system in Iraq.

Senior officials at the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority downplay the problems, emphasizing that the interim Constitution is a breakthrough, the first real effort by the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council to compromise.

"Everybody gave up something he or she wanted," one official said. "They are all clearly behind the law."

But he acknowledged that it was unclear whether the support would last.

"There are people expressing reservations, but how profound they are we`ll have to see," the official said.

In the best of circumstances, democracy-building is difficult, but in a country that lacks a democratic tradition, it is far harder. In Iraq it is made worse by the rising strife between minority Sunni and majority Shiite Muslims and between ethnic Kurds and Arabs. Fears of civil unrest are becoming increasingly widespread among Iraqis.

Assassinations have become commonplace. Shiite groups have killed scores of former members of Saddam Hussein`s Baath Party and now appear to be targeting a succession of Sunni clerics. Sunnis have targeted Shiites, especially clerics and some political leaders.

It has become widely accepted among Iraqis that in order to placate the factions, government power and ministries will be divided among the different sects and ethnic groups in a way that is roughly proportional to their community`s share of the population. But although this may be necessary for short-term progress, it looks likely to contribute to the instability and is reminiscent of Lebanon during the 1980s. The U.S.-led coalition put an international imprimatur on the sectarian and ethnic division of power early on by dividing the Iraqi Governing Council along those lines.

Since April, the United States has offered three successive proposals to transform Iraq`s single-party dictatorship into the Western-style democracy President Bush promised would become a beacon for the region. None of the plans has received Iraqi support.

"We are at the very beginning of a transition and much further back than the U.S. government would like us to believe," said Marina Ottaway, an expert in post-conflict situations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Generally speaking, at this point we don`t have a transition plan. There has been a succession of game plans, all of which the U.S. has been forced to abandon."

The disintegration of each plan, like so much else that has plagued postwar Iraq, is at least in part the legacy of U.S. decisions. Some of them are now viewed as mistakes, others as unavoidable moves — but all with unwanted consequences that are still reverberating.

Among the most troubling of the U.S. moves, say political scientists and post-conflict experts in the United States and Iraq, were the failure to stop the wide-scale looting in the weeks after the war, the decision to disband the army, and the creation of the Governing Council along religious and ethnic lines.

The looting undermined the U.S.-led coalition`s credibility with Iraqis early on, allowing a sense of lawlessness to become entrenched. It also enriched criminals who are believed to have used the stolen goods to help finance their activities, prolonging the postwar uncertainty.

The decision to disband the regular army was vigorously protested at the time by Iraqis because it put 400,000 armed men out of work in one fell swoop. It also deprived the U.S. of expertise.

Disbanding the Iraqi army also helped feed the anti-American insurgency, creating a large number of armed men willing to either actively or passively support the insurgents.

"If you add these things up, disbanding the army, the looting, you get a growing delegitimization of the coalition, and the liberators turn into occupiers and the occupiers into an unwanted foreign power," said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, a research organization that tracks conflict.

Finally, the distribution of seats on the U.S.-backed Governing Council set a precedent that now seems all but impossible to change. It was probably unavoidable, according to many experts, because it was a way to reassure the previously persecuted Shiite and Kurdish communities that they would take their rightful place in the government of Iraq.

"It was a genie that was let out of the bottle for good reasons but that cannot be put back in," the Carnegie Endowment`s Ottaway said.

The U.S. is spending $458 million on contracts to promote democracy, but it is difficult for an occupying power to instruct people in democratic principles.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that although people are uncertain about what they want, they know what they don`t want: a government imposed by the United States.

In January, 700 Iraqi tribal leaders, many of them wearing Western business suits underneath their robes, gathered to hear a discussion of democracy by Larry Diamond, a Stanford University expert on the subject.

After listening politely, the men, most of them Shiite Muslims, appeared puzzled as to what to make of his lecture. But they were sure of one thing: They would listen closely to the instructions of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country`s senior Shiite cleric.

"We know about democracy — we have had democracy since the time of the prophet Muhammad — but the democracy according to Islam is different, the Sharia [Islamic law] is different," said Sayeed Sahib Zamila, wrapping himself in his black sheik`s robe. "We are going to apply what his eminence Ayatollah Sistani is saying, and we are not going to apply any other point of view." The incident illustrates a fundamental difficulty the U.S. faces in Iraq. Although Iraqis and Americans use the same language to describe their goals — "democracy," "freedom," "equality" — they attach deeply different meanings to the words. And for each of the groups in Iraq long repressed by a despot, the only leader they can trust is one of their own.

*

About these articles

These articles were written and reported by Times staff writers John Daniszewski, Alissa J. Rubin, Patrick J. McDonnell, Mark Magnier and J. Michael Kennedy in Baghdad and Bob Drogin in Washington. Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella in Baghdad also contributed.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-econ…
IRAQ: ONE YEAR LATER
Waiting in the Dark
The lack of electricity is only a small piece of the difficult economic picture in Iraq, but for many citizens, it is emblematic.

March 20, 2004

Abu Muslim, manager of the Butterfly Electric Appliance store, leaned against a stack of cardboard boxes in front of his shop and smiled. "Generators are selling very well," he said, wiping dust off his black pants. "Prices have even gone up — to $170 now from $70 during the war just for the smallest one." His gain is Iraq`s loss. A year after the invasion, electricity remains down most of the day in Baghdad and is patchy elsewhere in the country.

The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority offers many reasons why the juice isn`t flowing. The system is decrepit. It never had the power advertised. And its distribution has become more equitable. Saddam Hussein used electricity like everything else: to serve the aims of the regime, leaving Baghdad and his hometown of Tikrit glowing like used-car lots while the Shiite-heavy south suffered daily brown- and blackouts.

"Now we`re looking at distributing it more evenly across Iraq," said Randy Richardson, senior electricity advisor for the CPA.

None of that washes with an Iraqi population led to believe that the Americans would bring them peace, freedom and prosperity in short order after decades of tyranny and economic mismanagement.

"We`ve been promised so many times that the electricity would come on, security would improve, the economy [would] get better," said Dauvaod Mohammed, owner of Kitchen Furniture in Baghdad`s Karada neighborhood. "In the 1990s, when Iraq had electricity problems, Saddam had it working within three months. The U.S. is so much richer, and they still don`t have it on."

The lack of power is only a small piece of the difficult economic picture here, but for many Iraqis, it is emblematic. Not only does the electricity shortfall deter companies, investors and consumers from spending, it also affects another enormous problem: the lack of security. Rubble-strewn streets are left dark and inviting to carjackers, muggers and saboteurs.

"I agree it`s all taken a long time, and people are frustrated," said Tom Foley, the CPA`s head of private-sector development. "But I think in 12 to 18 months it will be a whole different story."

In fact, there are signs of hope in the economy, although whether they will become the boom some coalition officials predict remains to be seen.

A torrent of cash should start flowing through the monetary system in the coming months, following this month`s awarding of $5.8 billion in water, communications, security and infrastructure contracts.

Wage increases for government officials are starting to work their way through, leading to an uptick in consumer spending.

A cellphone network is in place, although it`s already overloaded.

About $5 million a day is returning from overseas bank accounts.

There has been progress in rebuilding the financial system, with banks again taking deposits, although the country still lacks electronic money transfers, credit facilities, ATMs and even checks.

"If you`re going to pay everything in cash, it slows things down, and it`s obvious in this security environment it increases the risk," said Marek Belka, an advisor to Iraq`s Finance Ministry.

The country`s new currency — the face of Hussein has been replaced by images of fountains, minarets and sundials of yore — has quickly gained acceptance and stabilized at about 1,450 dinars to the dollar.

A clear priority for Iraqi planners and coalition forces is the creation of jobs — both for economic reasons and to channel disaffected young men into the workforce rather than the insurgency. Rows of shops in Baghdad`s commercial district remain shuttered, gutted or reduced to rubble.

A recent U.S. Treasury Department study found that the $5.8-billion spending spree could create up to 1.7 million jobs this year, though many people on the ground remain skeptical. The unemployment rate is believed to be about 28%, with an additional 20% underemployed.

So far, for most Iraqis it comes down to a matter of faith in the coalition, economist Humam Shamaa said, and that is in short supply. The U.S. has not been open about how it`s spending money or where oil revenue is going, he said.

Although there is a great deal of spending to be done in Iraq, he fears it will largely benefit American companies, with relatively little trickle-down benefit for Iraqis. And he sees enormous corruption ahead as a few "Ali Babas," or thieves, find ways to skim money, leaving relatively little in the hands of average citizens.

"There are many clever ways to steal money," he said. "I hope we can have a new strategic relationship between the U.S. and Iraq, but they`re not giving us a clear idea what they`re doing in many areas, so many Iraqis are suspicious."

*

About these articles

These articles were written and reported by Times staff writers John Daniszewski, Alissa J. Rubin, Patrick J. McDonnell, Mark Magnier and J. Michael Kennedy in Baghdad and Bob Drogin in Washington. Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella in Baghdad also contributed.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-oil-…

Die LATimes hat einige Artikel zum Jahrestag des Kriegsbeginns in der heutigen Ausgabe. Die Artikel enthalten nichts Neues, sind auch wohl als Zusammenfassung gedacht. Hier eine Auswahl von 4 Artikeln #20/21/22/23.


IRAQ: ONE YEAR LATER
A Source of Optimism
Iraq`s oil fields are making a comeback, and that`s good news for the U.S., which is counting on the revenue for reconstruction.

March 20, 2004

When American engineers fanned out into the rich oil fields of southern Iraq on the heels of the U.S. invasion last year, they were dumbstruck at what they found. Impoverished Iraqi villagers had already carted off anything that wasn`t cemented down — even the copper wiring.

Pumping stations throughout the fields were stripped bare, and to make matters worse, there was no quick fix for the ancient equipment because there were no spare parts.

It got worse: There were so many holes in the pipeline that it resembled a sprinkler system. Iraqis living along the line had discovered it contained fuel that could both power their cars and command a hefty price on the black market.

A year ago, Iraq`s oil industry, the nation`s primary source of wealth and the reason for its strategic importance, was a shambles. Now there are at least cautious expressions of optimism that Iraq can regain its footing as one of the world`s key oil producers. It is producing about 2.3 million barrels of oil a day, putting it within striking distance of prewar figures.

Soon, said Mike Stinson, the retired ConocoPhillips executive who is the senior U.S. advisor to Iraq`s Oil Ministry, "Iraq will have a good but slightly shaky base from which to begin."

That is welcome news for the United States, which is counting on oil revenue to fund much of the country`s reconstruction. But although exports have begun, significant hurdles remain to again make Iraq one of the petroleum industry`s major players, a spot it once occupied by virtue of its reserves, which rank third behind Saudi Arabia and Canada.

Iraq, among other things, faces the daunting task of producing and exporting oil in the face of creaky, outdated equipment, pipelines that are routinely blown up by saboteurs, leery international investors, civil strife and engineers who have basically missed out on the last generation of technological advances.

The effort to replenish the country`s coffers will also be stymied by domestic demands for fuel. Even now there are long lines at gas stations, with much of the increased demand resulting from the massive glut of imported autos in the country since Hussein was deposed. Energy-guzzling appliances, especially air conditioners, are being sold by the truckload.

Meanwhile, suspicions run deep about U.S. intentions, and talk persists on the street that the Americans may be more intent on absconding with oil than helping the country.

"We know why Americans are in the region — for oil and to have a base of power," said Salem Mohammed, 55, a retired teacher. "Iraq is a strategic place."

Fears that the United States embarked on its military campaign to gain physical control of Iraq`s oil assets appear unfounded. But some industry watchers say the U.S. could influence the industry in more subtle ways.

The fuel shortages in postwar Iraq have led to what Stinson calls "one of the greatest movements of materials and products that`s ever been done in the world." Each day, thousands of trucks and barges haul in U.S.-subsidized petroleum products from Turkey, Kuwait and Jordan in an effort to make up for the shortfall. But because Iraqis pay a pittance for their fuel — pennies per gallon — Iraqi smuggling rings are turning a profit by selling gas to buyers in those same countries, where prices are about five times as high.

The stated goal of the Coalition Provisional Authority is to raise the oil production level to the prewar 2.5 million barrels per day, but that is a somewhat misleading mark of success, because Iraq at its peak was producing 3.5 million barrels a day. And about 400,000 barrels a day are now being pumped back into the ground to maintain pressure in the wells.

Crispin Hawes, director of Middle East and African affairs for the Eurasia Group, a business research firm in New York, said engineers might have done themselves a service by taking the start-up more slowly — as Kuwait did after oil fields were burned out during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He said that in that way, Iraq`s equipment could have been modernized, which might have proved more profitable in the long run.

"Over the next few years, the Iraqis may have to drop back down again, and that`s not necessarily bad," he said. "Clearly there`s a revenue path here to reduce the burden on the U.S. Treasury. There is a perfectly reasonable imperative to generate export revenues. But it has ignored some of the long-term issues."

Iraq`s oil woes can be divided into two parts: the north and the south. The south is far better off in that it is dealing primarily with how to increase loading capacities at dilapidated port facilities around the southern city of Basra.

The north, however, is much more problematic because of sabotage that has allowed only a relative trickle of oil to make it through its pipelines to ports. Hawes, for one, believes that the sabotage is most likely the work of tribal leaders accustomed to being paid off by Hussein to leave the pipelines alone.

Still, there is a note of optimism: Iraq, under the guidance of U.S. forces, has begun to assemble a police force of 14,000 whose job will be to protect the pipelines. As the force has grown, the acts of sabotage have fallen.

Oil analyst Glen Carey, who has spent much of the last year in Iraq, is not effusive in his praise of the industry, but he acknowledges progress in the face of daunting odds.

"On balance," he said, "they are struggling with a very difficult task and doing the best they can."

*

About these articles

These articles were written and reported by Times staff writers John Daniszewski, Alissa J. Rubin, Patrick J. McDonnell, Mark Magnier and J. Michael Kennedy in Baghdad and Bob Drogin in Washington. Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella in Baghdad also contributed.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-iraq20m…
EDITORIAL
A War`s Woeful Results

March 20, 2004

The first anniversary of the war in Iraq provides an inevitable and appropriate time for reflection. The Bush administration deployed its top officials this week to argue its case. President Bush on Friday took his turn, telling diplomats from scores of countries gathered in the East Room of the White House that Iraqis are better off now and that the world at large is safer than it was a year ago.

At least the president might score a debatable point in asserting that life in Iraq is far better without Saddam Hussein. But he`s the president of the United States and leader of the free world. So it`s fair to ask whether the war has made life better for this nation and its allies. In our assessment, it has not. Although ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction was the administration`s major selling point for the war, it is now clear that Hussein`s regime no longer possessed those weapons. And European allies, including Poland — which Bush on Friday used as a post-communist model of how Iraq could evolve — feel misled and more worried than ever about their security.

Hussein`s Iraq played no part in 9/11, even as the administration insisted that the war in Iraq was an inevitable consequence of the 9/11 attacks. Al Qaeda followers, perpetrators of the assault against the United States, were and still are more likely to be found within the borders of U.S. ally Pakistan than within the borders of Iraq. Islamic radicals were able to portray the war as an imperialist ploy of the U.S. and its reluctant followers, invading Iraq because it was a Muslim nation with a stand-up Hussein as leader. That propaganda, which the Bush administration helped mightily to feed through its hubris and miscalculations, has spawned a new generation of recruits for terror. Those recruits have joined Hussein`s followers to kill U.S. soldiers and Iraqis cooperating with the occupation forces. More than 570 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, along with soldiers from Britain, Spain, Italy and other nations. The war has killed thousands of Iraqis as well. Nations must retaliate for attacks like those on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and expect casualties in war. But the invasion and occupation of Iraq — a nation that did not pose an imminent threat — and the shameful underfunding of homeland security have not lessened U.S. vulnerability. The U.S. grows increasingly isolated from its allies, and that gives comfort and strength to its enemies.

Last October, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asked his generals: "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the [Islamic schools] and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?" The answer was obvious as Islamic radicals killed more than 200 in Spain this month and scores more in Turkey, Morocco and Saudi Arabia earlier.

Meanwhile, troops are still in Afghanistan, hunting Al Qaeda and remnants of the Taliban while Pakistanis chase Osama bin Laden`s right-hand man, Ayman Zawahiri.

In March last year, before the invasion, this editorial page agreed that Iraq would be better without Hussein. We still believe that. But we worried that the war would do far more harm than good. We were concerned that combat would fuel a myth of American bullies come to wreak havoc on Muslims, would cost us billions of dollars, not to mention the rebuilding costs, and would divert attention from attempts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "We desperately hope to be wrong in our trepidation about the consequences here and abroad," we said then. Today we regret that our fears are being realized.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

Lies!

by Tom Engelhardt; TomDispatch; March 19, 2004

http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/

Quotes for the first anniversary of our most recent Iraqi War:



Donald Rumsfeld on the handing over of "sovereignty" to Iraqis on June 30: "Will it happen for sure? Who knows? I don`t know what`s going to happen tomorrow." (Reuters, 3/17/04)



On the week when casualties soared, a Baghdad hotel came down, and the "coalition" in Iraq began to fray and fall away, "This was planned as `Iraq week,` one [Bush administration] official said." The question, of course, was: Who exactly was doing the planning? (The San Francisco Chronicle, 3/17/04)



Paul Wolfowitz, leading neocon and deputy secretary of defense, becomes a revisionist historian on the eve of the first anniversary of the war. In an interview with Howard Arenstein of CBS radio:



"Q: But also it`s been without finding those stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that you told everybody were there.



"Wolfowitz: Sorry. We never said there were stockpiles. What we said was that after 12 years and 17 UN resolutions, 12 years of this regime defying the United Nations and at a very high price to his regime which suggests he had something to hide and we found some of what he was hiding, that it was time to come clean. There was the unanimous resolution of the Security Council that said it`s time to come clean."



I guess "never having said it" means never having to say you`re sorry.



Finally, on the first anniversary of the Vietnam (oops, Iraqi) War, this "light at the end of the tunnel" comment from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, overall commander of U.S. operations in Baghdad. While predicting violence without end in Iraq, he concludes: "We are winning. And the enemy is evolving in a way that is somewhat predictable." (San Jose Mercury News, 3/18/04)



One year too late



So let`s do a little round-up of first anniversary developments. It looks like the Spanish vote and the decision of the new Spanish prime minister to follow his party`s long-term position on the Iraqi war and occupation by withdrawing his country`s troops at the end of June (barring a major UN takeover) were a bit like yelling "Fire!" in your classic crowded theater. Fastest to the exit were the Hondurans with 370 troops. ("The decision was announced by Defense Secretary Federico Breve only one day after Honduran President Ricardo Maduro said the troops would stay. Breve said the Honduran decision `coincides with the decision of the prime minister elect of the Spanish government.`" {Los Angeles Times, 3/17/04) It is rumored that El Salvador and Guatemala may soon follow suit.



Next came the Dutch. The opposition Labor Party called last Tuesday for a July withdrawal of their contingent of troops (while a Dutch civilian died in ambush in Baghdad this week). When Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende met with President Bush later in the week, he refused in person to commit his country`s troops beyond July.



Almost immediately, the South Koreans rushed for the doors, announcing that they would not, as had been planned, send several thousand troops to the northern city of Kirkuk, a flashpoint of Kurdish desire (Hans Greimel, AP, 3/19/04). They are, claimed the government, looking for a new, safer place to put their troops. (Is there an offshore island around?) The Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, the staunchest of staunch "coalition" allies, promptly claimed his country had been hoodwinked -- the actual word he used was "misled" -- on Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction. (Monika Scislowska, AP, 3/18/04) (What his government was really hoodwinked on was its share of the spoils of Iraq`s "reconstruction" and this may be but a warning shot across the bow of the all-American reconstruction effort.)



The German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer promptly announced that NATO was far too overstretched to consider future deployment to Iraq. While that truly staunch, if seldom noticed, coalition ally Prime Minister John Howard of Australia began to publicly fret about how developments in Iraq would affect his election prospects next year. And so it went among the "allies."



In Iraq itself, blood continues to flow. American casualties have again risen precipitously. Only yesterday three American soldiers died in a mortar attack and today two Marines were reportedly killed, bringing the number of GIs who died in the last week to 15 (and that`s not counting the two who died yesterday in a firefight in Afghanistan) according to Antiwar.com. Foreign and Iraqi civilians -- translators, missionaries, aid workers, CPA officials, cleaning women at American bases, Iraqi journalists, Arab businessmen -- have also died in the last week or so, along with ordinary civilians, victims of brutal car bombings and simply of the atmosphere of mayhem and violence. It was announced that ten Iraqis had died yesterday -- ten being about as high as Americans can count when it`s Iraqi dead we`re dealing with. Last weekend, the San Francisco Chronicle`s Sunday Insight section created our first "Iraq Wall," a full section of the Sunday paper with little photos of all the American military dead in Iraq. (These can be viewed in somewhat different form by clicking here.) It was sobering indeed and should give us all pause on this anniversary date.



As I`ve said for a long time, the irony of all this is that the Bush administration`s strategists planned to drive through the soft underbelly of the Middle East -- the Iraqi military was known to be in a desperate state before the war -- and consequently change the "map" of the area. And so they have. But the unexpected result has been the rise of a ragtag insurgency with a plethora of groups and undoubtedly individuals, including Baathist thugs and killers as well perhaps as outsiders and Iraqis who simply hate the idea of being occupied, who find themselves in the driver`s seat and are driving this administration into a hole. (Vice President Cheney`s recent "Iraq Week" speech, attacking Senator Kerry`s national security credentials, for instance, played on some TV channels on a split screen with the destroyed and smoking Lebanon Hotel.) Among the most eloquent statements on the one-year anniversary of the launching of the Iraq War was James Carroll`s Boston Globe column, "The Bushes` New World Disorder" (3/16/04), in which he concludes, "Whatever happens from this week forward in Iraq, the main outcome of the war for the United States is clear. We have defeated ourselves." He wrote in part:



"The situation hardly needs rehearsing. In Iraq, many thousands are dead, including 564 Americans. Civil war threatens. Afghanistan, meanwhile, is choked by drug-running warlords. Islamic jihadists have been empowered. The nuclear profiteering of Pakistan has been exposed but not necessarily stopped. Al Qaeda`s elusiveness has reinforced its mythic malevolence. The Atlantic Alliance is in ruins. The United States has never been more isolated. A pattern of deception has destroyed its credibility abroad and at home. Disorder spreads from Washington to Israel to Haiti to Spain. Whether the concern is subduing resistance fighters far away or making Americans feel safer, the Pentagon`s unprecedented military dominance, the costs of which stifle the US economy, is shown to be essentially impotent."



And oh yes, just to put that special exclamation point on the week, according to the New York Times (3/19/04)today, the globe`s preeminent shop-till-you-drop nuclear proliferator, Pakistan, has officially been designated by Secretary of State Colin Powell as "a major non-Nato ally," so we can proliferate a little more of our "military technology" and "surplus weaponry" its way.



At this moment, when, for the first time in a year, demonstrators are again in some numbers planning to take to the streets of major cities tomorrow, it`s good to be reminded of exactly what a pack of lies and manipulations got us where we are today. Dilip Hiro, an expert on Iraq`s long and catastrophic modern history as on Iran`s, and on Islamist terrorism, has offered a reminder of several salient moments in the Bush administration`s quick-march to war that should have driven several Polish presidents and most of the rest of us crazy. Hiro has been an admirable chronicler of our sorry relations with Iraq since the days when we supported Saddam Hussein as a regional bulwark in the Middle East. Among his many books, his most recent -- and right now most relevant -- is Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After. As for me, I`ll be out marching tomorrow with a sign that, in honor of the Spanish voters and with a nod to Dilip Hiro, will simply read, "Lies!"



[This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing and author of The End of Victory Culture and The Last Days of Publishing.]

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The year of delusion
By Mike Carlton
March 20, 2004

And so we enter the second year of the Iraq war with the death and carnage more appalling than ever, the al-Qaeda killers as rampant as ever, and no end in sight. Let alone any sort of victory.

It is more than a grim anniversary. It is a disaster. The US President, George Bush, prattles inanely about peace and freedom, but it is a mirage pursued at the cost, so far, of more than 570 American lives, and heaven knows how many Iraqi lives.

Yet the neo-conservatives of Washington agreed before it began that the war would be "a cakewalk". Shock and awe would triumph. The sleek and saturnine Richard Perle, a White House intimate and a principal architect of the catastrophe, forecast in late 2002 that Iraqi opposition would "collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder". The fighting would be over in three weeks or less.

The Administration`s favourite tame Arab, Fouad Ajami, professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University, predicted - with much sangfroid - that the streets of Baghdad were "sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans".

The Vice-President, Dick Cheney, offered that "extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart. And our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced, just as it was following the liberation of Kuwait in 1991."

We know now that we were talked into this war under false pretences. "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tonnes of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent," said Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address. "Intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents."

And Cheney again: "We know [Saddam] has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

Or John Howard, in an article in The Australian under his name in January last year: "Iraq already has chemical and biological weapons. It will have a nuclear capacity when it can obtain the necessary fissile material ... The onus is on those who condemn the approach of the Australian Government to articulate the alternative approach that will ensure that Iraq does not retain and, therefore, potentially use weapons of mass destruction."

And so on. And on. Every last delusion now shattered by the awful reality unfolding daily in Iraq and the wider Middle East.

Surely, now, we should at least contemplate the possibility that we are beset by the worst US Administration of our time.

Bush is ignorant and floundering, a silver-spoon ideologue whose presidency was rigged for him by the hard-right establishment of the Republican Party. He is advised - if that is the word - by a ghastly camarilla of fundamentalist Christian bigots, Zionist zealots who often appear to owe more allegiance to Israel than to the United States, number-crunchers, spin doctors, academic fantasists, touts, urgers, corporate boondogglers and war profiteers. They make Richard Nixon`s rotten crew look like the signatories to the Declaration of Independence.

To say as much in this country is to be savaged as anti-American, of course. This is the last, perhaps the only resort of the Bush toadies here. But it is not so easy to pin that rap on the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, who got it spot on last week in a caustic barb recorded by a lapel microphone he was wearing.

"These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I`ve ever seen," he said.

Amen to that. Pray that Kerry wins in November to return decency and honour to the government of the United States.

Here at home, no reputation is so secure that it cannot be trashed by the Howard Government in defence of its own blundering into this war.

Last Sunday`s now famous observation by the Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, was unremarkable pragmatism. "The reality is, if this turns out to be Islamic extremists responsible for this bombing in Spain, it`s more likely to be linked to the position that Spain and other allies took on issues such as Iraq," he said on television.

Fair point. While it may be that the murderers of Madrid were nursing a grievance dating from 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella routed the remnants of the Islamic empire of the Moors in Granada, it is also a reasonable bet that Spain`s involvement in Bush`s coalition of the willing had not gone unnoticed back at al-Qaeda`s HQ.

Keelty was still in the Channel Nine studios when Howard`s chief of staff phoned to tell him to pull his head in, if the various (undenied) media reports are correct. And a chorus line headed by the Prime Minister queued to savage the commissioner in public, including the inevitable Downer of Arabia and the whited sepulchre formerly known as Philip Ruddock.

Downer`s denunciation bordered on the barking mad, a vicious accusation that Keelty had been "expressing a view which reflects a lot of the propaganda we`re getting from al-Qaeda".

It took three days for ministers to realise that public opinion was with Keelty. The backdown was spectacular. Overnight the commissioner became the greatest figure in Australian policing since Superintendent Hare captured Ned Kelly at Glenrowan.


Treasurer the winner this week

If there was a steady hand at all in the Government this week, it belonged to the Treasurer, Peter Costello. Often thought of as smug and smirking - not without reason - Costello nonetheless has the political smarts to keep his head when all around are losing theirs.

When Tony Abbott sought to whip up abortion as a wedge issue for the election campaign in a speech in Adelaide last Tuesday, it was the Treasurer who hosed him down.

Abbott, he said, was not speaking for the Government.

"[Abortion] is a delicate area and there are big passions and there are terrible choices that people face in this area, and we should not want it to become one of those incendiary political issues. Let`s not try and turn elections on issues like that," he said.

Ten points for political common sense and a remarkable refusal to toe the divisive George Bush line on the subject.

But Costello`s big win was his bullseye on Mark Latham and the Opposition`s sloppy blunder on pensions policy. Someone hadn`t done their homework. Latham had blithely announced that Labor would keep the age pension at 25 per cent of male average weekly earnings. But the pension is actually calculated from a different base, male ordinary time earnings.

And that little error, Costello pointed out, would have left a Labor government with a funding black hole of $8 billion.

Latham can thank his lucky stars that the news cycle was obsessed with Spain and Mick Keelty. He was in trouble for no more than 24 hours.

But one more policy whopper like that and he will begin to look accident prone. At best.



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This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/19/1079199417783.html

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Saturday, March 20, 2004
War News for March 19 and 20, 2004 draft
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
Bring `em on: One US soldier wounded by RPG fire in Mosul.

Bring `em on: Insurgents give Powell the "Wolfowitz Welcome" in Baghdad.

Bring `em on: Eight US soldiers and one Marine wounded by mortar fire in Fallujah. (Last paragraph.)

Bring `em on: Iraqi policeman killed in Kirkuk ambush.

Bring `em on: Iraqi police station bombed in Karbala.

Bring `em on: US Marines under rocket and mortar barrage near Al-Asad.

CENTCOM reports one soldier died from injuries sustained in Bradley accident near Beiji.

US soldier electrocuted in accident near Baquba.

South Korea cancels plan to deploy 3,600 troops near Kirkuk. Time to call up more US Guardsmen.

Iraqis sound off about Bush-style liberation.

Arab journalists walk out on Powell`s Baghdad press conference.

Reality TV in Mosul. "The scene could be straight out of the U.S. television reality show `Cops,` but instead of American police officers, the lawmen getting their 15 minutes of fame are Iraqi police."

Iraqi police colonel arrested for aiding insurgents in Kirkuk.

Let`s attack Iraq because there are lots of good targets there. "The Bush administration considered bombing Iraq in retaliation almost immediately after the 9-11 terrorist attacks against New York and the Pentagon, according to a new first-person account by a former senior counterterrorism adviser inside the White House. Richard Clarke, the president`s counterterrorism coordinator at the time of the attacks, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld complained on Sept. 12, 2001 -- after the administration was convinced that al Qaeda was responsible -- that, `there aren`t any good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.`" Emphasis added.

Today, hundreds of thousands of people are protesting Bush`s War. Rather than cover those protests, this one small incident reveals how much damage Lieutenant AWOL has done to America`s reputation.

Commentary

Editorial: " Bush`s theme yesterday was that it was important for the world to come together now to fight terrorism. There is no middle ground, he said. Fine, but the reality is that his administration`s arrogant, unilateral approach to the war against Iraq has done more to isolate the United States from its allies than any other single act over the last 100 years. Much, if not all, of the good will and unity that came out of the outrage over the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington was dissipated by the administration`s go-it-alone excursion into Iraq."

Opinion: "Iraq is only one example of distorted security priorities. By focusing on the use of unilateral military force at the expense of the more traditional U.S. focus on diplomacy, arms-control treaties and cooperation with allies, we actually have made ourselves less safe."

Casualty Reports

Local story: California soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Illinois Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Texas Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Arkansas Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Texas Marine wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Illinois Guardsman wounded in Iraq.

Local story: West Virginia soldier dies of wounds received in Iraq.

Local story: Ohio Marine wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Massachusetts Marine wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Vermont Guardsman dies in Kuwait.

Local story: Texas soldier dies in Iraq.

Local story: Georgia Guardsman dies in Kuwait.

Awards and Decorations

Local story: Oregon soldier posthumously decorated for valor.




# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:34 AM
Comments (2)

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Es sind mehrere Artikel und Bildersammlungen zusammengefasst für den Jahrestag.

WARNING

These Pages Depict The Horror And Reality Of

"OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM"

Images Of War
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article2604.htm
In case you missed it: 10,000 civilian deaths: The terrible human cost of Bush and Blair`s military adventure: UK and US authorities discourage counting of deaths as a result of the conflict. But academics are monitoring the toll and have identified a grim new milestone
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article5628.htm
In case you missed it: US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge of death: One man`s body was still in flames. It gave out a hissing sound. Tucked away in his breast pocket, thick wads of banknotes were turning to ashes. His savings, perhaps.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article2479.htm
President Bush`s "Bring Them On" Picture Album
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article4173.htm

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Detainees who cooperate with interrogators can wear traditional clothes rather than prison uniforms and have more freedom and better housing
March 21, 2004
Guantánamo Detainees Deliver Intelligence Gains
By NEIL A. LEWIS

UANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, March 19 — Military officials say that prisoners at the detention center here have provided a stream of intelligence to interrogators during the last two years, including detailed information about Al Qaeda`s use of charities as false fund-raising fronts and about the recruitment of Muslim men in Europe.

In interviews during an arranged tour, military and intelligence officials asserted that detainees who had been cooperating with interrogators had also provided information about Al Qaeda`s chemical and biological weapons efforts and how the group trains suicide bombers.
An interrogation room. Detainees wear shackles that are attached to the ring on the floor.

"We have been able as a result of information gained here to take operational actions, even military campaigns," said Steve Rodriguez, a veteran intelligence officer who oversees the interrogation teams — which operate 24 hours a day here.

"There are instances of learning about active cells, and we have taken action to see that the cell was broken."

The sweeping set of official assertions about the value of the detention center at Guantánamo is part of an overall effort by the Bush administration to counter increasing criticism both here and abroad about the operation, along with new allegations of mistreatment of prisoners here.

Another American official said that analysts had been able to attain an understanding of a kind of underground network in Europe in which young Muslims are selected and then drawn into Al Qaeda by imams and Islamic cultural centers and eventually were sent to Afghanistan.
The room where the military tribunals for the Guantánamo detainees will be conducted.

Mr. Rodriguez said that despite the fact that some of the detainees had been at Guantánamo for nearly two years, their information was still useful. "I thought that when I first came here there would be little to gain," he said. "But when they talk about what happens in certain operational theaters, the locations of certain pathways, that information doesn`t perish."

The first military tribunals for some prisoners at Guantánamo may occur as early as this summer, an event that is expected to engender a new wave of criticism. In addition to the many challenges to the legal basis the United States has cited to justify the detentions, several recently released prisoners have provided accounts to journalists of mistreatment ranging from enforced privation and petty cruelty to beatings and planned humiliations.

In an apparent effort to counter that criticism, officials offered to talk in far greater detail than they had previously about their interrogation techniques and what they say are important intelligence harvests from the detainees. The officials also denied the specific allegations of mistreatment made by prisoners recently returned to Britain whose accounts appeared in British newspapers and from Afghans who spoke to The New York Times in Kabul.

There is, however, no way to verify independently the situation as described by the American officials, just as the recent accounts by the former prisoners of mistreatment cannot be confirmed independently.

Mr. Rodriguez said a large number of the 610 detainees had not been cooperative with their interrogators. He said at least 50 of them were "ardent jihadists and have no qualms about telling you that if they got out they would go and kill more Americans."

Mr. Rodriguez`s emphasis on the most hard-core detainees raises one of the significant questions about Guantánamo: Does the prison camp also house large numbers of innocent men who were swept up in the chaotic aftermath of the Afghanistan war? Human rights groups and family members of those who have been detained have said that the United States has committed a gross injustice by imprisoning many people who were in Afghanistan or Pakistan for reasons other than to join the Taliban or fight with Al Qaeda. More than 100 prisoners from Guantánamo have been released so far.

Three former British prisoners who are friends from the city of Tipton said in interviews published last week in The Sunday Observer that they were arrested after they had gone to the region to arrange a marriage for one of the men. One of the other men was to serve as best man. They spoke of beatings and abuse by American soldiers, who they said had stood on the backs of their legs as they knelt and held guns to their heads during questioning at Guantánamo.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the departing commander of the Joint Task Force, which runs the prison camp at Guantánamo, categorically denied the allegations.

He also said he was confident that all the men there had been properly screened and fit the definition of an enemy combatant. "These people have a number of cover stories," he said. "I can say with certainty that the British detainees were here for an appropriate reason."

Mr. Rodriguez said, "If I were to believe the stories they tell me at first, then 90 percent of them are innocent rug merchants."

The released detainees said some prisoners were treated brutally by soldiers from the Immediate Reaction Force, a group of seven members called to prison cells when an inmate refused to obey an order. One carries a plexiglass shield and the rest have elbow and knee pads. Such actions, officials said, occur about three times a week on average and are always videotaped.
A detainee`s cell with bedding, towels, an orange jumpsuit, a chess board and a Koran hanging from a strap. The arrow points toward Mecca.
General Miller acknowledged that there had been a handful of occasions where the handling was judged afterward to have been too rough, although no one had been seriously injured. He said he once had a military policeman court-martialed because the man had overreacted when an inmate threw excrement on him. The soldier was acquitted.

The detention system at Guantánamo is intended to make the prisoners as compliant as possible, both for their jailers and their interrogators. They are quickly schooled in a system of rewards and penalties that may include access to books and puzzles or being deprived of things like towels and a toothbrush. Most are, for example, not allowed to exercise in their cells, which measure 6 feet by 8 feet, but can do so only in the twice-weekly 20-minute periods allotted for that and showers. As they become more cooperative in the eyes of the camp authorities, they are given more time out of their cells.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside group that visits the detainees, has not publicly complained about physical mistreatment but has said the prolonged detention without any certainty about their future is inhumane and psychologically debilitating.

The detainees are questioned by teams of about three military intelligence people. They may be summoned at any time of day or night for as many as two daily sessions of up to five hours.

One senior intelligence officer, a reservist who is a homicide detective in civilian life, described using hamburgers from the base`s McDonald`s and games of chess to gain an intimacy with a detainee he said was Al Qaeda`s chief explosives instructor.

General Miller said women had proved to be among the best interrogators despite the notion that the Muslim men would find it offensive to be questioned by them. He said many of the detainees related to the women as they might to their mothers, even though they might be the same age.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Poll: Neck and Neck
Bush and Kerry are tied in their race for the White House, but the incumbent is getting a slight boost from Nader’s bid, terror in Spain and skirmishes in Pakistan

Faisal Mahmood / Reuters
Pakistani soldiers guard suspected Al Qaeda sympathizers in Wana on Thursday. Reports that a senior member of the terror group is about to be captured may bolster voters` approval of Bush`s anti-terror tactics

Das Rennen ist wieder enger geworden. Nicht nur durch Nader, sondern auch durch die Beurteilung der Ereignissen in Spanien, die von den US-Amerikanern anders bewertet werden als von den meisten Europäern.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4564653/
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Brian Braiker
NewsweekMarch 20 - Although independent candidate Ralph Nader threw his hat into the presidential race last month, President George Bush and Senator John Kerry remained locked in a tie, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. Bush gets 45 percent of the vote to Kerry’s 43 percent--a statistically insignificant difference--while Nader appeals to 5 percent of the voters. Still, if Nader were to pull out now, the race only slightly shifts in Kerry’s favor, moving to a 48 percent to 48 percent dead heat. Bush’s favorability ratings remain steady, but he does enjoy more unified support from registered Republicans than Kerry does from registered Democrats. Finally, with last week’s terror attacks on Madrid and the current skirmishes on the Pakistani border with Afghanistan, voters are increasingly likely to rank "terrorism and homeland security" as very important in determining who gets their vote. On those issues, voters appear to have more confidence in Bush than Kerry.

Nader’s candidacy may appear to threaten that of the senator from Massachusetts, but the poll finds that only 20 percent of voters who support Nader say they support him "strongly." The greater threat to Kerry’s candidacy, however, may be Kerry himself. His approval ratings have dropped since he became his party’s nominee in February (from 56 percent to his current rating of 51 percent) and his unfavorability rating climbed from 27 percent to 36 percent. And with the Bush camp aggressively attacking Kerry as a "flip-flopper" on major issues, voters tend to think Kerry changes his positions more to curry favor (48 percent) than out of an evolving conviction (38 percent). Even among registered Democrats, less than half (47 percent) strongly support Kerry; a clear majority (70 percent) of Republican voters strongly supports Bush.

Recent developments on the world stage may also be giving the Bush campaign a slight boost in the polls. On the eve of the one-year anniversary of the U.S.-led coalition’s invasion on Iraq and in the wake of last week’s catastrophic terror attack on Madrid, Pakistani troops cornered a group of suspected Al Qaeda fighters in a remote area of western Pakistan (President Pervez Musharraf told news services that his generals believed the fighters were shielding a "high-value target"). Voters are more likely to rate "terrorism and homeland security" (74 percent, up from 69 percent in February) and "the situation in Iraq" (70 percent, up from 63 percent) as very important in determining who gets their vote. Voters are far more likely to trust Bush than Kerry on these issues. On terrorism, 56 percent of all voters would prefer the leadership of the incumbent president, 33 percent would prefer to see Kerry at the helm. On Iraq, Bush beats Kerry 53 percent to 38 percent.

But it’s hardly all plain sailing for the Bush campaign. Kerry’s approval ratings still remain slightly better than Bush’s (which are 52 percent favorable to 42 percent unfavorable). The senator is also clearly favored on domestic issues like health care (53 percent to 37 percent) and jobs and foreign competition (50 percent to 39 percent). The two are statistically tied on the issues of education and taxes. Voters are also leaning more toward Democratic candidates in races for Congress, who are preferred over their GOP rivalsby 49 percent to 42 percent.

A majority (54 percent) of Americans say that last week’s bombings in Spain have not much affected their opinion of Bush’s approach to fighting terror. Still, 24 percent of all voters believe that what happened there makes them feel the administration’s approach is the right one; 12 percent said the attacks caused them doubts. Asked what they believed led to the defeat of the ruling party in Spain, nearly half (47 percent) of those polled said Spanish voter fear that alignment with the U.S. had made it a target (compared to just 26 percent who attributed the upset to voter dissatisfaction). Nearly half (48 percent) of Americans think terrorists are likely to attempt affecting the outcome of November’s election by striking on U.S. soil shortly before Election Day.

For the NEWSWEEK poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates interviewed 1,006 adults aged 18 and older March 18 and March 19 by telephone. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

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Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through Manhattan in one of the many protests held around the world today to mark the anniversary of the war in Iraq.
March 20, 2004
Thousands Take to the Streets in Global Antiwar Demonstration
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 5:57 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- Hundreds of thousands of people around the world rallied against the U.S. presence in Iraq on the first anniversary of the war Saturday, in protests that retained the anger, if not the size, of demonstrations held before the invasion began.

Protesters filled more than a dozen police-lined blocks in Manhattan, calling on President Bush to bring home U.S. troops serving in Iraq. Mayor Michael Bloomberg estimated the crowd at about 30,000, but organizers said later that number had grown to more than 100,000.

``It is time to bring our children home and declare this war was unnecessary,`` said the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a New York activist addressing a rally in Manhattan.

The roughly 250 anti-war protests scheduled around the country by United for Peace and Justice ranged from solemn to brash.

In Montpelier, Vt., hundreds of silent protesters placed a pair of shoes on the Statehouse steps for each of the more than 560 U.S. soldiers killed in the war. In Los Angeles, one of about 2,000 protesters held photographs of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney with the words, ``forget Janet Jackson`s -- expose the real boobs.``

Around the world, hundreds of thousands raised their voices in rallies from Spain to Egypt to the Philippines.

Organizers estimated up to 2 million people demonstrated in Rome, and 100,000 in London, but police in those cities gave estimates of 250,000 and 25,000, respectively.

Anti-war activists jammed the streets of central Rome, many of them decked out in rainbow-colored peace flags and chanting ``assassins.`` Protesters demanded that the Italian government, a strong supporter of the war, withdraw its 2,600 troops from Iraq.
A sea of Italian antiwar protesters took to the streets of Rome today demanding that their government withdraw its troops from Iraq.

Paolo Quadrardi, 42, a mechanic, said the Madrid train bombings that killed 202 people March 11 showed that ``war doesn`t do anything but increase terrorism.``

No crowd estimate was immediately available for Madrid`s protest, although about 150,000 demonstrated in Barcelona. But the numbers paled in comparison to the millions that packed streets all over Spain after the train bombings.

The rallies coincided with the anniversary of the first bombings in Baghdad last year. Although President Bush ordered the attacks on March 19, the time difference made it March 20 in Iraq.

While turnout was high in some nations, the protests were all far smaller than the enormous demonstrations held around the world shortly before the war began.

A New York protest a year ago drew more than 125,000 by official estimates. Although that`s similar to organizers` estimate Saturday, organizers for last year`s event estimated the crowd at more than 250,000.

This event was peaceful, unlike last year`s rally, which produced several clashes between demonstrators and police.

New York police in riot gear walked calmly past barricades marking off the demonstration area on Madison Avenue as speakers mounted a stage to address the crowd on a sunny afternoon.

Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly stopped by the rally, but didn`t speak to demonstrators or participate.

Chicago police in full riot gear lined downtown streets as thousands of war opponents marched about two miles to the city`s Federal Plaza.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson told the Chicago demonstrators to express their opposition to the war by voting against Bush. ``It`s time to fight back: Remember in November,`` he said.

In Cincinnati, several hundred people gathered in a downtown park to call for a U.S. troop withdrawal. Claire Mugavin, clad in a biohazard suit, pretended to look for weapons of mass destruction beneath benches and garbage cans.

``We figure they`re not in Iraq,`` said the 24-year-old Cincinnati resident. ``So we figured we`d come look for them in Fountain Square.``

Thousands marched from Seattle`s First Hill neighborhood to the waterfront, including Alberto Salazar, whose 20-year-old son, a Marine, served in Iraq.

``I feel angry that we have gone this far,`` Salazar said. ``I feel hopeful people are waking up and seeing the truth of this whole matter.``

In San Francisco, thousands of taiko drummers, cyclists, activists and other protesters chanted ``End the occupation`` and ``Impeach Bush.`` Richard Penrose, 77, and his wife boarded an early bus from Sacramento to join the rally.

``I don`t know if Bush is going to hear the message, but we`re hoping the people of the United States hear it. Because people should have their power back,`` Penrose said.

Several thousand people turned out in Denver and several hundred marched in Atlanta and Albuquerque, N.M.

An anti-war rally and march in Augusta, Maine, drew an estimated 1,000 or more participants, as well as a smaller but enthusiastic band of counter-demonstrators. ``We`re here so the troops know we support them,`` said Erica Nawfel, 27, of Waterville.

Elsewhere around the world, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands and other European countries saw protests, while demonstrations took place earlier in Japan, Australia and India. About 500 protesters clashed with police outside the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines capital, Manila. No injuries were reported.

Demonstrators in Cairo -- vastly outnumbered by riot police -- burned an American flag. Hundreds of people gathered in other Middle Eastern capitals to denounce the war.

Thousands marched in Johannesburg, South Africa.


Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 21. März 2004, 9:02
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,291679,00.html
Truppenparade zum Irak-Jahrestag

"Ich bin froh, dass ich da weg bin"

Aus Heidelberg berichtet Claus Christian Malzahn

Beim Sturm auf Bagdad trug das V. US-Korps die Hauptlast. Doch den Helden mit Hauptquartier in Heidelberg ist zum Jahrestag des Irak-Einmarsches nicht zum Jubeln zumute. Die Zeremonie mit Blasmusik geriet zur routiniert abgespulten PR-Show. Im kleinen Kreis unter Soldaten fällt der Rückblick auf den Feldzug wenig glamourös aus.

Heidelberg - Unteroffizier Michael Matthews macht seine Sache gut. Tapfer, ohne Anzeichen von Nervosität, blickt er in die Kameras. Jede noch so blöde Frage pariert er ohne Stottern oder verlegene Pausen.




AP
Aufmarsch zum Jahrestag: Das V. Korps der US Armee in Heidelberg
Die in Heidelberg stationierte Führung des V. Korps der US-Armee - einer legendären Einheit, die schon bei der Landung in der Normandie dabei war, hat Soldat Matthews am Wochenende an der Pressefront in Deutschland in Stellung gebracht. Keine leichte Aufgabe. Aber Matthews wankt nicht. Er sagt Sätze wie: "Es war hart. Männer haben geschluchzt wie Babys, weil sie keine Beine oder Arme mehr hatten." Dann macht Soldat Matthews eine Pause und die Journalisten haben keine Fragen mehr.

Michael Matthews hatte Glück, Arme und Beine sind noch dran. Ihm musste man nach einer Explosion in Bagdad nur ein paar Splitter aus dem Körper ziehen. Es ist unklar, ob Matthews Konvoi angegriffen wurde oder ob sein Humvee über eine Mine fuhr. Jedenfalls knallte es furchtbar, dann verlor der farbige Texaner sein Bewusstsein, und als er Tage später im Armeekrankenhaus wieder aufwachte, haben ihm hohe Offiziere die Purple-Heart-Medaille um den inzwischen vernarbten Hals gehängt, die höchste Tapferkeitsauszeichnung der amerikanischen Armee.

Deswegen steht Matthews jetzt in seiner Wüstenuniform vor dem Exerzierplatz des Hauptquartiers vom V. Korps in Heidelberg und erzählt den Journalisten ein bisschen vom Krieg. Bevor die Zeremonie, die man vorsichtshalber nicht Siegesfeier genannt hat, auf dem roten Sandplatz beginnt, baut sich auch General Ricardo S. Sanchez vor einem Mikrofon auf. Im Hintergrund steht ein grüner Sherman-Panzer, das macht sich gut im Bild. Sanchez musste im vergangenen Jahr den Journalisten in Bagdad erklären, warum den US-Patrouillen im befreiten Irak ständig die Konvois um die Ohren fliegen. Der General bemühte damals sich stets zu lächeln. Das tut er auch heute.

Die Opfer sieht man nicht in Heidelberg

Auch die Frage nach dem Rückzug der Spanier bringt ihn natürlich nicht aus dem Konzept. "Das kriegen wir schon hin", kommentiert er lässig die Fahnenflucht der Alliierten von Madrid. Ansonsten, erklärt Sanchez, sei der Irak "heute ein besserer Ort als vor einem Jahr." Doch sein Statement könnte etwas überzeugter rüberkommen. Dann spricht er noch ein paar Worte an die "Familien der Soldaten, die unheimlich große Opfer bringen mussten." Das stimmt. Aber verletzte Soldaten mit Brandwunden im Gesicht, zu Krüppeln geschossene Veteranen oder auf Krücken daher humpelnde Kämpfer, denen nach einer Attacke ein Bein oder ein Arm amputiert wurden, sieht man heute nicht in Heidelberg.

Stattdessen marschieren jetzt, stellvertretend für die Einheiten des V. Korps, zwölf je etwa 50 Mann starke Kolonnen mit wehenden Fahnen auf den Sandplatz: Pioniere, Grenadiere, Infanteristen, Fallschirmjäger, Militärpolizisten - alle "Units" eben, die das Korps zu bieten hat und die vor einem Jahr dabei waren. Eine Militärkapelle spielt erst die deutsche, dann die amerikanische Nationalhymne. Die Soldaten salutieren, die Zivilisten erheben sich von ihren gepolsterten Plätzen und legen die Hand aufs Herz.

Doch trotz der Feierlichkeit wirken die Akteure der Veranstaltung merkwürdig müde. Die Fahnen flattern unter einem schwarzgrauen Himmel munter im Wind, lebendiger wird es hier heute nicht mehr. Fast scheint es, dass alle Teilnehmer diesen Jahrestag so schnell wie möglich hinter sich bringen wollen. Denn das "V" des fünften Korps steht ein Jahr nach dem Beginn des Krieges eben nicht für Victory, wie es die Offiziere und Soldaten, die mit etwa 10.000 Männern und Frauen in den Irak einmarschierten, aus der Geschichte ihrer Einheit gewohnt sind. Das V. Korps hat noch keine Schlacht verloren. Aber wie soll man einen Gegner besiegen, der sich gar nicht zeigt, der Autobomben vor Hotels und Moscheen zündet und Minen auf Marktplätzen vergräbt? Auch heute, beim Ringelpietz mit Böllerschüssen in Heidelberg, werden kein General Sanchez und kein Unteroffizier Matthews diese entscheidende Frage beantworten.

Nils Gransberg dagegen grübelt darüber schon lange nach. Der Unteroffizier gehörte bis vor kurzem zum V. Korps; den Krieg hat er als Fahrer eines hohen Offiziers mitgemacht. Seine Familie stammt von norwegischen Einwanderern ab; seit den amerikanischen Freiheitskriegen 1776 kämpfte je ein männliches Familienmitglied in der Armee. Die Gransbergs waren überall dabei. Im Bürgerkrieg (auf Seiten der Nordstaaten), im Ersten und im Zweiten Weltkrieg, in Korea, Vietnam, im Kosovo und zweimal im Irak. Niemals ist ein Gransberg je im Krieg ums Leben gekommen, "so ist unsere Familientradition", hat er mir vor einem Jahr erklärt.

Ich habe Gransberg im Irak kennengelernt. Er gehörte zu den Panzerpionieren, die ich während des Marsches auf Bagdad im Auftrag des SPIEGEL begleitete. Bei Nadschaf teilten wir uns ein Zimmer in einer notdürftig eingerichteten Kaserne. Gransberg, ein junger Mann mit einem offenen Gesicht, hat manchmal im Schlaf gesprochen, so laut, das er mich geweckt hat - aber das war nicht schwer, denn im Krieg schläft man nie besonders tief. Er hat sich unruhig auf seiner Pritsche hin und her gewälzt und gerufen: "Yes Sir. Very well Sir. No Sir. Hua, Sir!"

Kritik an Bush, aber Glaube an einen gerechten Krieg

Wie fast alle US-Soldaten hat Gransberg geglaubt, dass der Krieg mit dem Sturz der Statur von Saddam Hussein Anfang April 2003 zu Ende sei. Kaum jemand hielt es damals für möglich, dass der Horror jetzt erst richtig los geht und sich US-Soldaten auf Bagdads Straßen bald fühlen würden wie Enten in einem Jagdgebiet. Dieser Mangel an realistischer Lageeinschätzung und Planungssicherheit, der eine erhebliche Schwachstelle in der Strategie der politischen und militärischen Führung der USA offenbarte, nagt bis heute am Selbstbewusstsein der Truppe. Soldaten haben für alles ein Regelwerk; sogar das Pinkeln an der Front wird vorschriftsmäßig abgewickelt. Aber gegen Guerillakrieg ist kaum ein Kraut gewachsen. Das macht diesen Krieg im Irak so unheimlich, und deshalb ist das fahnenflatternde Grinsen in Heidelberg nur ein armseliger Versuch, von den Problemen abzulenken.

Nach seiner Entlassung im Oktober 2003 hat Gransberg sofort geheiratet. Viele Soldaten tun so etwas nach dem Krieg: Heiraten, eine Wallfahrt machen, Kinder bekommen. Solche Sachen nimmt man sich im Krieg vor. Oder besser: in ganz bestimmten Situationen während des Krieges, von denen man glaubt, dass man sie wahrscheinlich nicht überlebt und deshalb Stoßgebete in den Himmel schickt.

Vor kurzem habe ich Gransberg wieder gesehen. Wir hatten uns abends zum Essen verabredet. Ich wollte wissen, wie er diesen Krieg, bei dem er zweimal nur knapp dem Tod entronnen war, heute beurteilt.

Wir trafen uns in einem italienischen Restaurant in Hanau, dort sind die US-Panzerpioniere des 130. Bataillons stationiert. Nils brachte drei Freunde mit, die auch gerade aus dem Irak zurückkehren durften. Ich fragte sie, ob sie nicht verraten wurden von ihrem Präsidenten. Schließlich wurden keine Massenvernichtungswaffen gefunden. Und vom täglichen Terror wird die Armeeführung immer wieder kalt erwischt - die normalen GIs müssen es ausbaden.

Aber Soldaten versuchen offenbar immer an ihren Krieg zu glauben, auch wenn er vielleicht aus den falschen Gründen geführt wurde. Ein Freund von Nils sagte: "Besser, wir bekämpfen die Terroristen im Irak, als wenn sie alle in die USA kommen und sich da in die Luft jagen." Doch er schien selbst nicht völlig von seiner Fliegenfänger-Theorie überzeugt zu sein. Jedenfalls meinte er plötzlich: "Ach, verdammt, ich weiß auch nicht. Ich bin jedenfalls froh, dass ich da weg bin." George W. Bush hat in der Armee an Sympathie verloren. "Ich wähle beim nächsten mal die Demokraten", sagte einer der Soldaten.

"Die Rakete ist nicht explodiert"

Viele US-Militärs glauben, dass der Blitzkrieg von US-Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld zu schnell war. "Einige irakische Einheiten haben wir auf dem Vormarsch auf Bagdad links liegen lassen. Denen hätten wir uns stellen müssen. Heute haben wir den Salat!", kritisierte ein anderer. "Wir hatten zu wenig Truppen in Kampfbereitschaft. Die Nachschublinie war zu lang und deshalb verwundbar. Rumsfeld ist immer nur rumgelaufen und hat gesagt: Keep it cheap!", bemängelt ein weiterer Soldat.

Kritik an Bush und seiner Administration ist in der Truppe durchaus verbreitet. Aber grundsätzliche Zweifel am Krieg und der Besatzung? Fehlanzeige. Auch die Soldaten, mit denen ich in Hanau sprach, würden alle in den Irak zurückkehren, wenn sie einen Marschbefehl dazu erhielten. Keiner hatte den Eindruck, einen ungerechten Krieg geführt zu haben. "Saddam war ein Diktator, es ist gut, dass er weg ist," sagte Nils.

Plötzlich malte er eine Skizze von seinem Humvee auf eine Papierserviette. Ich kannte den Wagen, ich war ja oft genug mitgefahren. ""Sie standen oben auf einer Brücke", sagte Nils, "etwa zehn Mann, alle vermummt." Acht oder neun Raketen hätten sie abgefeuert, eine traf unseren Humvee. Die Rakete schlug hinten ein, genau in das Rücklicht; die flog dann am Tank vorbei und trat vorne durch den Scheinwerfer wieder aus. Das war Anfang Mai 2003, nördlich von Bagdad.

Aber Gransberg ist noch am Leben. "Die Rakete ist nicht explodiert", ergänzte er. Ein Wunder? Zufall? Vorsehung? Aus der Sicht eines Soldaten liegt das manchmal dicht beieinander. Wie wird Gransberg damit fertig? "Redest Du noch im Schlaf?", frage ich. Gransberg lacht erstaunt. "Tue ich das?"

Nils Gransberg ist 23 Jahre alt und bereits ein Kriegsveteran. Er lebt heute als Student einer Militärakademie im Staat Washington und bemüht sich, möglichst wenig an die Tage im Irak zu denken, an denen er beinahe seine Familientradition verraten musste.


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© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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March 21, 2004
Bremer Pushes Iraq on Difficult Path to Self-Rule
By DEXTER FILKINS

AGHDAD, Iraq, March 20 — For L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator here, the contradictions of Iraq seemed to crystallize in a single moment this month.

In a hastily called public appearance, Mr. Bremer, 62, stood at a podium, grim and ashen-faced, to denounce a horrific wave of attacks that had killed more than 150 Iraqi civilians this month on one of the highest Shiite holidays.

That same day, Iraqi leaders canceled a ceremony to commemorate Mr. Bremer`s most significant achievement to date: the completion of an interim constitution intended to chart the country`s path to democratic rule.

But instead of bestowing accolades on Iraqi leaders, Mr. Bremer could offer only condolences to the dead.

"Tuesday showed the dark vision of the evildoers," he said, his voice shaking with anger. "They fight to ward off harmony and are happy to pave the road to power with the corpses of their innocent victims."

With that, he walked off the stage.

In the 10 months since Mr. Bremer became the American-appointed proconsul of Iraq, much of his tenure has been like that: full of impressive achievements, clouded by the restless, divided nature of the country he is trying to oversee. Despite a widely admired work ethic, he has made a number of decisions that have been widely criticized and which appear to have undermined the very enterprise he is trying to move forward.

His early decision to disband Saddam Hussein`s army, critics charge, created ready recruits for the insurgency and fueled resentment among Iraqis who fault the Americans for failing to protect them. Despite warnings of dissatisfaction with the American plan for the transfer, he failed to anticipate the political assertiveness of Iraq`s Shiite majority.

Ultimately, criticism of his decisions will matter little if the new Iraqi state stands on its own after sovereignty is restored on July 1. The democratic institutions Mr. Bremer has helped create are sure to be tested in the months ahead, when American officials believe terrorists are planning major strikes against American and Iraqi targets.

Since May, Mr. Bremer has guided a multibillion-dollar reconstruction campaign that has restored many of the public facilities, like telephone lines and electrical grids, that had been stripped bare by looting that engulfed the country after the Hussein government collapsed. He has put in place a vast security apparatus, some 200,000 Iraqi police officers, soldiers and border guards, intended ultimately to replace more than 100,000 American soldiers trying to crush the guerrilla and terrorist campaigns still roiling the cities and countryside.

Most ambitious of all, Mr. Bremer has spearheaded the Bush administration`s plan to implant a democratic system here, a blueprint that includes nationwide elections, a federal constitution and the rapid transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people.

To accomplish that, he and his team have set up more than 250 city councils across the country and are rapidly preparing the central government to take over when the American occupation officially ends on June 30. And that, finally, will be the measure of his success or failure: whether the institutions he has tried to implant here — at the accelerated pace he demanded — sink or float.

Mr. Bremer, a polished diplomat who does not want for self-assurance, says the desire for democracy he sees in the eyes of Iraqis will prevail over the efforts of those who are trying to destroy it. Success, he says, is much more likely than the nightmare set of events feared by many Iraqis of terrorism and civil war. "I think the chances are very slim," he said of the likelihood of disaster, when he made public remarks on Friday to observe the anniversary of the start of the war. "You can always play `what if.` I just don`t think it`s going to happen. This country is very different from 12 months ago."

As the man who replaced Mr. Hussein, Mr. Bremer looms large over this occupied land. He is regarded by many Iraqis as earnest and hard-working, the benevolent despot they never had.

In January, when the Americans began replacing the old Iraqi currency, known here as "Saddam money," the face of the deposed Iraqi leader was removed from the new notes. Mr. Hussein`s face was replaced by a date palm, but Iraqis quickly gave the currency a new name: "Bremer money."

Some Iraqis ask Mr. Bremer for personal help. Among them is Ali Bressem, a villager who has been searching for a year for a way to help his 12-year-old son. The boy`s face was scorched by an American cluster bomb at the start of the war. One day, Mr. Bressem went to a computer shop and had a letter typed.

"Dear Mr. Bremer," the letter began. "Please accept our gratitude. During the last war of liberating Iraq, my house was exposed to a bombing. What is worse is that my son Ayad was exposed to a very severe injury in his eyes and face. We need help. We have no one to resort to but your excellency."

Mr. Bressem, a date farmer in the southern town of Kifil, recently took a bus to Baghdad, looking for Mr. Bremer`s driver. "If I could find his driver," he said, "he could take my letter to Mr. Bremer." But when he got to the heavily protected area known as the green zone, he said, soldiers shooed him away.

For Americans in the green zone, the impeccably dressed Mr. Bremer has inspired something of a fad. His one sartorial concession to the war zone is a pair of combat boots, usually worn with a wool blazer, silk tie and white handkerchief. Many American officials now wear combat boots with suits and ties; so, too, when he visits, does Mr. Bremer`s boss, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Summing up his accomplishments, Mr. Bremer reminds his questioners that he did not create the disaster that befell Baghdad and much of Iraq in the anarchic days that followed the collapse of Mr. Hussein`s government. He was merely asked to clean it up.

"As I drove in from the airport, Baghdad was on fire, literally," Mr. Bremer said. "There was no traffic in the streets. There was not a single policeman on duty anywhere in the country. There was no electricity anywhere in the country. There was no economic activity anywhere."

When he gazes out on Iraq today, he sees a country where a measure of law and order has been restored, where economic growth has resumed, where the basic elements of a modern society, like electricity and running water and schools, have largely returned to what they were before the war. Oil production, the country`s fountain of wealth, has returned to its prewar levels. There is a constitution, finally signed by the Iraqis, that provides for individual rights.

Iraq is now poised, Mr. Bremer says, to enter a period of rapid growth, development and prosperity. "So when I look at where we have arrived from where started, it is an astonishing record," he said.

Americans and Iraqis who work closely with him praise his drive and his ability to grapple with the range of Iraq`s problems. To many Iraqi leaders, his finest moment came with the completion of the interim constitution, an effort that succeeded in securing the assent of all 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council and reconciling the desires of Iraq`s tapestry of ethnic and religious groups.

The agreement was reached after days of intricate bargaining, which Iraqi leaders say Mr. Bremer shepherded at almost every step. When the Iraqis hit a snag around midnight on Feb. 29, the deadline they had set for themselves, Mr. Bremer proved decisive in breaking the deadlock. "It was past midnight, but Bremer said no one was going home," said Rozh Shawais, a senior leader in the Kurdish Democratic Party.

In fact, Mr. Bremer let the Iraqi leaders go home early that morning. They later returned, finally striking a deal at 4:20 the next morning. "Bremer was involved in every detail of the constitution," Mr. Shawais said.

But while few doubt Mr. Bremer`s commitment, some Iraqis say that in his drive to impose his vision on the country, he has sometimes failed to listen and, as a result, has made serious mistakes.

The most widely criticized of his decisions was one he made before he had even arrived. On the plane to Iraq, he decided to disband the 400,000-man Iraqi Army, which left thousands of trained soldiers unemployed. American officials say many of those former soldiers later formed the backbone of the guerrilla resistance to the occupation.

Despite the criticism, Mr. Bremer stands by the decision, saying there was no Iraqi army left to deal with anyway. "I don`t have any second thoughts about disbanding the army," he said. "Neither did the secretary of defense, and he`s my boss."

Other pitfalls have marked Mr. Bremer`s tenure here, many of them turning into political embarrassments. According to administration officials, Mr. Bremer assured officials in Washington last fall that he could persuade Iraqi leaders to accept the presence of Turkish troops in the country.

Instead, the Iraqis, deeply suspicious of Turkish motives, rebelled, forcing the Bush administration and the Turks to back off.

Like many Americans and Iraqis, Mr. Bremer also seemed to underestimate the political power of Iraq`s Shiite majority, and in particular, of its religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Shiite leaders say they warned Mr. Bremer last fall when he presented them with a plan that called for caucus-style gatherings as the primary means for choosing a national assembly.

When Mr. Bremer persisted, Ayatollah Sistani declared his opposition and sent thousands of Iraqis into the streets. The caucus plan was abandoned.

"Bremer has a personality type which is domineering, determined and decisive," said Dr. Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council and a neurologist. "He makes decisions on the run. Nine out of 10 times, he makes the right decision. But the 10th time, he makes the wrong one, and that`s the really important issue."

Many Iraqi leaders have credited Mr. Bremer with helping transform the Governing Council from an unwieldy debating society into a functioning legislature. At the same time, some Iraqis say he has sometimes gone too far, dictating to the Iraqis what they must and must not do.

In February, with Iraqi leaders nearly finished writing their constitution, Mr. Bremer publicly threatened to veto any attempt to impose Islamic law. The statement enraged Shiite leaders, who say they were so angered by his threat that they inserted stronger terms regarding Islam than they had originally favored.

"When Mr. Bremer said that, we felt that Islam might be excluded," said Hamed al-Bayati, a senior leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a political party. "So we decided to strengthen the role of Islam."

What seems certain is that the next few months will be dangerous. American and Iraqi officials are bracing for new waves of suicide attacks, intended to turn the Iraqis against their would-be protectors.

On a visit to Al Kut, a city southeast of Baghdad, Mr. Bremer found mixed signs. The chairman of the provincial council, Abid Suleman al-Satar, told him that there was not enough time before June 30 to prepare for the transfer. The police were incompetent, Mr. Satar said, and he feared that some local political parties would take advantage of the instability. "We have to have a longer period of time," he told Mr. Bremer. "This is a very short time to ensure that the political process is good."

Mr. Bremer waved away the warnings. "People are going to have to learn faster," he told Mr. Satar. "Most Iraqis do not want elections to be delayed."

Later in the day, Mr. Bremer flew by helicopter to inspect an irrigation project financed by the United States. The scene, choreographed by his handlers, nonetheless contained signs that the Iraqi enterprise was gathering a momentum of its own.

The project, costing $167,000, refurbished or replaced five aging irrigation pumps on the Tigris River. It was the first time in 36 years, said an Iraqi supervisor, that the pumps had operated at full capacity.

"Thank you, thank you!" cried Hekmet Rasoq, the 64-year-old supervisor, shaking Mr. Bremer`s hand. Behind him, a crowd of Iraqis had come of their houses to wave.

"They should thank you," Mr. Bremer said of the Iraqis. "You`re doing all the work."


Jeffrey Gettleman contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

March 21, 2004
THE MILITARY
6 G.I.`s in Iraq Are Charged With Mistreating Prisoners
By THOM SHANKER

BAGHDAD, March 20 — The American military brought charges on Saturday of assault, cruelty, indecent acts and maltreatment of detainees against six soldiers in connection with alleged abuse of prisoners in Iraq.

Eleven other soldiers remain suspended from duty while the investigation continues into possible mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the joint task force here, announced the charges against the six members of a military police battalion.

The military also said that American troops might not have been responsible for killing two journalists for an Arabic-language station at a checkpoint this week but that the investigation was continuing. In the tense area near Falluja on Saturday, an American marine was killed by guerrillas, the military said.

General Kimmitt, making his announcement of the charges, said: "The coalition takes all reports of detainee abuse seriously, and all allegations of mistreatment are investigated. We are committed to treating all persons under coalition control with dignity, respect and humanity."

Even so, the announcement will doubtless be cited by human rights groups, as well as former Iraqi detainees, as further evidence to bolster their claims that the American military has treated prisoners harshly or abused them in certain cases.

Besides the criminal investigation, an equally significant inquiry is under way, a possibly far-reaching administrative review of commanders` policies regarding detainees and of internal procedures in use at all of the prisons in Iraq that are controlled by occupation forces.

The American-led multinational force is holding about 9,500 suspected insurgents and criminals, a military spokesman said Saturday. Just under 1,500 are at Abu Ghraib, a prison that was notorious under Saddam Hussein for overcrowded cells and torture chambers.

The current investigation into possible abuse involves the treatment of about 20 of those prisoners in November and December of last year.

No specifics about the alleged mistreatment have been released. The names, ranks and even branch of service of the six military police battalion members charged with the crimes also have not been released.

Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice that governs members of the armed services, the six now face a hearing to determine whether the case will go forward to trial.

All 17 of the soldiers being scrutinized in the case remain in Iraq, and the 11 suspended from duty remain under investigation and are performing administrative tasks.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior military officer in Iraq, ordered an investigation on Jan. 14 after allegations of abuse surfaced.

But complaints go far beyond specific allegations of harsh treatment and abuse. The families of many of those held by the military have complained to commanders that they cannot find their relatives within the detention system, and are demanding that the detainees be charged with crimes or freed.

The Abu Ghraib case is not the only set of accusations against soldiers for abuse of detainees.

In early January, three Army reservists were discharged for abusing prisoners at a detention center near Basra, in southern Iraq. Their commander determined that the three soldiers had kicked and punched prisoners or encouraged others to do so.

Late last year, Lt. Col. Allen B. West, a battalion commander in the Fourth Infantry Division, resigned from the Army after it was disclosed that he fired a pistol near a detainee during an interrogation, apparently in an effort to frighten the man into disclosing information about impending attacks. Colonel West defended his actions as necessary to protect his troops.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

March 21, 2004
Citizen McCain

Senator John McCain is nothing if not an interesting politician. In a world currently divided into hostile Democratic and Republican planets, he`s spun off on an orbit all his own. Ever since his unsuccessful run for the Republican nomination in 2000, Mr. McCain has been more popular outside his party than in it. In the current, narrowly divided Senate, bipartisan could mean "supported by the Democrats and John McCain."

Last week, Washington was abuzz with speculation that Mr. McCain might consider running for vice president with John Kerry. After leaving the door slightly open in one TV interview, the senator from Arizona ruled that out. But it`s hard to give up a rumor that tasty. Mr. McCain, after all, is bound to Mr. Kerry by their shared experiences in Vietnam. There`s also the matter of their shared dislike of President Bush.

Mr. McCain started the speculation afresh when he told another TV interviewer — the man is on air more often than Major League Baseball — that he did not agree with the Bush campaign mantra that Mr. Kerry is "weak on defense." And Democrats keep noting that one of Mr. McCain`s signature issues — balanced budgets — has moved over to their side of the agenda in recent years.

The talk says less about Mr. McCain`s chances of switching parties than it does about Washington politics. What keeps getting him into trouble, Mr. McCain said recently, is that he is friends with Mr. Kerry and Democrats like John Edwards and Joseph Lieberman. These days, senators who hang out with their peers from the opposite party are both extremely scarce and slightly suspect.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

Es ist immer gut sich klarzumachen, dass hinter jeder Zahl von Opfern Menschen stehen, jeder mit seinen Träumen und den Seinen, die ihn lieben.
Das gilt für beide Seiten!

March 21, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS
The Things They Wrote

ne year ago today, America suffered its first casualties of the war in Iraq: a helicopter crashed in the desert near Kuwait City, killing four marines, while two others died from small-arms fire.

Last fall the Op-Ed pages published excerpts from letters home of some of the men and women who died in Iraq. Since then, 176 more soldiers have been killed, according to the Pentagon, bringing the total number of military casualties to 570. Below are excerpts from among the last letters that some Army soldiers had sent home to their families.

Excerpts from letters to his wife from Second Lt. Todd J. Bryant, 23, of Riverside, Calif. Lieutenant Bryant was killed on Oct. 31 by a homemade bomb while on patrol near Fallujah.

Friday, Sept. 19, 2003

I lack the words to express the whirlwind of emotions I am going through right now. We are still in Iraq, one day from getting to our base camp. So far the road has been safe, but tomorrow we get into Indian country: there have been numerous attacks along our route and frankly I am scared. Tomorrow I may see if four years at West Point and $250,000 of taxpayer money has produced an effective leader. I don`t know if I will sleep tonight but I will try.

The image that keeps appearing in my mind is of you at the end of that aisle as your dad put your hand in mine. All I think about is that — and how we have joined together for life. That is why I must do my best and come home safe to you. Your family entrusted you to me, and I can`t take care of you if I don`t take care of myself. I love you with all my heart.

Monday, Sept. 22

Today things did not go so well. We rolled out on a mission in the early afternoon. Right before we were supposed to turn around and come back we got shot at. I`m O.K. . . . These armored Humvees are pretty good but I`d rather have my tanks. We had one other guy wounded but thank God neither were serious.

Thursday, Sept. 25

Well, today we got in all kinds of contact and thank God nobody was hurt. I keep pressing the commander to try and find out how long we will be here. He doesn`t know of course and says he can only speculate. The thing is if he says six months and it turns out to be 12, that will kill morale. Morale is already very low here, as you might have guessed. No mail, lots of work, the heat and bad chow will do that to a unit.

Tuesday, Sept. 30

Today was fairly uneventful. We had a mission in the morning with no incidents, thank God. Then I went to church when I got back, which was nice. Being here has made me appreciate so many things, it`s funny — little things like going to Wal-Mart or IHOP. I love you so much, Jen, and I miss you more than anything. I really don`t want to spend another day away from you as long as I live. I guess when I get out in three years and nine months I`ll have to find a job with no business trips ever.

Monday, Oct. 20

This place is scary. It is awful to be so young and wonder every day if you will see tomorrow. Any day we don`t have a mission, like today, is a good day. I try and think how much longer it is until I go home but realize any time I roll out the gate is dangerous. As far as I know we are still only scheduled to be here until March.

Saturday, Oct. 25

Today was quite disturbing. We were doing our usual route clearance when we got the call on the radio that a civilian convoy had been attacked about eight kilometers in front of us. We sped up and secured the area so we could begin giving medical assistance. There were already a couple of Bradleys there by the time we got there. So we dropped off our medic and began to pull security and had one of the Bradleys call for a medevac and we secured a landing zone for the helicopter to come in.

Well, one Suburban had been hit by a bomb and they ruptured the gas tank, causing it to catch fire. Two people died and one got rushed to the hospital before we got there. Everyone else was huddled behind one of the two remaining vans. One guy was an American contractor and he had some British bodyguards. The second van had three bodies in it, one of which was pretty gruesome because the guy`s spine was severed and his head just hung there. They died as a result of small-arms fire, probably AK-47`s. Made me feel good to be in an armored truck.

Thursday, Oct. 30

Today we woke up early for a mission. Went and did a route recon and came back. Right before I lay down to take a nap we got the call that there was a protest at the front gate and we had to go pull security. That lasted for 4 1/2 hours. So by the time we got back from that we had other stuff to do, so no napping for me.

But every cloud has a silver lining and mine was when the mail came! Six letters and a package! Wahoo! I have the best wife in the world. . . . All your letters were wonderful and totally made my whole week and will probably carry into November.

•

Excerpts from a letter to his mother and stepfather from Capt. Pierre E. Piché, 29, of Starksboro, Vt. Captain Piché was killed on Nov. 15 when his helicopter crashed near Mosul.

Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2003

I can say that I will be home by early February. . . . I am definitely looking forward to being out of the military. It was good for what it did for me, I don`t regret it, but it is time to go. I see the future holding a lot more deployments. . . . I am proud to defend my country but I don`t want to be defending it constantly for the next 10-15 years.

I am looking into both teaching and law enforcement when I get out. Either way, I still want to be doing a job that has a positive impact on the world. I am not some idealist who thinks I can change the world but I can still be doing some sort of good. I want to be able to believe in what I am doing. I prefer the teaching route because it has a more predictable schedule and I can blab about politics and history all day long (something I enjoy anyway). I had some good teachers growing up and I think it would be pretty cool if I could do what they did.

•

Excerpts from an e-mail message to her family from Pfc. Holly J. McGeogh, 19, of Taylor, Mich. Private McGeogh was killed on Jan. 31 near Kirkuk by an I.E.D., military parlance for an improvised explosive device.

Monday, Jan. 5, 2004

Hi, you guys, what`s going on on that side of the world? Things are O.K. over here. Today when my section rolled out of the gate we saw someone drop a can on the ground, and we thought it was an I.E.D. So I stopped right away and backed up. We got out and pulled security. Then we called Charlie Company out to take a look.

Well, it ended up not being an I.E.D. I felt a little embarrassed, but at the same time I knew that we had done the right thing. And I have full confidence in the people I work with — if they felt if anybody`s life was in danger, they would do everything in their power not to let anything happen.

Anyway, that was the most exciting thing that happened today — so far. Everything here is good and I`m doing good. . . . I am very thankful for having such a caring and loving family! I really can`t wait to get home. I can`t wait to see everyone, I really miss you all soooooo much — if it weren`t for you guys, I would have never been able to make it through all this.

•

Excerpts from letters to his mother from Specialist Robert A. Wise, 21, of Tallahassee, Fla. Specialist Wise was killed on Nov. 12 by a homemade bomb while on patrol in Baghdad.

Monday, Feb. 24, 2003

So far I`ve been in a sandstorm (twice), I`m working on my third one as I speak (or write). I`ve also had the pleasure of experiencing a "sand-bomb." It`s not what you think, but it is very interesting. When the wind is blowing really strong, it fills the tents, but when the wind stops, all the air rushes out of the tent and causes the sand to literally explode into the air and covers everything in a fine coat of dust. Yeah!

Every morning I wake up, and it`s like a scene out of the movie "The Mummy." I get to shake the dirt out of everything, including my face and hair. One day I`ll get a hold of a camera and I`ll send you some cool pictures.

P.S.: You will be proud to know I have finished reading "The Hobbit" and "Halo." I`ve started on "The Lord of the Rings." That book is a workout both physically and mentally.

Wednesday, April 2

In case you were wondering, I stink. The kind of stink that you can only find in the desert. We call it "the scent of the Desert Rose." It`s what you get when you haven`t had a shower in over 20 days. Thank God for baby wipes. I had to get a filling replaced. I was chewing some gum and crack! — I don`t know how, but it broke and started to splinter in my mouth.

On to more positive news. Since I left Fort Stewart, I`ve read: "The Hobbit," "Halo," "The Lord of the Rings" ("The Fellowship of the Ring" and "The Two Towers,") "Aliens vs. Predator: War" and "Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars, Volume II." Nothin` like a little boredom to get ya in a readin` mood.

Well, I hope everything back at Fort Living Room is going well.

Thursday, May 8

Rumor has it that we`ll be on a plane home June 22, so keep your fingers crossed. I`m really going to need your help setting up a budget when I get home and making sure I stick to it. I know the only way I`ll complete my goals of paying off my car and getting all of that furniture for our house by the end of the year is by paying attention to what I spend my money on.

Well, I`m runnin` out of things to write about. I love you and I miss you. Tell everyone I said hi, and one day I`ll get home.

P.S.: There`s no place like home (click)
There`s no place like home (click)
There`s no place like home (click)
Damn, it didn`t work again!

•

Excerpt from a letter and e-mail message to his family from Sgt. Michael A. DiRaimondo, 22, of Simi Valley, Calif. Sergeant DiRaimondo, who planned to be a paramedic firefighter, was killed on Jan. 8 when his helicopter was shot down while on a medical evacuation mission near Fallujah.

Thursday, Sept. 4, 2003

Life is so precious. Living day by day in good health or just happiness is probably what makes me happy right now. I try not to think that what I do makes me happy. Just being alive, having a wonderful family, good friends, watching the sunrise morning after morning — that`s what makes me feel good. I think people take their lives for granted. Some just haven`t hit that part of their lives where they stop and say, "I am such a lucky person to have the life that I have."

Sunday, Jan. 4, 2004

New Year`s Day was very busy for me. It started at 5 a.m. and went on for hours. Mission after mission. I had eight patients that day. I lost one of them, but there was no helping him when I got to him. That was sad, but we all must move on. It`s sad to think that I can see that and then just go to lunch like it never happened. I`ll always remember that soldier, though.

Most guys don`t like it because you see a lot of gory stuff. But I see it as training for the future. I`ve been thinking about my future a lot lately. Who knows what`s gonna happen, right?



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home

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Onkel Tom ist immer noch in Bangalore und versucht von da aus zu erklären, weshalb es gut ist, dass die Arbeitsplätze dort ist und nicht im Silicon Valley.

March 21, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Software of Democracy
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

My favorite building in Bangalore, India`s Silicon Valley, is a corporate complex called the "Golden Enclave." In some ways, the whole tech sector in Bangalore could be called India`s "Golden Enclave" — disconnected from the country`s bad governance, as companies create their own walled enclaves, with their own electricity, bus service, telecommunications and security, and disconnected from the countryside, where many Indians still live in abject poverty.

As long as these two liabilities of inept governance and endemic poverty are not addressed, India can`t really take off and become a big-time technology competitor of the United States. The information revolution, though, has given India, for the first time, some real resources and tools to address its chronic ailments. Will it seize this opportunity? This is India`s "to be or not to be" question.

Says Vivek Paul, president of the cutting-edge Indian software giant Wipro: "In some sense, all that this globalization of information technology and [outsourcing] has done is to give India pin money to reform itself." If India "blows it," well, the opportunities may still be out there, "but India won`t be a beneficiary in the long run," he said. "The beneficiaries will be those who are most flexible and able to organize themselves around the opportunities." Mr. Paul said he believed India would seize this moment.

But it will require some radical changes in politics: While India has the hardware of democracy — free elections — it still lacks a lot of the software — decent, responsive, transparent local government. While China has none of the hardware of democracy, in the form of free elections, its institutions have been better at building infrastructure and services for China`s people and foreign investors.

When I was in Bangalore recently, my hotel room was across the hall from that of a visiting executive of a major U.S. multinational, which operates in India and China, and we used to chat. One day, in a whisper, he said to me that if he compared what China and India had done by way of building infrastructure in the last decade, India lost badly. Bangalore may be India`s Silicon Valley, but its airport (finally being replaced) is like a seedy bus station with airplanes.

Few people in India with energy and smarts would think of going into politics. People don`t expect or demand much from their representatives and therefore they are not interested in paying them much in taxes, so most local governments are starved of both revenues and talent.

Krishna Prasad, an editor for Outlook magazine and one of the brightest young journalists I met in India, said to me that criminalization and corruption, caste and communal differences have infected Indian politics to such a degree that it attracts all "the wrong kind of people." So India has a virtuous cycle working in economics and a vicious cycle working in politics. "Each time the government tries to put its foot in the door in IT [information technology]," he said, "the IT guys say: `Please stay away. We did this without you. We don`t need you now to mess things up.` "

That attitude is not healthy, because you can`t have a successful IT industry when every company has to build its own infrastructure. America`s greatest competitive advantages are the flexibility of its economy and the quality of its infrastructure, rule of law and regulatory institutions. Knowledge workers are mobile and they like to live in nice, stable places. My hope is that the knowledge workers now spearheading India`s economic revolution will feel compelled to spearhead a political revolution.

There are signs. Consider Ramesh Ramanathan, an Indian-born former Citibank executive, who returned to India to lead an N.G.O., Janaagraha, dedicated to improving local governance.

India`s independence revolution in 1947 began in urban India and its political reform revolution is also going to begin in urban India — "this time fueled by the forces of globalization," he said to me in his Bangalore office, surrounded by young volunteers. "Globalization is creating the affluent urban Indian who is going to demand more from government and is not going to be content with islands of affluence. [Because] it will be impossible for them to fully take advantage of the opportunities globalization is giving them without airports and roads and sidewalks . . . acceptable in any city in the world. And the only way they are going to get that delivered is if they get engaged in government. We have [in India] a motto: `Elect and forget.` And what we need is to `elect and engage.` "



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Es geht immer noch um die Entenjagd von Vize Cheney und dem Richter des Obersten Gerichts Scalia. Die beiden sind Freunde, das alles ist noch kein Problem, nur ist Scalia gleichzeitig Richter in einem Verfahren, dass gegen Cheney anhängig ist. Und Scalia will nicht aus dem Verfahren ausscheiden. Diese Story geht schon seit Wochen durch die Presse.

March 21, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Quid Pro Quack
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

That incandescent intellect, the Stephen Hawking of jurisprudence, has been kind enough to take time from his busy schedule to explain to us how the Republic really works.

Antonin Scalia has devoted 21 pages to illuminating the impertinence of those who suggest that it is wrong for a Supreme Court justice to take favors from a friend with a case before the court.

Res ipsa loquitur, baby. Why should the justice who put Dick Cheney in the White House stop helping him now? It`s the logrolling, stupid!

"Many justices have reached this court precisely because they were friends of the incumbent president or other senior officials," the justice sniffs.

That elite old boy network can really help in those dicey moments when you need to stop the wrong sort, like Al Gore, from getting ahead.

You don`t stop ingratiating yourself with your powerful friends and accepting "social courtesies" from them just because you get on the court. Ingratitude is a terrible vice.

Anyway, what`s the point of being in the ultimate insiders` club if you have to fly coach, eat at IHOP and follow silly rules on conflict of interest?

Justice Scalia proffers that while he accepted the vice president`s offer of a ride on Air Force Two to Louisiana for a duck hunting trip, taking along his son and son-in-law, there was no quid pro quack. "I never hunted in the same blind as the vice president," he says. No need for justice to be blind when the blinds are just.

Not since Tony Soprano discovered ducks in his swimming pool have ducks revealed so much about the man.

The justice elucidates that if he and his family had not accepted a free ride on Air Force Two, there would have been "considerable inconvenience" to his other friends, who would have had to meet a commercial plane in New Orleans and arrange car and boat trips to the hunting camp.

What is integrity compared to inconvenience?

"I daresay that, at a hypothetical charity auction, much more would be bid for dinner for two at the White House than for a one-way flight to Louisiana on the vice president`s jet," he writes wittily. "Justices accept the former with regularity." Now there`s an argument that requires a first-rate mind: Everybody does it.

Only a few casuistical steps away from parsing the meaning of "is," Justice Scalia writes that it is fine for him to be friends with Mr. Cheney and hear his case as long as it doesn`t concern "the personal fortune or the personal freedom of the friend."

Holy Halliburton, whatever were we thinking?

The Sierra Club suit is against Mr. Cheney in his official capacity, not in his camouflage capacity.

"Political consequences are not my concern," says the justice. Unless, of course, it`s about picking the president of the United States.

He reassures us that "Washington officials know the rules, and know that discussing with judges pending cases — their own or anyone else`s — is forbidden." We must simply trust them, for they were bred to lead. Watching Mr. Cheney and Justice Scalia in action is all the proof one needs that Washington officials would never break the rules or engage in cronyism.

"If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined," the justice scoffs.

That`s for sure.

Justice Scalia says, "The people must have confidence in the integrity of the justices, and that cannot exist in a system that assumes them to be corruptible by the slightest friendship or favor, in an atmosphere where the press will be eager to find foot-faults." He observes that it would be nonsensical for him to recuse himself simply because the press has the effrontery to point out when someone has done something wrong.

We, the press, are supposed to be the handmaidens and the manservants of our rulers. If we fulfilled our duties properly, our reports would go something like this:

In an admirable spirit of uncommon objectivity, in the pursuit of truth, justice and the American way, Associate Justice Scalia made time to poke around in the marshes of Louisiana with the equally scrupulous Dick Cheney, and then, refreshed by a well-deserved plane trip at our expense, he continued to transmit his enlightenment to a grateful nation.


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Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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New Iraq? Hooded Protest And Masked Statistics

Robert Fisk in Terbil, Iraq

20 March 2004 (The Independent) -- Exactly a year after the Anglo-American armies invaded Iraq, I found five young men yesterday busy smashing up what was left of a Saddam statue in this little dusty border village. The torso and head of the dictator had long disappeared from his plinth at the frontier station but his legs and one arm and a battery of monumental missiles still lay on the ground in gleaming steel. Two American attack helicopters were racing up the border - still trying to find Donald Rumsfeld`s al-Qa`ida hordes as they supposedly swarm into Iraq - but what caught my eye were the heads of the five young men, so assiduously hammering and sawing and hacking at the remains of the statue. Four of them were wearing black face masks, the fifth had a black hood over his head. A year after the fall of Saddam, Iraqis have to hide their identity when they attack his image. What does that tell us about "new Iraq"?

If you are in Iraq, in Baghdad, driving its dangerous roads, the evidence of collapse and failure is everywhere. The few unarmed NGOs are marooned in the cities, unable to travel on the highways, which have become the domain of assassins and bandits. Now even the road south of Kerbala is the haunt of armed gangs. When I drive these highways, I now wear a keffiyeh and thobe on my head. My driver wears western trousers and shirt but I am in Arab clothes to avoid being attacked. Other westerners are doing the same thing. What does that tell us about Iraq a year after its "liberation"?

Many drivers now refuse to work for western reporters - and who can blame them? Yesterday, another journalist from the "Arabia" television station died of wounds after being shot by US troops - no wonder his colleagues walked out of Colin Powell`s boastful Baghdad press conference yesterday. Three journalists working for the American- funded television station have been killed by insurgents. An old Iraqi friend of mine - one of Saddam`s most trenchant critics - approached me this week. He had wanted to work for a "democratic" Iraq. Now he wanted my help in obtaining a second passport. Could I speak to the Australian embassy, he asked? He no longer believed that he would live in a stable country. What does this also tell us about "new Iraq"?

For those who spend time in Iraq, it is difficult to know whether to laugh or to cry when the pro-war chorus bangs its drums again. Richard Perle, one of the war`s American neo-conservative Vulcans who did more than most to push the Bush administration into this invasion, was arguing with me on a radio show, praising the resumption of 24-hour electrical power in the Iraqi capital. Alas, I could hear little of what he was saying because of the roar of emergency generators around me in night-time Baghdad.

How do we explain now the armies of truculent, often ill-disciplined mercenaries now roaming Iraq on behalf of the Anglo-American occupation authorities. Many thousands of them British, some are well trained, many are not. In my own hotel, dozens of them swagger through the lobby with rifles and pistols, all talking "security", all working for private security firms hired by the occupation power or by private companies. They have no rules of engagement and many of them drink too much. When I pleaded with one British gunman in sunglasses last week to at least put a shirt over his gun to conceal it when walking in and out of our hotel, he pointed a finger at me. "Listen mate," he shouted. "If I see someone with a gun come to shoot you, I am going to walk right past and do nothing." But he is the risk to our security. The Iraqis, of course, watch the coming and going of these young men and draw their own conclusions. I fear I know what they are.

Attacks against US troops and western civilians are daily increasing in Mosul. Two days ago, three Iraqis were killed in Basra by a car bomb intended for a British military patrol. Western troops will now only drive at night north of Najaf in companies 200-strong. What happened to that nice little neatly defined "Sunni triangle"? No wonder Spanish troops are so keen to go home. Now that Poland`s Prime Minister says he was "deceived" about weapons of mass destruction, how soon before the Polish contingent follow the Spanish? Never is it reported that Polish troops are attacked almost every night around the city of Hilla. David Kay`s astonishing interview in yesterday`s Le Figaro - "we must recognise our mistakes in order to restore our credibility" - is being widely broadcast in Baghdad. "I don`t think there was any serious chance of proving the existence of weapons of mass destruction," he said. "Because the best evidence suggests they did not exist."

Still, the occupying power, the "Coalition Provisional Authority", refuses to keep statistics on the dozens of innocent Iraqis dying each week under their mandate, in massive car bombs and in roadside killings. The US military searches of Iraqi Sunni villages, the Israeli-style battering down of doors and houses, the constant American killing of innocents is embittering a new generation of Iraqis. And soon we will have "democracy" in Iraq.

Copyright: The Independent. UK.

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washingtonpost.com
Mortars Hit U.S. Coalition HQ in Iraq


By Basses Mroue
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 21, 2004; 4:54 AM


BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two mortar rounds landed in the headquarters compound of the U.S.-led coalition Sunday. A third struck nearby, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding 10.

People at the headquarters were told to move to bunkers following the explosions but an American official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was not immediately clear whether there were any casualties in the compound in central Baghdad.

People in the upscale neighborhood of Mansour outside the compound said the mortar rounds damaged cars and several shops. Officials at the nearby Yarmouk Hospital said one civilian was killed and 10 others wounded, including a child and two women.

"This is a terrorist act. There are no military targets in Mansour," said Raed Abdul Saheb, a doctor at the hospital.

Taxi driver Ahmed Khalid described the attack.

Mortar and rocket attacks on the coalition headquarters are common. The assaults often miss and hit nearby neighborhoods.

Rocket Attack West of Baghdad Kills 2 U.S. Troops



Reuters
Sunday, March 21, 2004; 2:28 AM



BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A rocket attack near the flashpoint Iraqi town of Falluja, west of Baghdad, killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded seven, the U.S. military said Sunday.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the U.S. army in Iraq, said three rockets hit a forward operating base and two impacted outside at about 8 p.m. (1700 GMT) on Saturday. The wounded comprised six from the army and one from the navy, he said.

The attack brought to 395 the number of U.S. troops killed in action in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion a year ago.


© 2004 Reuters

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washingtonpost.com
U.S. Mideast Initiative Faces Arab Backlash


By Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page A19


KUWAIT CITY, March 20 -- The Bush administration and Arab leaders are engaged in a delicate dance over President Bush`s call for democracy in the Middle East, with each side struggling to find a balance between high-minded rhetoric and actual progress, U.S. and Arab officials said.

Facing an Arab backlash, the Bush administration has honed its Greater Middle East Initiative, due to be unveiled at the Group of Eight summit of industrial powers in June, to place greater emphasis on plans emerging from the region, such as a possible resolution from the Arab League later this month, U.S. officials said. Arab officials say they feel pressured to respond to the Bush administration proposals, but even reformers privately say they fear that any U.S. imprimatur would discredit the initiative in the eyes of the Arab public and strengthen radical Islamic forces.

The balancing act was on display last week as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with Kuwaiti and Saudi officials about the U.S. initiative. Powell told reporters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Friday that the push for greater freedoms in the Middle East was "not a matter of satisfying the United States; it`s a matter of satisfying the aspirations of the people in the Arab world." Powell flew back to Washington after meeting with Kuwait`s emir, Sheik Jabir Ahmed Sabah, on Saturday.

In recent weeks, after administration plans for the June summit were leaked before U.S. officials had fully discussed them with Arab leaders, a bevy of U.S. officials have toured the region to make amends.

"When our ideas were first made known to the press, there was a great deal of angst in the region," Powell acknowledged. "It has caused a great deal of debate, a lot of argument in the press, and that`s good. That`s part of the democratic process."

"Each nation has to find its own path and follow that path at its own speed," Powell said.

Saudi Arabia`s foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, standing next to Powell, responded that the Saudi monarchy was ushering in reforms but not "to get a report of good behavior." He said reform would take place at a pace that would make it "a unifying force for the country and not a divisive aspect."

Saudi Arabia has scheduled its first municipal elections for later this year, and officials have hinted that women may be granted the right to vote. But shortly before Powell arrived, Saudi officials arrested 10 reformist figures, including a university professor, after they had called for the monarchy to move toward a more constitutional model. They also were planning to criticize a state-approved human rights group set up earlier this month. Saudi officials said the group was involved in "acts of sabotage."

Powell said he has expressed concern over the detentions. But Saud, the foreign minister, said, "These people sowed dissension when the whole country was looking for unity and a clear vision, especially at a time when it is facing a terrorist threat."

The pace of reforms has also been uneven in Kuwait. The news media are relatively free to criticize the government but not the emir. Some Islamic leaders have used the political process to block even modest reforms proposed by the emir, including granting women the right to vote, liberalizing the economy and allowing coeducation at universities. The finance minister faces a vote of confidence this week.

"Kuwait is moving in this direction rather steadily, with a legislature that is -- how should I put this gently? -- is showing some energy with respect to oversight of the government," Powell said Saturday after meeting with Kuwaiti officials.

Officials are now focusing on the upcoming Arab League summit in Tunis, which begins March 29. The 22 members of the league have indicated that they will discuss democracy initiatives and possibly adopt a resolution. "I think if the Arab League could come to some conclusion that everyone agrees to, we would certainly respect that statement of vision," Powell said.

But U.S. officials said the text of such a resolution would determine whether it could be embraced as a step forward at the G-8 summit. Egypt, which has criticized the U.S. initiative, has submitted a proposed resolution that U.S. officials have suggested falls short of Bush administration goals.

The Egyptian proposal would affirm a commitment to "processes of modernization and reform that are undertaken by Arab societies in response to the wishes and needs of their people." The initiative supports the efforts of nongovernmental organizations "within the framework of legality" and links progress on the issue to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt recently said at a conference on reform issues that homegrown reforms must take society`s cultural, religious and demographic character into account to avoid "instability or the overtaking of the reform process by extremists who would steer it in a different direction."

"From what we saw of the Egyptian idea, there were more red lines than forward-looking ideas for reform," said a State Department official involved in democracy planning in the Middle East.

Jordan, which in recent months has responded more positively to U.S. calls for reform, also plans to propose a resolution. While its text has not been made public, it is expected to cover similar ground but refer more specifically to good governance, freedom of expression, women`s rights, judicial and educational reforms and commitment to human rights.

Jordan`s foreign minister, Marwan Muasher, traveled to Washington recently to share his government`s ideas with U.S. officials.

Powell told Muasher that the United States has "many tools available to nations that want to use those tools to enhance their reform efforts," such as an ongoing program at the State Department, according to a senior State Department official close to Powell who participated in the meeting. "Powell told Muasher that is the spirit of what we want to do at the G-8: We will try to define tools and reforms and how they can be used as we watch progress in the Arab world."

Wright reported from Washington.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Einige Tops and Flops aus dem Wahlkampf. Am Meisten im Gespräch ist immer noch Kerrys Anmerkung die meisten Regierungschefs würden froh sein, wenn er gewählt würde. Er kann natürlich keine Namen nennen.
Ich würde vorschlagen, er soll die Regierungschefs nennen, die Bushs Wiederwahl unterstützen. Das wäre kürzer und Blair wäre nicht beleidigt, bei Berlusconi bin ich mir schon nicht sicher.

washingtonpost.com
Kerry Rejects Outsourced Endorsements


By John F. Harris

Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page A07


John F. Kerry`s campaign is trying to wave surrender on the great controversy over his claim that more foreign leaders secretly back his candidacy than President Bush. Campaign aides last week said he is neither seeking foreign endorsements, nor will he accept them.

"This election will be decided by the American people, and the American people alone," Rand Beers, a Kerry foreign policy adviser, said in a statement. "It is simply not appropriate for any foreign leader to endorse a candidate in America`s presidential election. John Kerry does not seek, and will not accept, any such endorsements."

So goes the effort to end the hubbub over perhaps the most damaging boast in U.S. politics since Al Gore claimed the invention of the Internet. Like that earlier boast -- Gore was indeed an important early backer of government research funding for the technology that eventually became the Internet -- this one may well have more truth than not. Polling in most European nations shows powerful anti-Bush majorities -- do the leaders disagree that much with their constituents? -- and just last week Bush was rebuked by the prime minister of Poland and the newly elected leader of Spain.

But the most prominent voice on the record last week backing the presumptive Democratic nominee was not exactly welcomed by Kerry. Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad -- a man with a long history of anti-Semitic utterances -- declared, "I think Kerry would be much more willing to listen to the voices of people and of the rest of the world."

The Republican National Committee, continuing what has been a drumbeat of Kerry mockery, featured a new video on its Web site, www.rnc.org. With Austin Powers-style music and images, the spot spoofs the candidate as "John Kerry: International Man of Mystery."

Of course, the Republicans had their own problems with unsavory Asian dictators last week, after Newsday disclosed that the official merchandise Web site for Bush`s reelection campaign has sold clothing made in Burma, which has a repressive government and whose goods are banned from import to the United States.

Two Spinners Whirl Back


Two familiar faces in the world of political spin and media combat are returning to Washington, courtesy of Kerry. Howard Wolfson, an aggressive campaign spokesman for Hillary Rodham Clinton`s 2000 Senate run in New York, is moving here to join the Kerry communications team, spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said.

Coming from even farther away is former State Department spokesman James P. Rubin, himself a man of Austin Powers-like mystique, arriving soon from London for six months in Washington. Rubin, who is married to CNN star correspondent Christiane Amanpour, will live here through the fall as a foreign policy adviser and public surrogate for Kerry. Kerry, however, was not Rubin`s first choice for president; he advised Wesley K. Clark until the retired Army general`s campaign ended.

Democrats Building Unity


It will be a parade of Democratic stars in town on Thursday for the Democratic National Committee`s "Unity Dinner," designed to celebrate the party`s determination to bury intramural differences and rally behind Kerry.

Former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, who have had their differences over the years, will be on hand for the dinner at the National Building Museum -- as well as at an after-hours party at the nightclub Dream.

Also present for the dinner will be all of this year`s Democratic presidential candidates, minus one. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio) was not invited, a DNC official said, because he is still campaigning and not preaching party unity.

The day will also mark the ribbon-cutting at the DNC`s newly renovated headquarters at the foot of Capitol Hill. About $13 million was spent refurbishing the building, once a notorious dump. The building is wired for the latest technology, including a studio for satellite news conferences, but staffers grouse that it`s still many long blocks from decent expense-account restaurants for source-building reporters.

350 Friends Briefed at 1600


The socially conservative and politically influential Family Research Council was given red-carpet treatment at the White House on Thursday. More than 350 major donors and other supporters received a private briefing from Elliott Abrams, the National Security Council staff director for Middle East affairs.

To give the White House session a more intimate feel, Bush aides split the more than 350 attendees of the council`s annual "Washington Briefing" into two groups on successive days.

The Family Research Council is a nonprofit educational foundation and by law must be nonpartisan, but the GOP leanings were clear at last week`s briefing. When James Dobson of Focus on the Family warned during one discussion that gay marriage could lead to a "man marrying his donkey," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, had the crowd chortling by saying that made him think of "a Republican marrying a Democrat."

Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
The Terrorism Debate




Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page B06


THE RECENT wave of bloody terrorist bombings, from Madrid to Baghdad, underlines the special importance of the war on terrorism as an issue in this year`s presidential campaign. It is vital that voters hear a robust debate between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry about how the war has been conducted since Sept. 11, 2001, and how best to manage it in the coming four years. But that argument should convey a message of fortitude and not weakness to America`s enemies -- especially the Islamic terrorist groups that may dream of reversing U.S. policy with a single, traumatizing blow. That, sadly, could be the outcome in Spain, where the winner of last weekend`s election, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has responded to his upset victory with a message of retreat from Iraq that the authors of the Madrid train bombings will claim as a success.

By that measure, President Bush`s national security address Friday, and the earlier exchange of broadsides between the Bush and Kerry campaigns last week, offered a good beginning to the American debate. The rhetoric may have been tough and some of the charges overheated. But both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush started from a common point: The United States must not shrink from the challenge, either in Iraq or elsewhere. Though he condemned what he described as a failed policy, Mr. Kerry declared in a speech Wednesday that "having gone to war, we have a responsibility to keep and a national interest to achieve in a stable and peaceful Iraq." And though Mr. Bush might perceive a benefit in promising to wind down the mission, he sent the opposite message: "We will never turn over Iraq to terrorists who intend our own destruction," he said. "We will not fail the Iraqi people, who have placed their trust in us. Whatever it takes, we will fight and work to assure the success of freedom in Iraq."

That there are irresponsible alternatives to these positions has been demonstrated by both Republicans and Democrats in recent days. The Democratic version came from former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who implied that Mr. Bush was somehow responsible for the terrorist attacks in Madrid. Mr. Kerry, who had unwisely recruited Mr. Dean as a surrogate spokesman, quickly and rightly repudiated him. A couple of days earlier, Vice President Cheney charged, not for the first time, that Mr. Kerry advocated returning to the pre-9/11 policy of treating terrorism primarily as a problem of law enforcement. The implication was clear: A vote for Mr. Kerry would be a vote against a war on terrorism. The claim was missing from the vice president`s subsequent and broader assault on Mr. Kerry on Wednesday, and appropriately so: It simply isn`t true, as Mr. Kerry`s own speech made clear.

That there is much to legitimately disagree about was manifest in the week`s speeches. Mr. Kerry argued that Mr. Bush overstated the Iraqi threat, that he failed to build a strong alliance for the war or prepare for its aftermath, that he sent too few troops and then did not give them the body armor they needed. He promised an expanded army, an expanded alliance in Iraq and a long list of benefits for soldiers, reservists, veterans and their families. The essence of the Bush offer, as Mr. Cheney described it, is to stay the course; the suggestion is that Mr. Kerry might not. The vice president pointed to the senator`s shifts of position on Iraq and his past opposition to weapons systems and mocked his stance on alliances, saying only those countries who oppose the United States seem to have Mr. Kerry`s respect. There are real differences here. As Mr. Cheney said, Americans may have the clearest and most meaningful choice on national security in any presidential election during the last 20 years. But that choice should be about how the United States can win the crucial battles now underway -- not whether they should be fought.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Blair`s credibility `destroyed`
(Filed: 20/03/2004)


The war on Iraq was "armed globalisation" to take the country`s oil reserves, former cabinet minister Tony Benn has said.

Mr Benn said the world was "obviously not a safer place" after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, adding that Tony Blair`s credibility had been "destroyed".

But at the same time London and Washington were trying to whip up fears of terrorism to "get control and take away civil liberties", he said.

Mr Benn is the new president of the Stop the War Coalition. He predicted that if MPs begin to suspect that Mr Blair is weakened by the ongoing controversy over the war, "in a few years` time trying to find a Blairite will require a microscope".

Mr Benn, who quit as a Labour MP in 2001, was speaking tbefore addressing an anti-war rally in New York to mark the first anniversary of the attack on Iraq.

Some 250 protests were being held across the US, mirroring those in Britain.

He said: "The Iraq war was an example of armed globalization. You go into a country... take their oil and send somebody in who allows all the Iraqi assets to be privatised.

"I think that the credibility of those who argued for the war has been destroyed by what we actually now know.

"And when people lose confidence in what they are told, that is a greater threat to democracy than the occasional terrorist attack."

Claiming that there is a "crisis of confidence" in Britain`s leadership, he said: "Never in my lifetime have we had a situation where the gap between the people and Parliament was so great.

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

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History will damn them

We must not accept our leaders` illegal occupation of a sovereign state

Richard Overy

Saturday March 20, 2004 (The Guardian) -- Imagine, for a moment, the following scenario. American and British troops battle their way into Iraqi territory, sprayed with anthrax shells and gas bombs. In Cyprus and Tel Aviv, rockets explode, loaded with biological agents. After a bitter struggle, coalition forces seize control of the country. They find concealed rocket silos with missiles primed for attacks on distant European targets; plans are found for rocket attacks on London. At other sites they find an advanced nuclear bomb project and barrels full of chemical weapons. They flush out an al-Qaida stronghold where they find the battle plan of world terrorism. Saddam and Bin Laden were, after all, in cahoots.

A year ago this was the fanciful vision that pushed Blair to side with Bush and go to war in Iraq. They braced their troops and populations for the worst, and the more gullible believed them (I talked to Londoners planning their evacuation route from the capital). The rest of us saw the arguments for the claptrap they were. The reality from March 20 last year to March 20 this year has been grotesquely different. Two of the world`s most sophisticated armed forces brushed aside a tinpot army of soldiers without boots, smashed Iraq`s cities to pieces, killed thousands of civilians and captured Iraq`s oil more or less intact. There were, as any intelligent observer could have told them, no WMD, no centre of world terrorism, no aggressive intent.

In the past 12 months, deserters from the Bush/Blair cause have revealed piecemeal the reality. War was planned long in advance against a soft Arab target that nobody much liked. The intelligence services knew that they were being asked to endorse fairy tales. The attorney general has come clean on how he was forced to turn an illegal war into a lawful war of defence against the Iraqi threat. The duplicity was systematic, and remains so. Blair has no regrets. He bays defiant nonsense about the terrible menace that has been removed, and the greater terrorist menace still at large. Not once has he expressed regret for what a dozen years of sanctions and war inflicted on the Iraqi people. Enough that his cause is just.

There is no pleasure in saying, a year on, that we told you so. Invasion invited worldwide hostility, divided (and still divides) Europe, weakened the UN and, above all, provoked precisely the confrontation with terror that the war was supposed to alleviate. I have been told to stop carping and let the British and Americans get on with the job of ruling Iraq now they are there. But this is tantamount to endorsing the war. Why are the US and Britain there, in illegal occupation of a sovereign state? Why should we accept this reality and knuckle down to Blair`s call to arms? Today`s demonstration is a reminder that what was a war of unprovoked aggression a year ago has not been changed by victory.

I have had many arguments, too, about the vexed question of oil. The view that oil is some kind of Marxist red herring is widespread. But in this case there can be no other conclusion. Oil installations and oil lines were captured and guarded first; the oil ministry was protected while priceless art treasures were being ransacked. The second largest oil reserves are now safe once again for the wider world market and the global oil companies. Popular ignorance about the nature of oil politics has played into coalition hands, just as popular indifference to the use of major US companies in rebuilding what the US armed forces knocked down has deflected debate from issues that should shock international opinion.

The most familiar argument in favour of the war, repeated mantra-like in all circles, is that a much-hated dictator has been overthrown. This week`s opinion poll purports to show how grateful the Iraqis now are for their liberation. No one would wish Saddam Hussein back. The problem is that the reason for going to war was quite different. If unseating tyrants was the priority, Saddam should have been unseated long ago. War in 2003 was about protecting British and American interests, not liberating Iraq, a posture of self-interest rather than magnanimity. This was the same motive for declaring war on Hitler in 1939. It was not dictators that the west could not stomach, but the threat to their interests and way of life (again).

In this sense, the analogy drawn last year that Saddam had to be confronted like Hitler was truer than might have been supposed. Parliament was bamboozled into accepting that Saddam posed an immediate threat to Britain. There were honourable motives for declaring war on Hitler, as there are for unseating Saddam, but that is not what, a year ago, we were offered. Liberation was the means to dress war up as legitimate. So much so that there must be a large number in Britain and the US who think that unseating Saddam really was the reason that war began.

One more battery turns on the anti-war lobby: look at Madrid, look at the daily attacks in Iraq or Israel. Blair was right. Terrorism is the chief threat we face, and the war against terror must unite us all. This has little to do with Iraq. Attacks against the occupiers were provoked by war. Attacks in Israel are part of a different struggle for Palestinian liberation. The assault in Madrid is part of a longer confrontation between militant Islam and western cultural and economic imperialism. Lumping them all together as evidence that a war against terror is the primary object of our foreign policy is nonsense.

"Terror" is not an organisation or a single force. It is related to a variety of political confrontations, each of which has to be understood in its own terms. "Terror" cannot be fought as if it were a war against a hidden, global and undifferentiated enemy. The threat, such as it is, has been exacerbated by the arrogant display of naked power shown by the US, Britain and its motley coalition. But the real changes to "our way of life" are the consequence of the panicky western response to terrorism, which has eroded civil liberties and the rule of law and threatens to smother us with a security net that will undermine the so-called "democratic" values that the west is pledged to preserve. This is an unnecessary price to pay, but we will all see the surveillance state grow unless democratic non-compliance reasserts itself.

What, then, are the alternatives? Could anything different have been done? Should something different be done now? Of course. War should have been avoided and other ways explored to get Iraq to re-enter the world economy, and to feed and supply its population properly. The west could show that it is serious about tackling the question of a Palestinian state, instead of using it as a figleaf to clothe its ambitions in the region. Blair could show that he values a commitment to a common European defence and foreign policy, which might have avoided war altogether.

Today we could confront terrorism differently. It is a profound irony that Blair has helped to defuse the Ulster crisis and reduce terrorism by the very means that he has abandoned in his crusading zeal against the world enemy. Terrorists do not blow people up just because they are nihilistic thugs. Terrorism is born of fear, resentment and powerlessness in the face of the massive power and cultural expansion of the west; it is about real issues for those who perpetrate its acts of violence. Palestinians die because they want to free Palestine. Understanding those issues on their own terms and adjusting our politics in order to do so does not mean that we endorse violence.

Last year Blair told the British people: "Let history be my judge." The history of the past year has been damning, but there is an opportunity for the people to judge as well. The same message that the Spanish people sent to José Aznar can also be sent to Bush and Blair. It will not solve the world`s problems, but it might make the world a safer place.

· Richard Overy is professor of modern history at King`s College London, and author of The Dictators, to be published by Penguin in June

Copyright: The Guardian. UK.

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Chomsky backs `Bush-lite` Kerry
Matthew Tempest
Saturday March 20, 2004
The Guardian

Noam Chomsky, the political theorist and leftwing guru, yesterday gave his reluctant endorsement to the Democratic party`s presidential contender, John Kerry, calling him "Bush-lite", but a "fraction" better than his rival.

Professor Chomsky - a linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as a renowned chronicler of American foreign policy - said there were "small differences" between Senator Kerry and the Republican president. But, in an interview on the Guardian`s politics website, he added that those small differences "can translate into large outcomes".

He describes the choice facing US voters in November as "the choice between two factions of the business party". But the Bush administration was so "cruel and savage", it was important to replace it.

He said: "Kerry is sometimes described as `Bush-lite`, which is not inaccurate. But despite the limited differences both domestically and internationally, there are differences. In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."

He reserved his especial venom for the Bush administration`s plans for the health sector: "The people around Bush are deeply committed to dismantling the achievements of popular struggle through the past century no matter what the cost to the general population."


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Budapest March 20, 2004

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AL-JAZEERA SLAPS OSAMA WITH 7-SECOND DELAY

Warns Madman About Potty-mouthed Terror Rants

Reflecting the increasingly prudish tenor of the times, the Arabic-language broadcast network al-Jazeera today warned al Qaeda madman Osama bin Laden that all future on-air appearances of his would be subject to a seven-second delay.

“We have no problem with Osama threatening the West with death and destruction, but we’d really like him to clean up his language,” an al-Jazeera spokesman said. “You don’t have to be potty-mouthed to get your message of terror across.”

Observers of the broadcast industry said that the seven-second delay was imposed on Mr. bin Laden after he appeared on the air last week and used “inappropriate language” similar to that used by rock singer Bono during last year’s Golden Globe Awards.

Additionally, the continuing controversy about Janet Jackson’s breast-baring incident at this year’s Super Bowl made the decision to put Mr. bin Laden on a tape delay “inevitable,” the al-Jazeera spokesman said: “We don’t think Osama would resort to flashing, but you never know.”

While censorship opponents such as the ACLU opposed al-Jazeera’s seven-second-delay policy, the network received a surprising vote of support from another renowned international madman, President Kim Jung-Il of North Korea, whom many had expected to side with Mr. bin Laden.

“You can terrify the world without resorting to foul language,” Kim Jung-Il said. “When terrorists start talking like Courtney Love, I really start wondering what this world is coming to.”

In other bin Laden news, days after NBC released a CIA video showing aerial footage of Mr. bin Laden wearing a white robe, Mr. bin Laden announced that he would no longer wear a white robe.

**** BOROWITZ AT LUNA LOUNGE MONDAY MARCH 22 ****

Andy Borowitz performs next Monday night at 8:30 at Luna Lounge, 171 Ludlow St, NYC. $8 admission includes one free drink.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-green21…
IRAQ: ONE YEAR LATER
Green Zone Colors View of Occupation
For Americans, the center of U.S. military and civilian operations is a secure bubble in a hostile city. To Iraqis, it`s a symbol of colonialism.
By J. Michael Kennedy
Times Staff Writer

March 21, 2004

Here in the Green Zone, off-duty soldiers laze away their afternoons sunbathing at the luxurious palace swimming pool.

Residents use telephones with an upstate New York area code, even to call someone across the hall.

The parking lot is so clogged with identical new sport utility vehicles that drivers have to punch the alarm buttons on their key chains to draw a bead on where theirs are located. And there`s American chow, lots of it, shipped in from the United States. Think chipped beef on toast.

Welcome to the Bubble. Behind the massive concrete blocks, razor wire, sandbags and maze of checkpoints where visitors are searched and searched again is the heart of U.S. military and civilian operations in Iraq.

Save for the routine mortar attacks that have yet to do much damage to this sprawling 4-square-mile zone, there is a surreal sense of calm about the compound, especially when juxtaposed with the snarled, noisy streets of Baghdad — which many people inside the zone seldom, if ever, see.

It is a place where soldiers and civilians work long hours, party hard when they can and look for the little things that make life bearable in this hostile land.

But for Iraqis, the Green Zone represents a foreign power hunkering down for a long stay — in Saddam Hussein`s old digs, no less — while shutting itself off from the country it conquered. Rubbing salt in the wound, speculation has it that the zone, which encompasses some of Baghdad`s prime real estate, will eventually become the site of the mammoth U.S. Embassy.

"Americans should behave in a normal, civilized way, like they do elsewhere in the world," said Dauvaod Mohammed, owner of the Kitchen Furniture store in Baghdad. "They hide away behind big walls."

On a more mundane note, Iraqis complain bitterly that Baghdad`s streets wouldn`t be clogged if the Americans pulled up stakes and moved somewhere else. And the restricted access is a source of irritation for Iraqis who will never get in.

Saad Abbas, deputy editor of the politically moderate Az Zamman newspaper, said seeing well-heeled Iraqis and foreigners with their suits and cellphones entering the zone only reminds the working class of opportunities unavailable to them.

"It is natural when a poor person sees someone coming out of the Green Zone with all these things, he will not like that," Abbas said. "He will feel angry at the sight of him."

There are reasons for the compound, of course, security chief among them. The 15-foot blast-resistant concrete walls that surround the compound protect it from attacks such as the car bomb that killed seven people Wednesday at a Baghdad hotel. The military is not about to make the same mistake it did in Beirut in 1983, when a suicide bomber plowed through a lightly reinforced security gate and killed 241 American service members as they slept in their barracks.

At the beginning of the Baghdad occupation, the construction of the Green Zone was a source of friction between the United States and the United Nations, which felt that the foreigners should mingle with the population. But after two devastating attacks on its headquarters, the U.N. has relocated to neighboring countries. Some foreign companies doing contract work, meanwhile, tried to operate in Baghdad neighborhoods only to take refuge in the Green Zone after hearing persistent rumors that they were in imminent danger.

Just getting into the compound is a challenge to one`s patience as well as a source of jitters, given that a car bomb detonated at one of its gates in January. At least 20 people were killed and 120 wounded.

On any given day, the lines to enter the Green Zone can stretch so long that soldiers spend much of their time trying to stop impatient visitors from jumping the queue. Of these, hundreds are men who hope to become police trainees and receive the $120-a-month salary that goes with it. Even when the line is short, getting in involves two full-body searches and two identity checks.

Inside, the scene changes dramatically. The Green Zone includes the cavernous convention center, Hussein`s ornate Republican Palace and the Rashid Hotel, once the city`s premier hostelry. It was once wired by Hussein`s minions for eavesdropping on visiting VIPs, but under coalition control, it has been abandoned as living quarters because of rocket attacks. Still, it remains the mess hall of choice for 5,000 Americans living inside the zone plus a prime source of pirated DVDs and tacky paintings in the first-floor gift shops.

The palace is the nerve center of the zone, where soldiers and civilians work around the clock. Eighteen-hour days are common and 12-hour shifts are routine.

"I`m finding that sometimes I forget what day it is," said Pepper Bryars, a civilian communications specialist from Alabama.

Four huge, helmeted busts of Hussein have been removed from atop the palace, and his throne has been put in storage. The foyer of the palace`s main entrance has been turned into a dining room, where food is dished out cafeteria-style. Rooms inside the palace have been chopped up by dividers, and offices are identified by paper taped to doors. On the walls are Valentine`s Day cards from grade-school children, including one depicting an assault rifle in the middle of a heart.

"Cupid`s New Arrow," reads the inscription.

Marble floors are lined with red carpet, and one large ballroom is used as a dormitory. On one wall is a Hussein-era fresco of Scud missiles rocketing skyward, as they did during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when they hit targets in Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem. On the other is a fresco of Jerusalem`s Dome of the Rock, one of Islam`s holiest sites. In between, the floor is scattered with bunk beds and cots, with gear strewn about.

But mostly, the palace has the look of slightly disheveled office building where workers go about their business.

"The days are long but the weeks are short," said Col. Emmett DuBose of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a Texan who is responsible for restoring Iraq`s oilfields. "When you`re busy working day in and day out, you don`t even realize you`re in a bubble."

A souk, or market, has sprung up inside the compound near the palace, where merchants sell souvenirs that include Saddam Hussein wristwatches and other knickknacks.

The Green Zone Cafe, a converted gas station, is a favorite eating spot and welcome diversion from the regular fare. The Iraqi proprietor serves hamburgers and chicken kebabs along with sodas and beer. He`s been so successful that construction workers are expanding the eatery, which is particularly busy in the evenings. Among other things, the cafe has a large cache of what the label describes as "The Love of God Wine," widely believed to be of the Communion variety. Two Chinese restaurants vie for the Asian palate, their major difference being that one serves beer and the other doesn`t.

Around the compound, trailer park communities have sprung up to accommodate the thousands of American workers who have made the Green Zone their home. The guidelines are two people to a room, two rooms to a trailer.

The neighborhoods have such names as Embassy Estates, Poolside, Riverside and the Palms (not the best place to live when mushy dates are falling from the trees).

There is a laundry and a post exchange roughly the size of a convenience store.

When Bryars arrived in the Green Zone, he was billeted in a large tent with dozens of other people, many of them serious snorers. "I thought I`d never get to sleep," he said.

In another part of the compound is the parade route where Hussein would review his troops as they marched under four massive crossed swords. The hands holding the blades are exact replicas of the ex-dictator`s. Along the path are metal bumps — Iranian army helmets, cemented in during the Iran-Iraq war so Hussein`s troops could crush the enemy underfoot.

Finally, there is the Baghdad Convention Center, which houses media facilities as well as dozens of civilian operations ranging from Royal Jordanian Airways (flying to Amman only) to the giant Bechtel construction company, whose offices are in the sub-subbasement. The Iraqi National Symphony rehearses in the center; on a recent afternoon, the conductor grew impatient with the horn section, which was having trouble hitting its notes.

And yes, there is green in the Green Zone — grassy, flower-filled areas around the convention center that are tended by Iraqi gardeners.

But the green ends at a guard shack manned by American soldiers, replaced by more sandbags and concertina wire marking the way back to dusty Baghdad.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op…

Ein Artikel über das Versagen der Briten nach dem WWI im Irak. Damals hatten die Briten sich schon einmal in der Staatsgründung versucht und sind auch für die seltsamen Staatsgebilde verantwortlich.



Beginning to Bloom
The British learned in the 1920s that growing democracy in Iraq takes time. But the U.S. effort there is already showing signs of success.
By Joel Rayburn
Joel Rayburn, an Army major, teaches history at the U.S. Military Academy.

March 21, 2004

WEST POINT, N.Y. — A year ago, troops of the U.S.-led coalition moved into Iraq on their way to swiftly defeating Saddam Hussein`s armies. Since then, Iraq`s journey toward stability and democracy under U.S. tutelage has been painfully slow and difficult. So says a chorus of observers who reflexively transform not-unexpected obstacles to the establishment of an Iraqi government into major roadblocks. Typical was the New York Times` judgment, after reports of a delay in the signing of the interim Iraqi constitution, that the U.S. occupation had failed both to deliver Iraq from "pervasive insecurity" and to devise a "satisfactory formula … for creating the interim government due to assume power July 1." But although the problems confronting the United States and its coalition partners in Iraq are complex, they are not new. The good news is that when measured against the only previous attempt at Iraqi democracy-building — in the 1920s under the British — the current effort compares favorably in virtually every way.

Britain`s experience in Iraq after World War I was strikingly similar to that of the U.S.-led coalition. From their capture of Baghdad in 1917 to their withdrawal from the League of Nations mandate in Iraq in 1932, the British struggled to build a stable state around the country`s ethnic, tribal and religious divisions. One of the most important events was the adoption of Iraq`s first constitution and the holding of its first elections.

Although promising elections in 1918, the British governors of Iraq didn`t begin drafting election laws until they assumed the League of Nations mandate in summer 1920. Not until a year later did the British install a constitutional monarchy under the non-Iraqi Prince Faisal, friend of T.E. Lawrence and leader of the Arabs` so-called Revolt in the Desert. Another year passed before election regulations were published (May 1922). Meanwhile, the British army and air force had to suppress a nine-month insurgency involving as many as 100,000 Iraqis.

The British-sponsored elections rules were convoluted and often unfair. They called for two phases of voting in 14 separate districts; candidates were nominated in various ways. The regulations were stacked against the Shiites, who, though constituting perhaps 60% of Iraq`s population, were guaranteed no better than a plurality in the Iraqi constituent assembly. Jews and Christians, though small minorities, were allocated a certain number of seats. Iraqi tribes, which generally sought to undermine the central government, were effectively allowed to vote twice — once when sheiks nominated candidates and once when tribesmen voted as individuals. When the leading Kurdish figure briefly declared himself king of an independent Kurdistan, the British enticed the Kurds back into the elections by decreeing that no Arab could be elected in a Kurdish area.

When the British administration and King Faisal opened the elections in October 1922, they immediately encountered opposition from Shiite clerics who demanded direct democracy. That halted elections for six months. In response, British officials declared the leading Shiite imams to be "citizens of Persia" and deported them. The entire Shiite clergy protested, then followed their leaders into exile.

With Shiite leaders gone, the elections resumed in July 1923. British officials manipulated the process at every turn to obtain an assembly that would not oppose their proposed constitution. They colluded with regional election officials to produce lists dominated by pro-British candidates. In the final tally, popular Iraqi nationalist candidates improbably received fewer votes than some Jewish and Christian candidates. Of the assembly`s 98 members, 74 were British-approved.

British troops had occupied Baghdad for almost seven years and Basra for nearly 10 when the elections closed in February 1924. The election process, which was interrupted three times by insurrections, had taken almost four years. Although the new assembly dutifully adopted the proposed constitution, the "democratic" experiment undermined the legitimacy of the Iraqi government. Iraqis distrusted their new government as a tool of the British, even after the British withdrew in 1932.

In contrast to Britain`s attempt to democratize Iraq, the U.S.-led coalition`s much-maligned postwar plan and timeline for constituent-assembly elections in 2005 are speedy and farsighted. In addition, they could not possibly produce results less fair or legitimate than those of the British election method, which sought to dilute Shiite voting strength. Furthermore, U.S. civil administrators in Iraq have not expelled critics — especially Shiites — as the British did. Nor have U.S. forces closed opposition newspapers or indiscriminately bombed rebellious tribes or villages. Finally, signers of Iraq`s interim constitution could at least say that Iraqis had a significant hand in its writing. The proposed constitution under the British mandate was written by a team of British legal advisors and thrust upon King Faisal complete.

The U.S.-led democratization effort in Iraq, then, has been quite successful despite problems, risks and poorly handled situations. Even the Islamist terrorists seem to agree. In a way, their horrific surge of violent attacks against civilian targets last week, from the drive-by shooting of aid workers to the powerful car bomb in Baghdad, is a sign of their desperation and fear that democracy is taking root in Iraq, and that their window for destabilizing the country is closing. The goal of a stable, pluralistic democracy seems reachable — and we`ve been in Iraq only a year. If the pessimists read some history, they would learn that expectations of a swift conclusion to the Iraqi project are unrealistic and historically naive.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
Zwei Artikel von Der Kommentarseite, einmal den Umbau der Army durch Rumsfeld und dann die islamischen Wurzeln in Spanien: (kostenlos anmelden)

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op…

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op…

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op…

Bei Bush trifft zu: Wem nicht zu raten ist, ist auch nicht zu helfen.

MIDDLE EAST
Transplanted Democracy Will Wilt in Infertile Soil
By Shlomo Avineri
Shlomo Avineri is a professor of political science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He participated in democracy-enhancement projects in Eastern Europe sponsored by the National Democratic Insti

March 21, 2004

In his speech Friday on Iraq, President Bush cited the lessons of Eastern Europe. "In the 1980s, the example of Poland ignited a fire of freedom in all of Eastern Europe," he said, adding that Iraq and Afghanistan have now become democratic beacons to the rest of the Middle East.

The ambitious U.S. plan for democratizing the region is well intentioned, but it will fail. The reasons: a total lack of allies in the Middle East and completely different local conditions. It`s true that decades of U.S.-sponsored programs in Eastern Europe helped bring about the fall of communism and eventually the demise of the Soviet Union. But the analogy is misleading.

In all the countries in which post-Communist democracies have been established, the major impetus for democratization came from within, from what has come to be known as "civil society." Poland had a history of internal dissent, which flared up in 1956 and 1968 before ultimately coalescing into the Solidarity labor movement, an alliance of workers and intellectuals in the 1980s. In Hungary, the insurrection of 1956 was followed by the slow emergence in the 1970s of the Hungarian Democratic Forum. Czechoslovakia had the "Prague Spring" of 1968, followed by the dissident movement Charter 77.

The movements also had charismatic leaders — Lech Walesa in Poland, Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia, the lesser-known Joszef Antall in Hungary — who helped galvanize public opinion. Crucial support from the outside was made possible through the Helsinki agreements, but outside help would have been useless if there were no local groups giving the process legitimacy and impetus. In the Soviet Union, with a traditionally weak civil society, democratization started from above, led by reformer Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Yet there too it received an immense push from grass-roots nationalist-oriented reform movements in the peripheral republics of the Soviet Union — in Lithuania under Vytautas Landsbergis, in Georgia under Zviad Gamsakhurdia and lesser-known movements active in Estonia, Latvia and Armenia.

Nothing of the sort exists in any Arab country. In an era that has seen dramatic developments toward democratization all over the globe — in Eastern Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia — the Arab region stands out as an exception. It has not produced one serious movement in support of democracy, nor have any of its leaders provided such a beacon. There has been no Arab Gorbachev, no Arab Walesa. To make Islam the culprit for this is wrongheaded. Turkey has for the last 80 years gone though a slow but consistent process of democratization — albeit sometimes flawed.

Iran, a self-styled Islamic republic, provides daily examples of a vibrant civil society, with surprising pluralism even within an Islamic discourse. It has contested elections, student demonstrations and a combative press. It may appear at the moment that the conservatives are winning, but possibilities still exist.

Nothing like this is happening in any of the nations of the Arab League. Although many Arab countries have courageous individuals speaking out — like Saad Eddin Ibrahim in Egypt — nothing has coalesced into a meaningful mass movement.

This is surprising, since Arab countries are very different from one another: Some are small, others are large; some are rich, others are poor; some are traditional monarchies, others are military-based authoritarian regimes. But in none of them — with the exception of some feeble attempts in a few of the less oppressive monarchies like Jordan, Morocco and Bahrain — is there a movement toward democratization or a legitimate local base for such a movement.

The reasons for this are not obvious and have eluded even the courageous Arab intellectuals who tried, two years ago, to examine them in a U.N.-sponsored Arab Human Development Report, which pointed out the unique democracy deficit in Arab societies. The group called for further studies, and they should be undertaken, even if they may not sound politically correct. In the meantime, though, we should abandon the illusion that democracy will come easily to the Arab world. Importing it from outside will fail, as the U.S. occupation of Iraq is daily demonstrating. The provisional Iraqi constitution may sound fine, but the road to implementing it is long and rocky.

Change in the Arab world must come incrementally — and from the inside. Civil society should be encouraged, and every move to a more open society in countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt should be supported. But these things will have to emerge organically; they cannot be imported.

To imagine Western-sponsored democracies flourishing anytime soon in the Arab world is a dangerous illusion, doomed to bring about violent resentment and rage against U.S. arrogance and imperial hubris.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op…


FOREIGN POLICY
Nation-Building Exposes GOP`s House Divided
The neocon dream of exporting democracy clashes with the traditional Republican view of a foreign policy grounded in "realism."
By Jacob Heilbrunn
Jacob Heilbrunn is an editorial writer at The Times.

March 21, 2004

WASHINGTON — The longer the U.S. struggles to impose order in postwar Iraq, the harsher the indictments of the Bush administration`s foreign policy are becoming. "Acquiring additional burdens by engaging in new wars of liberation is the last thing the United States needs," declared one Bush critic in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs. "The principal problem is the mistaken belief that democracy is a talisman for all the world`s ills, and that the United States has a responsibility to promote democratic government wherever in the world it is lacking."

Sound like a Democratic pundit bashing Bush for partisan gain? Nope. The jab came from Dimitri K. Simes, president of the predominantly Republican Nixon Center and co-publisher of the National Interest magazine. And he is not alone in calling on the administration to reclaim the party`s pre-Reagan heritage — to abandon its moralistic, Wilsonian, neoconservative dream of exporting democracy, in favor of a more limited and realistic foreign policy.

The most profound foreign affairs ideological divide in the 2004 election might not be so much between liberals and conservatives as it will be among conservatives themselves. A growing number of so-called "realists," who feel that U.S. foreign policy should be shaped by a narrowly defined national interest rather than by a broad desire to promote global democracy and human rights, have gotten increasingly vociferous in warning about the perils of adventurism abroad.

These critics, unlike the anti-imperialists of the left, don`t view U.S. power with antipathy: They revere it. But they fear squandering the country`s might and are fond of recalling 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke`s warning: "I dread our own power and our own ambition. I dread being too much dreaded." They see neoconservatives like the Weekly Standard`s William Kristol as championing big government in the service of social engineering abroad. The debate between realists and neoconservatives over U.S. power and moralism could prove as poisonous to the Republicans as the foreign policy fights that racked the Democratic Party during the 1970s and 1980s.

The GOP has struggled before with its position on entanglements abroad. Sen. Robert Taft, a leading light of the party during the 1940s and early 1950s, decried America`s entry into NATO and its sponsorship of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe: "No foreign policy can be justified except a policy devoted … to the protection of the liberty of the American people, with war only as the last resort and only to protect that liberty." But once Mr. Republican, as Taft was known, lost the 1952 presidential nomination to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the GOP was set on a more internationalist course. As William F. Buckley Jr. put it, "in order to fight communism, we may have to accept bureaucratic totalitarianism on these shores" because communism was "the greatest danger the West has ever faced."

But this was only a temporary accommodation. By the mid-1990s, many Republicans, like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, displayed distinct isolationist impulses, attacking the Clinton administration`s interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor. They saw Bill Clinton`s humanitarian interventions as the equivalent of welfare programs — as attempts by big government to carry out social engineering. But like the Cold War, Sept. 11 pushed a large chunk of the GOP back onto an internationalist course. George W. Bush, who denounced nation-building during his campaign, has found himself presiding over the economic and political reconstruction of two Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Before the Iraq war, conservative complaints about Bush were largely confined to a figure like Pat Buchanan. "Lust for destruction is not policy, no matter how much Pentagon hawks and neoconservative media trumpets may yearn to plow salt into the fields of Iraq," his American Conservative magazine declared in fall 2002. In response, in the April 7 issue of National Review last year, David Frum, coauthor of the new neoconservative manifesto "An End to Evil," denounced "unpatriotic conservatives," declaring that "they have turned their backs on their country. Now we turn our backs on them."

But in recent months, the kind of apprehensions expressed by Simes and others about U.S. overreaching have spread. According to realist thinker Fareed Zakaria, author of the bestseller "The Future of Freedom," a skeptical look at exporting democracy, "At some point denial will stop working, the markets will react … and the budget will be under severe pressure. Then Congress will begin searching for cuts, and spending on foreign affairs, even military spending, will get the ax. And America`s grand new engagement in the world will turn out to be short-lived indeed."

In Congress, conservatives like Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.) are expressing doubts about the country`s new activism around the world: "I continue to believe that this war came about because [Bush] is surrounded by big-government neocons in key foreign policy positions rather than traditional conservatives," Duncan wrote last year.

Indeed, it is precisely the grand neoconservative push to democratize the Third World that has alarmed writers such as conservative commentator George F. Will. In his article "Can We Make Iraq Democratic?" in a recent City Journal, Will warns against Bush`s contention that any country can become a democracy. According to Will, nothing is more alluring than the idea "suddenly central to America`s international exertions … that nations are mechanical, not organic things. And therefore a can-do people with an aptitude for engineering — people like Americans — can build nations. These ideas share a dangerous lack of respect for the elemental, powerful impulses that produce nations."

So far, such views have held no sway with neocons in the administration. The U.S. has had less than a year to create a functioning government in Iraq, which, they insist, is far too little time to declare the venture a failure. But if the worst-case fears of the realists become reality, then the GOP will find itself in for some agonizing self-examination.

Just as Democrats shied away from an activist foreign policy for decades following Vietnam, so a Bush defeat in November would probably trigger a prolonged civil war between realists and neoconservatives over the use and abuse of U.S. power at home and abroad.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

[Joerver]

__________________

"The price of oil hit a 13-year high. What a coincidence, wasn`t it 13 years ago the last Bush was president?"


"Some people are criticizing Kerry for going on vacation this week right when he needs to distinguish himself from President Bush. A newspaper printed the titles of the four books he`s going to be reading in five days. Hey, just reading four books in five days distinguishes him from President Bush right there."

Jay Leno

[Joerver]

After 9/11, U.S. policy built on world bases
James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, March 21, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ


URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/21/MNGJ65OS4J1.DTL


Government officials have been searching for suitable memorials to the thousands killed in the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, but the most telling monument, which best illustrates the historic turn America`s approach to global problems has taken since the attacks, may turn out to be an obscure American air base in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.

The Bush administration honored the memory of Chief Peter J. Ganci Jr., the most senior New York City Fire Department official killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center, by naming the new military base there for him.

It was a fitting choice because the facility is just one in a string of new overseas military deployments, beyond Afghanistan and Iraq, that have become a defining characteristic of President Bush`s tough style of foreign engagement.

One year after U.S. tanks rolled through Iraq and more than two years after the United States bombed the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan, the administration has instituted what some experts describe as the most militarized foreign policy machine in modern history.

The policy has involved not just resorting to military action, or the threat of action, but constructing an arc of new facilities in such places as Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Qatar and Djibouti that the Pentagon calls "lily pads." They are seen not merely as a means of defending the host countries -- the traditional Cold War role of such installations -- but as jumping-off points for future "preventive wars" and military missions.

In a major policy statement issued in September 2002 and titled the National Security Strategy, the president declared, "It is time to reaffirm the essential role of American military strength," and he detailed two significant new uses of that might: pre-emptively attacking would-be enemies, as in Iraq, and preventing rivals from even considering matching U.S. strength. It was a new assertion of U.S. primacy, not through diplomacy or economics but through unquestioned military domination.

This sharp turn in U.S. policy has ignited a passionate debate -- well beyond the dispute over the wisdom of the war in Iraq -- over the proper role of U.S. power and whether the focus on the projection of military force has taken attention away from such other critical issues as economics and trade, the stunning rise of China as an economic power and the need to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"There`s clearly been a militarization of foreign policy, initially justified on the basis of the events of 9/11," said Charlene Barshefsky, the United States trade representative under President Bill Clinton. "Unfortunately, the military portion of the policy has now defined our entire policy."

Under the Bush administration`s plans, some older deployments in areas such as South Korea, Japan and Germany may be reduced, but more troops are being shifted to the most volatile and dangerous regions of the globe. It is, experts say, the most extensive realignment of U.S. power in the past half century.

Writing last year in the normally dry journal Foreign Affairs, Kurt Campbell and Celeste Johnson Ward of the Center for Strategic and International Studies found the sheer scale of the shift so profound that they reached for a cosmic analogy, calling it "a sort of military `big bang.` "

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, an architect of the Iraq war, articulated some of the thinking behind the new posture in an interview with the New York Times in 2002, saying the function of the string of new bases in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa "may be more political than actually military.``

The new installations, he added, would "send a message to everybody, including strategically important countries like Uzbekistan, that we have a capacity to come back in and will come back in -- we`re not just going to forget about them.``

The administration has argued that the policy is needed to remove regimes that support terrorists and to confront the new threats of a terrorist enemy that operates globally, preys on weak governments and targets civilians. In a commencement address at West Point in 2002, the president declared: "In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act."

More recently, the Bush administration appears to have accepted that it needs to pursue a variety of approaches to solving some problems -- a reflection, perhaps, of the difficulties it has encountered in Iraq. For instance, the United States has invited the United Nations to play a larger role in holding elections and restoring services in Iraq.

Rather than unilaterally confronting the other two nations named in the "axis of evil," the United States is working jointly with China, South Korea, Japan and Russia to try to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programs. And the White House, at least for now, is allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency to negotiate an end to Iran`s nuclear program.

In each of these instances, though, the administration has hinted that it is prepared to take military action if negotiation does not produce results, and it has put bases in place to undertake those missions.

But, some experts warn, the military emphasis may have made the United States less safe by placing troops in harm`s way and by inflaming anti- American sentiment abroad. In their Foreign Affairs essay, Campbell and Ward warned that the expansion of America`s military reach "could well increase foreign anxiety about and distrust of the United States."

Other policy analysts and former government officials express concern that the military emphasis is coming at the expense of equally pressing issues.

"The apparently overwhelming emphasis on the security issues to the near total exclusion of economic issues is short-sighted," said C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics in Washington and a former senior Treasury Department official.

A report last year by a bipartisan commission of Middle East experts appointed by Congress favored the administration`s policy of seeking democratic change in the region, but concluded that the singular focus on armed might rather than diplomacy and aid threatened the program with failure.

"In this time of peril, public diplomacy is absurdly and dangerously underfunded," the commission said.

"The real issue is we`ve lost the capability to be a good listener," said Ellen Laipson, president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a national security research institute in Washington, and a former senior intelligence official under Republican and Democratic administrations. "We don`t have to negotiate. We don`t have to compromise. The sheer ambition of the policy is what`s causing the resentment."

She added, "We are lagging behind badly in using the kind of power that will predominate in the 21st century."

She said that so-called "soft power" included economic strength, working through multilateral organizations, diplomatic arm-twisting where necessary and, when confronted with issues of force, working through international alliances such as NATO.

Chalmers Johnson, a professor emeritus at UC San Diego and an Asia expert, says he believes that few Americans are even aware of the extent of the military`s reach and the profound influence it is having on policymaking in this country and public opinion abroad.

Johnson says the Pentagon`s calculation that it owns or rents 702 bases in about 130 countries -- over and above the 6,000 bases in the United States -- is a gross underestimate because it fails to include installations in such places as Kosovo and Bosnia, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan, and secret installations in Israel, Australia and England, among others.

"As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power," Johnson wrote in a recent book, "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic."

Niall Ferguson, a historian at New York University and a senior research fellow at Stanford`s Hoover Institution and at Oxford University, generally supports the use of U.S. force in a dangerous world. But in a recent book, "Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power," he describes the United States as "an empire in denial" because it hasn`t acknowledged the immensity of its globe-girdling base system.

According to the Pentagon and GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank that tracks military data, the United States has constructed a big new base, Camp Stronghold Freedom, in Uzbekistan to serve as a logistical hub that could supply military missions anywhere in oil-rich Central Asia or the Middle East.

In Kyrgyzstan, the military has airlifted in such equipment as fire trucks, cargo loaders and tractors. "We`re establishing a mini Air Force base from which we can fly a variety of military missions, mainly airlift, aerial refueling and tactical air," Brig. Gen. Christopher Kelly told the New York Times in an interview.

Much of the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan was conducted from bases in Pakistan.

Roughly 153,000 troops are in Iraq and another 11,000 in Afghanistan, many of them positioned in what experts say are large permanent bases.

New facilities have been constructed at Camp Le Monier, in Djibouti, at the mouth of the Red Sea. The installation, with about 1,600 troops, is regarded as critical to controlling the entryway to the sea, which runs up the western flank of Saudi Arabia, and for gathering intelligence on terrorist groups in the Horn of Africa.

An important new base with about 1,600 troops has been put in place in Qatar. With the U.S. military having withdrawn from its bases in Saudi Arabia, the new installation in Qatar and the new bases in Iraq are regarded as key to protecting U.S. interests in the Middle East.

There are still 5,000 troops in Kosovo and 3,000 in Bosnia from earlier peacekeeping operations. The U.S.-led international peacekeeping force sent to Haiti earlier this month includes 1,600 Marines.

Teams of American special forces have been sent to Georgia, in the former Soviet Union, to train the local military and, the nation`s president has said, to help protect oil pipelines, according to Johnson.

There are also clusters of special forces in Colombia, where they train local troops to fight leftist guerrillas and police narcotics trafficking -- and also to provide a way to gather intelligence in South America. In the Philippines, more than 1,000 troops are working with the Philippine military to combat terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, about 75,000 soldiers are still in Germany; 47,000 in Japan, where the United States maintains 73 bases; 37,000 in South Korea; 13,000 in Italy; and 12,000 in England -- all left from the Cold War. The military also maintains major air and submarine bases in Guam and Diego Garcia.

According to the Pentagon`s Manpower Report, before Sept. 11, 2001, there were 255,000 U.S. military personnel in 153 countries. According to GlobalSecurity.org, that number was closer to 350,000 as of early February. Johnson calculates that if civilians and dependents are added in, the number is 531,000. What worries some experts is that other important global trends, especially the growing economic competitiveness of Asia, are passing the United States by. For instance, China has surpassed Japan to become the world`s third-largest trading power, and soon it will overtake Germany to capture the No. 2 position, behind the United States, Bergsten said.

That development does not seem to have gotten much attention from the Bush administration. For example, in October China`s leaders launched what has been called a charm offensive throughout Asia, using several important regional meetings to strike business deals, offer improved trade terms and coordinate economic policies. At the same meetings, Bush spoke almost exclusively about the war on terror, in spite of the fact that the U.S. trade deficit exploded last year to a record $549.4 billion, largely because of imports from Asia.

"The U.S. seems to be sort of missing in action" on economic issues in Asia, said Michael Armacost, a former ambassador to Japan and now a professor at Stanford.

Jeffrey Garten, the dean of Yale`s School of Management and an international policy official in Republican and Democratic administrations, said that by failing to take charge of important economic and trade discussions, particularly in Asia, U.S. power was actually declining, even as the military`s reach has been extended.

"Before, we wanted to be seen as the world economic leader," Garten said. "That is not the case now. You just don`t hear it. In the trade arena, economic policy is subordinate to our security policies. We use it to buy friends."

Even supporters of the administration`s ambitious efforts in the Middle East say the military focus, without equally energetic efforts on diplomacy and programs to open up economies and create jobs for young Arabs, could produce a disaster. The administration has put forward three programs for political and economic reforms in the Middle East but hasn`t developed them.

"We have a moment of opportunity to create something important, but it must be done comprehensively," said Edward Djerejian, director of the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Israel. "You have to do it all at once, or it won`t succeed, and that is not happening yet."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
U.S. troops around the globe
Approximately 350,000 U.S. troops were stationed around the world as of early February, according to GlobalSecurity.org. About 250,000 were deployed in combat, peacekeeping and counterterrorism operations, and an additional 100, 000 in Germany, Japan, Italy and England were serving routine tours of duty.

Bosnia and Kosovo: About 8,000 U.S. troops are part of NATO`s peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Georgia: Approximately 75 Marines are training four Georgian battalions in counterterrorism.

Haiti: A multinational peacekeeping force, including 1,600 U.S. Marines, was sent earlier this month.

South Korea: Approximately 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed here, some within a few miles of the demilitarized zone.

Colombia: Clusters of special forces soldiers train Colombian troops to fight leftist guerrillas and police narcotics trafficking.

Yemen: U.S. special operations forces trained 200 Yemeni soldiers in counterterrorism tactics last year.

Djibouti: A task force of 1,600 provides support for counterterrorism activities in the Horn of Africa region and monitors the southern entry to the Red Sea.

Iraq: Approximately 153,000 troops.

Afghanistan: Many of the 11,000 troops are positioned in what experts say are large, permanent bases.

Philippines: More than 1,000 troops are working with the Philippine military to combat terrorism.

Qatar: Since the American military withdrawal from Saudi Arabia, an important new installation in Qatar with about 1,600 troops is regarded as critical to U.S. strategy in the Middle East.

Germany: 75,000

Japan: 47,000

Italy: 13,000

England: 12,000

Source: GlobalSecurity.org

E-mail James Sterngold at [e-mail].

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle |

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What Iraqis fear most -- sectarian violence
WHAT LIES AHEAD: A difficult struggle to remake a nation
Borzou Daragahi, Chronicle Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 16, 2004

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle hat über die ganze Woche Artikel veröffentlicht über den Irak-Krieg:`Ein Jahr danach`. Dies ist der 1. Artikel. Die anderen Artikel unter dem Link:

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/…

Baghdad -- A year after U.S. bombs shook Baghdad, launching the lightning war that toppled Saddam Hussein, occupation forces are preparing to relinquish control of the country, but Iraqis are preparing for a long, perilous battle of a different kind: the struggle to define the future of their fractious nation.

If they succeed, they could provide a model for the entire Arab Middle East. But if they fail, the entire mission could end in disaster.

The greatest danger now is virulent sectarianism -- long suppressed under Hussein`s iron rule -- that divides the nation, from autonomous Kurdistan in the north to the pious Shiite-dominated south, from the simmering Sunni Triangle to the modern, secular quarters of Baghdad.

"All of this political posturing will lead to a partitioning of Iraq,`` said Abdul Razzaq Abdul Fatah al Rawi, a businessman from the militant Sunni Arab stronghold of Fallujah. "What about unity? What about Iraq for Iraqis?"

At the heart of the conflict are basic questions about what it means to be an Iraqi and what common denominators bind together this nation of 25 million people.

"Up until now, an Iraqi has not been a citizen in the (real) sense of the word -- someone who wants to take part in the civic culture and administration of the country while respecting the rights of others," said Professor Albert Issa, the Christian Iraqi head of the political science department at the University of Sulaymaniyah.

Now, Iraqis are being called upon to take up the mantle of citizenship.

Sometimes the battle to shape a new national identity plays out peacefully in city councils or in the U.S.-supported Governing Council. Too often, though, the battleground is the street, where religious and ethnic differences translate into bloody violence.

Since bombs exploded during Shiite religious rites in Karbala and Baghdad early this month, killing at least 181 people, at least six Sunni mosques have been attacked, says Hareth Alwiri, spokesman for the Committee of Islamic Clerics, a Sunni group.

"Our greatest fear and worry is sectarian war," said Alwiri.

In northeastern Baghdad, assailants in pickup trucks tossed a grenade into the courtyard at the Badria Dulaymi mosque this week as worshipers finished evening prayers, killing one and injuring two others.

Religious elders blamed the attack on Americans, Iranians, foreign al Qaeda operatives, Israelis -- anyone but fellow Iraqis -- and urged their young parishioners to remain calm. But the Sunnis seethed with anger at Shiites, who were long oppressed under Hussein but are seen as holding the upper hand in the new Iraq.

"If they want to fight, we will fight," said Mohammad Najid, a young Sunni standing outside the mosque. "The reason we didn`t get these guys in the first place is that we don`t have enough rifles. Some of our guys have AKs (AK- 47 rifles). Maybe we`ll start carrying them around again."

Among Iraq`s Shiites, who comprise 60 percent of the population, there is a strong sense that their time has come, and they are acting on that feeling. At this month`s Ashura celebrations marking the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, Shiites took their once-banned religious processions into Sunni neighborhoods. Many community leaders privately worry that such triumphalism could lead to civil war once the U.S.-led occupation force hands over power at midnight on June 30.

But in the poor Shiite slums of west Baghdad, where 2 million Iraqis live amid crumbling buildings, mounds of trash and raw sewage, politics and Islamic identity have become one.

"It`s time for the Shiites to collect," said Abdul Kareem Sheqeet, a decorated Navy officer in the Iran-Iraq war who was jailed and tortured for four years by Hussein`s Sunni-dominated government.

Even in the homogenous Shiite south, however, many fear that fighting will break out among the various Shiite political parties and groups once coalition forces hand control to the Iraqis unless a strong leader -- a benevolent version of Saddam Hussein -- takes control. Already, such militias as the Iranian-linked Badr Brigades and Iraqi Hezbollah are vying for power and supremacy there.

Not all signs point to sectarian war. Iraq`s Shiites converted from Sunni Islam only in recent centuries and still maintain strong ties to their tribal roots, whether Sunni or Shiite. And several decades of war and violent political repression have bled Iraqis, leaving few with the stomach for civil war.

Some Sunni leaders like Alwiri are trying to keep things calm by channeling their followers` energies into political and community organizations.

"Religion here deals with politics as well as moral guidance," he said. "We believe that God almighty must be obeyed whether in praying or living. We will not organize ourselves as a political front, but we`ll intervene in politics."

Secular political groups without allegiance to ethnic groups or religious sects exist in Iraq and maintain strong ties to the U.S.-led occupation authority, holding a handful of seats on the Governing Council. But they have little popular support and, since they are mostly led by exiles who fled during Hussein reign, have little legitimacy among Iraqis who suffered under the previous regime or fought against it.

"What makes us angry is we feel like we fought against Saddam and we`re not part of the new Iraq," said Salman Sharif Duaffar, who organized a daring 1996 assassination attempt on Hussein`s son Uday.

The U.S.-led war to topple Hussein`s Sunni-dominated government depended in large measure on the participation of Iraq`s Kurds. But a year later, these U.S. partners` demands for cultural, economic and political power threaten to destabilize the country.

In the Kurdish-dominated areas, demands for an autonomous federal Kurdish state now encompass a huge swath of northern Iraq, including Arab cities, farmlands near Saddam Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit and territory by the Syrian border.

Earlier this month, Kurds attacked an ethnic Turkoman offices in Kirkuk, smashing windows and hurling rocks. Last month, they handed a petition with 1. 7 million signatures to the United Nations, calling for a referendum on the future of Kurdistan.

"Basically, Kurdish people got a lot out of the toppling of the regime," said Mola Bakhtiyar, a Kurdish guerrilla leader whose fighters captured his hometown of Khanqin during the war, with American help. "Our problem is not whether we can survive or not. It`s what more can we get."

Much of Khanqin`s Kurdish population, including Bakhtiyar, had been displaced by Saddam Hussein`s policy of "Arabization" in the oil-rich region. Now he is determined to retain control of "Kurdish" land, even if it comes at the expense of Arab residents.

"The Western mentality can`t understand our mentality,`` said Bakhtiyar. "I was humiliated and my land usurped. The problem of what to do with the Arab who has taken my land is a very small problem. I just want him to go back to where he came from."

But here, too, there are signs of a political maturing.

After Kurds were freed from Hussein`s chokehold in 1991, under the protection of the U.S.-British "no-fly zone," they descended into four years of bloody civil war in which at least a thousand combatants died. But within their autonomous zone, Kurds have begun the process of unifying what had been two competing governments.

"Our civil society has grown remarkably over the last few years," said Amanj Saeed, who runs a health center at the University of Sulaymaniyah. "We`ve learned that we can`t solve our differences with weapons."

U.S. plans for a peaceful, democratic Iraq depend on the willing participation of groups whose demands for their own cultural, economic and political power may ultimately prove incompatible -- both with each other and with the U.S. government`s vision of postwar Iraq.

And the strains evident now are likely to become more severe as the time for the U.S. handover approaches. The secular, political middle class has been all but marginalized by the more dominant religious groups.

Kurdish leader Nechirwan Mustafa, who studied in Baghdad during the 1960s and proudly considers himself an Iraqi as much as a Kurd, sees his country`s ethnic and religious rivalries as signs of a political culture experiencing growing pains.

"After 35 years of this totalitarian government, we need at least two years to reorganize this society," he said.

One year after the war began, the questions remains: Can the U.S.-led occupation and the Iraqi transitional government that takes over from it prevent civil war among the country`s sparring factions until then?

Even Iraqis are not sure.

"As Iraqis, we are helpful, hospitable and will always go out of our way to give you a hand when you`re having a difficulty," said Musa Abdul Hussein, a 46-year-old Sunni Arab employee of a currency exchange in Adhamiya. "At the same time, we`re hot-blooded, and our impulsive reactions are violent and quick."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the series
This week marks the first anniversary of the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Over the next several days, The Chronicle reports from Iraq, Washington, D.C., and the Bay Area on the impact the war has left one year later.

• Today: Iraqis prepare for the long journey to self-rule

Wednesday: Assessing the work of the intelligence agencies

Thursday: How Bay Area companies benefited from the military buildup

Friday: The mood on the streets of Iraq on the anniversary of the start of the war

Saturday: The struggles of those recovering from war wounds

Sunday: The increasing number of U.S. military missions around the globe

Monday: A look at the peace activists who protested the war

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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When politics trumps science
Die Bush -Regierung hat wissenschaftliche Gutachten manipuliert. Wenn man glaubt das die Erde in 6 Tagen erschaffen wurde, ist jede Wissenschaft suspekt.
Zurück ins Mittelalter!

Sunday, March 21, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/21/EDG2R4SIOC1.DTL


DOES IT really matter that the Bush administration has tried to manipulate science in the service of its conservative political agenda?

Yes, and here`s why. The federal government`s agencies are charged with providing expert, impartial scientific advice to Congress and the American people. When this information is suppressed, altered or ignored, our health --

and that of the environment -- is endangered.

Last month, 62 of the nation`s top scientists, including a dozen Nobel laureates, denounced the Bush administration for "misrepresenting and suppressing scientific knowledge for political purposes."

The scientists accused the administration of distorting research findings, stacking scientific advisory panels with unqualified conservative ideologues, deleting accurate information from government Web sites, censoring or suppressing reports by the government`s own scientists, declining to seek independent scientific advice from leaders in their fields, misleading the public on issues, ranging from safe levels of mercury emissions and lead poisoning to climate change, blocking the publication of research that could adversely affect particular industries and slashing funds for scientific research that conflicts with the administration`s political goals.

These are serious charges, but they are neither new nor inaccurate. Scientists have long been complaining that the Bush administration uses a political litmus test to vet both scientists and the scientific evidence provided to the public.

Concerned about this distortion, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., compiled an extensive study titled "Politics and Science in the Bush administration," which details many of the deceptions and distortions that have occurred during the last few years.

Some of the abuses have received widespread publicity. In October 2002, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention replaced an online fact sheet about the use of condoms with one that was more palatable to social conservatives who oppose government attempts to support birth control.

The initial posting included information about the proper use of condoms and cited evidence that sex education does not promote increased sexual activity among young people. The revised fact sheet lacked instructions on condom use and instead emphasized the frequency of condom failure and the effectiveness of sexual abstinence.

The State Department`s Agency for International Development (USAID) also censored its Web site. The original information included two documents on condom effectiveness, which stated that "latex condoms are highly effective in preventing HIV infections," and described condom distribution as a "cornerstone of HIV prevention strategy."

The revised Web site deleted one of the two documents. It also eliminated much of the second document and only left in the words that "condom use can reduce the risk of HIV infection" and "while no barrier method is 100 percent effective, correct and consistent use of latex condoms can reduce the risk of transmission of HIV . . ."

To press its case against abortion, the Bush administration suggested that abortion could be a risk factor for breast cancer. In 1997, however, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine had already discredited such a relationship.

In response, members of Congress funded a three-day conference of scientific experts who again concluded that no relationship existed between abortion and breast cancer.

According to the Waxman report, various agencies have appointed people with slim scientific credentials but strong ties to industry; nonexperts with a conservative ideological agenda; and opposed the appointments of some of the most respected scientists in their fields.

A highly publicized example of such political vetting occurred recently when the Bush administration pulled Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, a distinguished professor of biochemistry at the University of California at San Francisco, from the President`s Council on Bio-Ethics panel because she supported experiments that used embryonic stem cells for research.

She and a colleague were replaced with new members who supported the president`s political views on embryonic stem-cell research.

The influence of politics on science has also endangered public health. According to the Los Angeles Times, when the Environmental Protection Agency created new regulations for mercury emissions from power plants , "political appointees bypassed agency staff, as well as a federal advisory panel." The agency crafted "a rule on mercury emissions preferred by the industry and the White House. EPA staffers say they were told not to undertake the normal scientific and economic studies, which are required under a standing executive order."

The result? The proposal to regulate mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants used language provided by lobbyists to justify standards that won`t meet government deadlines for lowering emissions. (Under fire from environmentalists, the Bush administration has just decided to reconsider this decision.)

When politics trumps science, no one wins: The Bush administration, already burdened by a growing credibility gap, squanders even greater public trust; scientists waste precious time fighting political battles; and we, the nations` citizens, lose expert advice on how to protect our health and that of the environment.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We pay with our health
The Bush administration is waging a campaign to alter, eliminate, distort or suppress any scientific evidence that doesn`t support its policies or ideology. Here are but a few examples:

-- Abortion: To strengthen its anti-abortion agenda, the administration portrayed abortion as a risk factor in breast cancer, which it is not.

-- Environmental health: The Bush administration has suppressed evidence about safe levels of mercury emissions and lead. Mercury and lead contamination are linked to neurological and development impairment in children.

-- The environment: President Bush has dismissed the dangers posed by global warming and has, by executive order, reversed or relaxed environmental regulations that have protected the American public from air, water and soil pollution.

-- Sexual abstinence: To support its abstinence-only sex education campaign, the government deleted important information from a Web site about how using condoms can help prevent HIV infection.

-- Stem cell research: The Bush administration recently replaced two eminent scientists on the Council on Bio-Ethics who disagreed with the administration`s political opposition to embryonic stem-cell research.

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

[Schürger]

Früher standen die Führer=Heerführer an vorderster Front.

Schicken wir den Bush, den Powell(der war allerdings schon), einen Rumsfeld, seine Sicherheitsberaterin usw.
doch mal dorthin.

Vielleicht ändert er dann seine Meinung.

[Joerver]

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 21. März 2004, 12:06
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,291707,00.html

Siehe auch #13919 LATimes von gestern.

Antiterrorkampf

Ex-Topberater kritisiert Bushs Strategie

Richard Clarke, führender Antiterror-Experte in den USA und ehemaliger Präsidentenberater, hat George W. Bush ein verheerendes Zeugnis ausgestellt: Dieser habe Terrorwarnungen monatelang ignoriert. Clarke sagte, Amerika sei heute weniger sicher als vor Bushs Amtsantritt.

New York - In einem Interview mit dem Sender CBS, das Sonntagnacht (Ortszeit) ausgestrahlt werden soll, sagte Clarke ironisch: "Ich finde es unerhört, dass der Präsident sich der Wiederwahl stellt, angesichts der Tatsache, dass er beim Terrorismus so große Dinge geleistet hat." Dann fügte er hinzu: "Er ignorierte ihn. Monatelang schenkte er ihm keine Beachtung, zu einer Zeit, als wir noch etwas gegen die Angriffe vom 11. September hätten unternehmen können." Bush habe im Kampf gegen den Terrorismus "furchtbar schlechte Arbeit" geleistet.

Clarke, der vier amerikanische Präsidenten beriet und Bushs führender Beamter bei der Terrorabwehr war, schreibt in einem Buch, das kommende Woche erscheinen soll, Bush hätte al-Qaida und deren afghanische Trainingslager ausheben sollen, bevor es zu den Anschlägen von New York und Washington gekommen ist. "Wie Bush auf al-Qaida reagiert hat - vor dem 11. September, indem er nichts getan hat -, und was er nach dem 11. September unternahm, hat unser Land unsicherer gemacht."

Bushs Sicherheitsberaterin Condoleezza Rice entgegnete, Bush habe al-Qaida betreffend zunächst die Politik seines Amtsvorgängers Bill Clintons verfolgt, bis er dann seine eigene Strategie verfolgt habe.

Clarke berichtet auch, Bush habe bereits unmittelbar nach den Anschlägen vom 11. September 2001 einen Angriff auf den Irak erwogen. Er selbst und andere Experten hätten Bush und Kabinettsmitglieder wie Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld beraten. "Rumsfeld sagte, wir müssen den Irak bombardieren", sagte Clarke. "Wir alle sagten, `aber nein, nein, al-Qaida ist in Afghanistan`. Und Rumsfeld sagte: `Es gibt keine guten Ziele in Afghanistan und es gibt viele gute Ziele im Irak`."

"Sie haben am 11. 9. über den Irak gesprochen", sagte Clarke gegenüber CBS. "Sie haben am 12. 9. darüber gesprochen." Er habe sich gewundert, dass die Regierung sofort an den Irak gedacht habe statt an al-Qaida und Bin Laden. "Ich denke, sie wollten glauben, dass es eine Verbindung gab", sagte Clarke. "Aber die CIA saß da, das FBI saß da, ich saß da, und wir sagten, `Wir haben seit Jahren diese Frage im Blick. Seit Jahren beobachten wir das und es gibt einfach keine Verbindung.`"

Clarkes Abteilung für Cybersicherheit wurde nach dem von Bush neu geschaffenen Heimatschutzministerium in dieses eingegliedert. Er beendete seinen Dienst im Februar 2003.

Im Januar hatte CBS ein Interview mit dem ehemaligen US-Finanzminister Paul O`Neill ausgestrahlt, in dem auch dieser von einem frühen Plan der US-Regierung für einen Sturz des irakischen Präsidenten Saddam Hussein gesprochen hatte. Bush habe bereits bei Amtsantritt die Absicht gehabt, in den Irak einzumarschieren, hatte O`Neill erklärt. Er betonte zudem, keine Belege für die Existenz von irakischen Massenvernichtungswaffen gesehen zu haben, die Hauptbegründung der USA für den Kriegsbeginn. O`Neill war im Dezember 2002 von seinem Posten entlassen worden. Bislang wurden keine Massenvernichtungswaffen im Irak entdeckt.

Unterdessen hat der Biograph von Osama Bin Ladens Stellvertreter Aiman al-Sawahiri, der pakistanische Journalist Hamid Mir, berichtet, al-Qaida habe auf dem zentralasiatischen Schwarzmarkt bereits hergestellte atomare Waffen gekauft. Gegenüber einem australischen Fernsehsender sagte Mir, al-Sawahiri habe behauptet, auf dem Schwarzmarkt gebe es so genannte intelligente Bomben im Aktentaschenformat.

Auf die Rückfrage des Journalisten, es sei schwer zu glauben, dass al-Qaida Nuklearwaffen habe, habe al-Sawahiri gelacht und geantwortet: "Mr. Mir, wenn Sie 30 Millionen Dollar haben, gehen Sie auf den Schwarzmarkt in Zentralasien, nehmen Sie mit irgendeinem verbitterten Sowjet-Wissenschaftler Kontakt auf, und Sie können einige dieser Bomben erhalten." Wann das Gespräch zwischen Mir und al-Sawahiri stattfand ist nicht bekannt.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

[Joerver]

Sunday, March 21, 2004
War News for March 21, 2004 draft

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring `em on: Two US soldiers killed, seven wounded in rocket attack near Fallujah.

Bring `em on: Green Zone mortared in Baghdad. One US soldier wounded.

Bring `em on: Attempted pipeline sabotage reported near Kirkuk.

Bring `em on: One Iraqi killed, four wounded in mortar attack on PUK office in Mosul.

Bring `em on: One Iraqi killed, ten wounded in Baghdad mortar attack.

Bring `em on: One Iraqi policeman killed, two wounded by bomb in Khalis.

Bring `em on: Roadside bomb in Mosul wounds one Iraqi civilian. (Last paragraph.)

CENTCOM reports one US soldier killed, two injured in vehicle accident near Taji.

Happy anniversary. "The millions of Iraqis who exulted in Saddam`s downfall did not publicly celebrate the day, nor were there street protests from those who enjoyed his patronage - partly because public gatherings are vulnerable to suicide attackers, car bombs, shootings and other violence."

More happy anniversaries coming. "Despite optimistic predictions from the Bush administration about an emerging democracy and plans to transfer sovereignty to an Iraqi government this summer, experts in foreign policy say Americans should prepare for many more years of deadly roadside bombings and U.S. and civilian casualties. Americans should also be prepared to pay billions per year for Iraq`s reconstruction."

Lieutenant AWOL`s shabby coalition. "Because the coalition is one of individual governments without the cohesion provided by the United Nations or NATO, its makeup can change as governments do. Those who, in Bush`s language, are `with us` before national elections can suddenly be `against us` depending on an election`s results."

Iraqis feel humiliated in an unstable nation. "`Now I will list the bad things,` said Saad as he entertained two visiting Americans in his living room and served them cans of Pepsi. `There is no stability, there is no security, there is no clear future. Along with a feeling of humiliation.` One year after American forces invaded Iraq and overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein, the Saads` fears and complaints are one way to understand why many Iraqis haven`t embraced the American-led occupation."

Commentary

Analysis: "Retired Gen. William Odom, director of national security studies at the Hudson Institute in Washington, said the Iraq war has already weakened the broad international unity Bush commanded after Sept. 11. Then, Odom said, NATO for the first time invoked Article 5 of its founding constitution, essentially declaring that the terrorist attacks on the United States constituted attacks on the trans-Atlantic alliance as a whole. `Everybody was with us,` Odom said. `Today, a remarkable number of people have left us. The question is when and why. It starts with the president`s 2002 State of the Union message, when he announced the axis of evil. The Europeans were absolutely shocked. They said, `We didn`t sign up to fight Iraq, Iran and North Korea. We signed up to fight al Qaeda." That was the fork in the road` Odom said. `By waging war in Iraq, the president has managed to essentially erode the anti-terrorism coalition.`"

Opinion: "America went to war in a dishonest way that alienated key allies, divided and weakened the United Nations, outraged the world community, made us more hated in the world and made the war on terrorism more difficult to win. The decision on war or peace is the most important decision any president ever makes."

Opinion: "Of the numerous misrepresentations in the ads, I find particularly annoying the claim that Kerry voted to cut combat pay for soldiers. In fact, as the public record abundantly proves, it was the Bush administration that opposed extending the period for increases in combat pay for soldiers in both Afghanistan and Iraq by $75 a month for imminent danger pay and by another $150 for family separation allowance. The administration backed down because of public outcry."

Opinion: "Their 507th Army Ordinance Maintenance Co. was ambushed March 23, 2003. Eleven soldiers died; six were captured. A lone soldier held out until the end; he ultimately was fatally shot and stabbed by Iraqi troops. When American forces later retrieved Lynch from an Iraq hospital, the Pentagon immediately created the myths of a daring raid to rescue her and of her heroic resistance to the Iraqis. U.S. soldiers don’t need myths to bolster their reputation. This isn’t like the Vietnam conflict, when some troops found themselves reviled by folks back home. Americans have come to their senses. Irrespective of their views about the ongoing war in Iraq, Americans are unified in their support and concern for U.S. servicemen and women."

Analysis: "Honduras is sticking with its plan to withdraw 300 soldiers in July, and when Bush recently met the Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende pointedly refused to say how long he would leave his 1300 troops in Iraq. Small beer, perhaps. But it is all symptomatic of rising anger and tension among the old and valued friends at the insistence of Bush - who may well be judged by history to have been the ventriloquist`s doll for the ideologues around him - that his very necessary war on terrorism did not need to be swamped by war and its uncertain aftermath in Iraq."

Editorial: "When Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the administration continue their bullheaded insistence that it does not really matter whether the central reasons for invading and occupying Iraq have come to pass, it serves only to drive away key coalition members such as Spain. The latter`s frustration and distrust were underscored by the defeat last week of its pro-U.S. government… With the November election looming, it is past time for the Bush administration to come clean with the American people and its allies, and admit its mistakes in Iraq. That might help it make its case for more help from abroad for the important work that remains to be done. But continuing to go it alone, with no end in sight, is not an option."

Casualty Reports

Local story: Texas Marine wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Pennsylvania soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Ohio Marine dies of wounds received in Iraq.





# posted by yankeedoodle : 3:14 AM
Comment (1)

[Joerver]

_______________

[Joerver]

Es scheint ein dickes, fettes Problem auf Bush zuzukommen. Es wurde immer schon behauptet, dass sich nicht um die Terrorwarnungen gekümmert hat.

March 20, 2004
Clinton Aides Plan to Tell Panel of Warning Bush Team on Qaeda
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, March 19 — Senior Clinton administration officials called to testify next week before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks say they are prepared to detail how they repeatedly warned their Bush administration counterparts in late 2000 that Al Qaeda posed the worst security threat facing the nation — and how the new administration was slow to act.

They said the warnings were delivered in urgent post-election intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 for Condoleezza Rice, who became Mr. Bush`s national security adviser; Stephen Hadley, now Ms. Rice`s deputy; and Philip D. Zelikow, a member of the Bush transition team, among others.

One official scheduled to testify, Richard A. Clarke, who was President Bill Clinton`s counterterrorism coordinator, said in an interview that the warning about the Qaeda threat could not have been made more bluntly to the incoming Bush officials in intelligence briefings that he led.

At the time of the briefings, there was extensive evidence tying Al Qaeda to the bombing in Yemen two months earlier of an American warship, the Cole, in which 17 sailors were killed.

"It was very explicit," Mr. Clarke said of the warning given to the Bush administration officials. "Rice was briefed, and Hadley was briefed, and Zelikow sat in." Mr. Clarke served as Mr. Bush`s counterterrorism chief in the early months of the administration, but after Sept. 11 was given a more limited portfolio as the president`s cyberterrorism adviser.

The sworn testimony from the high-ranking Clinton administration officials — including Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton`s national security adviser — is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

They are expected to testify along with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who will answer for the Bush administration, as well as George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence in both administrations.

While Clinton officials have offered similar accounts in the past, a new public review of how they warned Mr. Bush`s aides about the need to deal quickly with the Qaeda threat could prove awkward to the White House, especially in the midst of a presidential campaign. But given the witnesses` prominence in the Clinton administration, supporters of Mr. Bush may see political motives in the testimony of some of them.

The testimony could also prove uncomfortable for the commission, since Mr. Zelikow is now the executive director of the bipartisan panel. And the Clinton administration officials can expect to come under tough questioning about their own performance in office and why they did not do more to respond to the terrorist threat in the late 1990`s.

The White House does not dispute that intelligence briefings about the Qaeda threat occurred during the transition, and the commission has received extensive notes and other documentation from the White House and Clinton administration officials about what was discussed.

What is at issue, Clinton administration officials say, is whether their Bush administration counterparts acted on the warnings, and how quickly. The Clinton administration witnesses say they will offer details of the policy recommendations they made to the incoming Bush aides, but they would not discuss those details before the hearing.

"Until 9/11, counterterrorism was a very secondary issue at the Bush White House," said a senior Clinton official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Remember those first months? The White House was focused on tax cuts, not terrorism. We saw the budgets for counterterrorism programs being cut."

The White House rejects any suggestion that it failed to act on the threats of Qaeda terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The president and his team received briefings on the threat from Al Qaeda prior to taking office, and fighting terrorism became a top priority when this administration came into office," Sean McCormack, a White House spokesman, said. "We actively pursued the Clinton administration`s policies on Al Qaeda until we could get into place a more comprehensive policy."

Mr. Zelikow, the director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a co-author of a 1995 book with Ms. Rice, has been the target of repeated criticism from some relatives of Sept. 11 victims. They have said his membership on the Bush transition team and his ties to Ms. Rice pose a serious conflict of interest for the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law-enforcement actions before the attacks.

Mr. Clarke said if Mr. Zelikow left any of the White House intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 without understanding the imminent threat posed by Al Qaeda, "he was deaf."

Mr. Zelikow said in an interview that he has recused himself from any part of the investigation that involves the transition, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. He said his participation in the Qaeda intelligence briefings was already well known. "The fact of what occurred in these briefings is not really disputed," he said.

Ms. Rice has refused a request to testify at the hearings next week, saying it would violate White House precedent for an incumbent national security adviser to appear in public at a hearing of what the White House considers a legislative body. She has given a private interview to several members of the commission.

The commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was created by Congress in 2002 over the initial objections of the Bush administration.

Ms. Albright and Mr. Cohen declined to be interviewed about their testimony. Mr. Berger refused to discuss details of his testimony, saying only, "I intend to talk about what we did in the Clinton administration, as well as my recommendations for the future."

In the past, Mr. Berger has said that he and his staff organized the intelligence briefings in December 2000 at which Ms. Rice, Mr. Hadley and Mr. Zelikow were warned in detail about the Qaeda threat and that on his departure, he advised Ms. Rice that he believed the Bush administration would be forced to spend more time on dealing with Al Qaeda than on any other subject.

In his testimony, Mr. Clarke is also expected to discuss what he believed to be the Bush administration`s determination to punish Saddam Hussein for the Sept. 11 attacks even though there was no evidence to tie the Iraqi president to Al Qaeda.

The issue is addressed in a new book by Mr. Clarke, and in an interview to promote the book on "60 Minutes" on CBS-TV scheduled for Sunday, Mr. Clarke said that the White House considered bombing Iraq in the hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, even when it became clear that Al Qaeda was responsible.

"I think they wanted to believe there was a connection, but the C.I.A. was sitting there, the F.B.I. was sitting there, saying, `We`ve looked at this issue for years — for years, we`ve looked, and there`s just no connection,` " Mr. Clarke said. He recalled telling Defense Secretary Rumsfeld that "there are a lot of good targets in a lot of places, but Iraq had nothing to do" with the Sept. 11 attacks.

The White House has insisted that it acted aggressively throughout 2001 on the warnings to deal with the threat from Qaeda terrorists, and that there was an exhaustive staff review throughout the spring and summer, with a proposal ready for President Bush in early September to step up the government`s efforts to destroy the terrorist network.

The Clinton administration witnesses may face difficult questions at the hearings about why they did not do more to deal with Qaeda immediately after the Cole attack and the discovery the previous winter that Qaeda terrorists had come close to coordinated attacks timed to the Dec. 31, 1999, festivities for the new millennium.

"There was no contemplation of any military action after the millennium plots, and there should have been," said Bob Kerrey, a Democratic member of the commission and a former senator from Nebraska.

"The Cole is even worse, because that was an attack on a military target," he said. "It was military against military. It was an Islamic army against our Navy. Just because you don`t have a nation-state as your adversary doesn`t mean you should not consider a declaration of war."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

Sunday Herald - 21 March 2004
Ask No Questions
The US press may finally be realising it was hoodwinked over the war … but the coverage of Madrid proves it hasn’t learned. By Ian Bell

http://www.sundayherald.com/40672
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Who was it who alerted British tabloids to the “fact” that our troops on Cyprus were under imminent threat of attack from Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction? Who was it who supplied the New York Times, in September of 2002, with the “intelligence” that allowed the paper to state that Iraq had attempted to procure thousands of aluminium tubes in order to enrich uranium and produce a nuclear bomb?
These, of course, were only two of many fantasies whose roots will never properly be known. You could add the tale of yellowcake, the fairy story of mobile chemical weapons laboratories, the oft-repeated fiction that United Nations resolution 1441 made war inevitable. A year on, with carnage in Madrid marking the anniversary of the invasion, the pieces of the mosaic no longer matter much. The pattern is what counts.

Part of the pattern, a large part, can be discerned in the American press. After the election of the Spanish socialist party and the decision by its leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to remove Spain’s troops from Iraq, newspapers in the United States were almost of one voice last week. This was, they told their readers, “appeasement” of al-Qaeda.

They may have mentioned, but certainly did not stress, that 91% of the Spanish people had opposed the war to begin with and that, unarguably, Zapatero was obeying the democratic will. Nor did American papers waste much time explaining the fury of voters in Spain towards the outgoing prime minister, José María Aznar, who had attempted to spin the tragedy for electoral gain by claiming certain knowledge that the massacre had been carried out by ETA, the Basque separatist group. It was one lie too many.

Lies, it seems, are the currency of modern war. You might have thought some collective memory would store the experiences of Suez, of Vietnam, of the Falklands and Gulf I. Not so: the media’s attention span is short and journalists forget. The thing they forget, above all, is that politicians don’t tell the truth about wars.

There is a difference, for all that, between naivety and docility, between trust and a wilful refusal to test what you are being told. A lot of things about the Iraq conflict were failing to make sense long before the fighting began. Even then large sections of the press, particularly the American press, simply chose to believe what the politicians said. That was, as even some Americans have begun to admit, a big mistake.

Headlines have told their story. “Iraq’s arsenal was only on paper” admitted the Washington Post recently. “So, what went wrong?” Time magazine wanted to know. Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal was obliged to report that: “Pressure rises for probe of pre-war intelligence”. The cat was out of the bag: they’d been had. Yet why had publications with vast editorial resources been such easy marks? And why had sceptics and dissidents been silenced?

The answer to the second question is simple: the great American newspapers censored themselves. They became, if you like, patriotically deaf. In the post-9/11 atmosphere they had no editorial strategy for coping with George Bush’s moral authority, and no editorial will to devise one. If the President was going after the guys who knocked over the Twin Towers, decent Americans were with him.

The trouble with that argument is that it confused cases. Iraq, despite another subset of official fictions, had nothing to do with September 11, and every spy agency said so. That takes us back to our first question, whose answer is also simple: complicity. The American media, in large part, chose to cooperate.



First, they chose to take the White House at its word and failed to check assertions a junior reporter would have checked. Then they adopted Iraqi defectors and exiles, many capable of saying anything if it would lead to war on Saddam, as reliable sources. Then they preferred to ignore sceptical rumblings in the intelligence community, widely reported in Europe, over WMD. Finally, they heaped contempt on the International Atomic Energy Authority and its inspectors.

When the fighting began, a novel process helped to cement relationships. The embedding of journalists was attractive to the media for one obvious reason: it cut their costs. These days the insurance premiums required to cover a civilian in a war zone are astronomical, running into tens of thousands of pounds. With embedded correspondents, the media could be guaranteed words and pictures and be relieved of insurance costs. The attraction can be measured, in a small way, by the fact that the Sunday Herald was the only Scottish newspaper to refuse the chance to embed.

The deal was attractive to the military, too. A journalist can only report what he or she sees. With embedding, the armies knew exactly where most correspondents were, and knew exactly what they were hearing and seeing. The US army had learned from Vietnam and watched while Britain managed news from the Falklands: embedding was the result.

This meant, inevitably, that Iraqi divisions could appear and disappear on a whim. It meant that the fighting could be as difficult or as easy as the Pentagon wanted it to be. It meant that no one would ever know how many Iraqi lives were being lost. The media, in large part, put up with it. In the case of many newspapers and broadcasters, they put up with it eagerly.

Back home in Britain, reactions were almost predictable. Liberal newspapers, with the unprecedented exception of the Observer, were sceptical about the war or actively opposed; conservative titles were marching on Baghdad long before Bush and Blair were ready. It was the British way.

Yet in Britain there was, to say the least, a huge debate. In America, a consensus of credulity reigned. As Michael Massing wrote last month in the New York Review of Books: “Despite abundant evidence of the administration’s brazen misuse of intelligence [over the alleged existence of WMD], the press repeatedly let officials get away with it”.



This is not to say that British sceptics were always right. Robert Fisk of The Independent, a highly respected correspondent, filed reports before and during the fighting predicting armageddon and/or the mass slaughter of civilians. Many Iraqis died, but the carnage was never as great as Fisk predicted.

It remains the case, equally, that anti-war columnists, this one included, sometimes struggled to deal with the humanitarian argument. Saddam was a murderous tyrant whose downfall was long overdue. Why quibble over the fibs deployed to secure his fall? The dangers posed by pre-emption and the importance of international law were part of the answer, but too many writers resorted to anti-American clichés.

Our friends in the American media, it turns out, were not listening. If reactions to Madrid are anything to go by, many still prefer patriotic deafness. First the ETA theory was seized upon; now “appeasement” is the only word that will do. The fight for democracy appears not to extend to democratic Spain and the battle for truth is being left unfought. On this newspaper we know from responses to our website that there was, and remains, a huge appetite in the United States for untainted reporting. Many Americans knew they were being conned. The American press has begun to ask itself how it, too, could have been used so easily over WMD. But as reactions to Madrid’s tragedy reveal, the habit of unthinking allegiance is becoming ingrained.

[Joerver]

[Joerver]

Let America Be America Again

A Flash:
http://www.ericblumrich.com/pax.html

Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There`s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery`s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one`s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I`m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That`s made America the land it has become.
O, I`m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I`m the one who left dark Ireland`s shore,
And Poland`s plain, and England`s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa`s strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we`ve dreamed
And all the songs we`ve sung
And all the hopes we`ve held
And all the flags we`ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that`s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that`s mine--the poor man`s, Indian`s, Negro`s, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people`s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes.

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The Bush doctrine has been turned on its head

March 22, 2004

It is late at night and there is gunfire out in the city, but Baghdad is eerily quiet for the first anniversary of the start of the war.

The loudest noise came from Washington: George Bush`s troubled plea for unity in the face of world terrorism. Disagreements "among old and valued friends", he said disingenuously, "belong to the past".

Bush is working to corral his postwar coalition in Iraq. But, as it frays at the edges, British diplomats are working up a new attempt to legitimise the Iraq campaign with a proper United Nations mandate. Consider:

The Spanish are pulling out unless the UN takes over, and President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland says he was "taken for a ride" by the US on Saddam Hussein`s supposed weapons of mass destruction.

The Koreans have baulked at moving 3000 troops to Kirkuk in the north of Iraq, because they fear for their security; and when the Japanese arrived in the south - to protect the Iraqi people - they promptly wrote a cheque for $US95 million ($126 million) for the local tribes to protect them from the Iraqi people.

Honduras is sticking with its plan to withdraw 300 soldiers in July, and when Bush recently met the Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende pointedly refused to say how long he would leave his 1300 troops in Iraq.

Small beer, perhaps. But it is all symptomatic of rising anger and tension among the old and valued friends at the insistence of Bush - who may well be judged by history to have been the ventriloquist`s doll for the ideologues around him - that his very necessary war on terrorism did not need to be swamped by war and its uncertain aftermath in Iraq.

But the old friends just get bolshier. The French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, was straight up in his assessment of the first year. "The war in Iraq was a mistake, I would even say, a blunder. We cannot fail to see that there are two centres that feed terrorism today: the first is the Middle East crisis, the second is Iraq."

Right behind him was the European Commission President, Romano Prodi. "It happens in Iraq as elsewhere - Istanbul, Moscow, Madrid. The terrorism that the war in Iraq was supposed to stop is infinitely more powerful today than it was a year ago."

There have been at least as many terrorist operations in the past year as there were in the previous 12 months, and that is with an estimated two-thirds of al-Qaeda`s known leadership dead or behind bars.

The arch villain - Osama bin Laden - remains free and his terrorist organisation has morphed into something even more dangerous than what existed before the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

Previously, bin Laden`s lieutenants went out into the world, buying into terrorist plots they thought to be worthwhile investments. Subsequently, the Bush Administration, with echoes from Tony Blair and John Howard, has enhanced the myth that it is all - and only - bin Laden`s work.

What seems to have happened is more insidious.

The notion of a bin Laden chain of command has been superseded by a sort of McDonald`s of terrorism, franchise cells and groups that want to be like al-Qaeda, carrying a torch for the man in the cave without ever receiving direct orders. The word simply goes out in the Arab media and it is absorbed - war against the US. And when they strike, they pack the punch by claiming that it was done in the name of al-Qaeda.

The CIA director, George Tenet, told the US Senate as much this month when he said: "A serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future, with or without al-Qaeda in the picture."

And Blair`s special representative for Iraq, Jeremy Greenstock, almost as though he was surprised by the outcome, applied the Tenet dictum to Iraq when he warned of the damage to the country and its people from terrorism. "Something new has grown in this area. It has happened in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Colombia, in the Middle East peace process and now it`s threatening Western Europe - it`s already happened in Madrid.

"Iraq is a now a theatre where they`re trying to maximise this damage."

Between them, it is an admission that the war in Iraq has helped al-Qaeda and its followers.

The hotel from which I write, The Palestine, was crowded with the first of the foreign fighters to arrive in Iraq in the first week of war last year. They have long since fanned out around the country and they are thought to number several hundred, working with the desperate and the nationalist in Iraq to capitalise on Arab anger as they challenge the Western invasion of a Muslim country and, at the same time, attempt to split the Bush coalition.

In Iraq and elsewhere, they have turned the Bush doctrine on its head. Just as Bush went after the terrorists and those who harboured them, and threatened those who would not support him, the terrorist attacks in Iraq and beyond have been against those who have helped Bush.

The protest marches around the world this weekend and the fraying at the edges of the Iraq coalition, especially the outcome of the Spanish election, raise a dire question: is terrorism winning over democracy?

Superficially, maybe.

But something more fundamental is happening, something very democratic: leaders are being held to account, because the Bush case for war in Iraq has been proved to be a lie that was supported by Blair and Howard.

We were told the war was to get rid of Saddam`s weapons of mass destruction - they did not exist. It was to save us from the link between Saddam and al-Qaeda - there was none. This was to be a quick war - the soldiers were to be welcomed with songs and flowers, but they will be stuck here for years to come and it might be a civil war that gives birth to the new Iraq - not Bush`s liberation.

Some good has come of it all - Saddam is gone and Libya has come into line. Syria is nervous. But North Korea and Iran still play nuclear hardball, and the Palestine-Israel stalemate continues to pollute daily life right across the Middle East. And US military resources and world attention have been distracted almost totally from the fight against terrorism.

The goal of freedom for all is fine, even if Bush came to it for the Iraqis 13 years too late and only after the rest of his spurious case for war fell apart. And it is not enough to drape the country in the flag; to insist that "we must support the troops" by not debating why they are here; and to have the aimless ra-ra of the State of the Union address. That is the sort of theatre Saddam engaged in.

Enough has leaked from the White House to confirm that the war was a decision made before it was justified. This weekend there was more evidence - Richard Clarke, Bush`s counter-terrorism co-ordinator in September, 2001, told American 60 Minutes that within 24 hours of the attacks the Administration was convinced that al-Qaeda was responsible, but the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had complained that "there aren`t any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq".

Rumsfeld obsesses about uncertainty. As explained to The Atlantic Monthly by one of his deputies, Douglas Feith: "the need to deal strategically with uncertainty; the inability to predict the future; the limits on our knowledge and the limits on our intelligence". That`s a windy way of saying that the end justifies the means.

But people are not as stupid as the White House would like. Just as Spanish voters saw what their government was doing - using the Madrid bombing for an election-eve smash at ETA, the Basque separatists, when everything pointed to al-Qaeda - the brutalised people of Iraq are the same.

They are indeed grateful to be rid of Saddam, but they loathe this occupation; they deeply resent the security crisis it has visited on them; and they feel humiliated by it. And they openly mock the superpower that said: "It`ll all come right."

The US in Iraq is still demonstrating what it cannot do, not what it can do. Already it is retreating to the safety of its "hard" bases and talking up the competence of Iraq`s incompetent new security and emergency services - which have had less training than the security staff at your local Target store - so that it can foist the mess on them when sovereignty is handed over on June 30.

But the US is so entrenched in Iraq that it is hard to see it being able to devote its full resources to fighting terrorism any time soon.


This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/21/1079823239710.html

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Military Fatalities:

+US++UK++Other++++Total
582++59++++42++++++683

3-2004 33

The Wounded:3300

http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx

03/21/04 Centcom: Electrocution Death in Ba`qubah Confirmed
A First Infantry Division Soldier was electrocuted while working on communications equipment at Forward Operating Base Comanche north of Baqubah March 19 at approximately 2 p.m.
03/21/04 AP: 1st Infantry Division Soldier Killed Sunday In An Apparent Accident
A 1st Infantry Division soldier was also killed Sunday in an apparent accident during a weapons firing exercise in Samarra... Army spokeswoman Maj. Debra Stewart said.
03/21/04 AP: Policeman Killed, 2 Wounded
A bomb exploded at a police station in Khalis, north of Baghdad, killing a policeman and wounding two.
03/21/04 Reuters: Roadside bomb in Mosul wounds one Iraqi civilian
In other attacks on Sunday, a bomb exploded at a police station in Khalis, north of Baghdad, killing a policeman and wounding two. A roadside bomb intended for a U.S. convoy hurt a municipal worker in the northern city of Mosul, police said.
03/21/04 AP: 3 Mortar Rounds Explode In Baghdad; Killing One Iraqi
Two mortar rounds landed in the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition on Sunday, a U.S. official said, while a third round landed on a street outside the compound, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding eight.
03/21/04 AP: Two US Soldiers Killed By Rocket Attack In Iraq
Insurgents fired a rocket overnight at American troops near Fallujah in western Iraq, killing two soldiers. The attack also wounded five soldiers and a sailor.
03/20/04 AP: Turkman Politician Survives Assassination Attempt
In the northern city of Kirkuk, Iraqi police said Subhi Saber a Turkman politician, survived an assassination attempt Saturday. Assailants opened fire on Saber`s car, injuring his driver, but the politician escaped
03/20/04 Centcom: One Soldier Killed, Two Injured In Vehicle Accident
One Task Force Ironhorse soldier died and two were injured when their vehicle rolled over near Taji at approximately 10:00
03/20/04 Reuters: U.S. Marine Killed in Attack West of Baghdad
Guerrillas killed a U.S. Marine near the restive town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Saturday.
03/20/04 AP: Helicopter Shot Down Friday, Pilots Uninjured
A U.S. military helicopter was downed by rebel fire west of Baghdad, but there were no injuries, the U.S. military said Saturday
03/20/04 Albawaba: US Soldier Wounded In Mosul
US soldier was wounded Friday in the city of Mosul when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the convoy he was travelling in
03/20/04 AP: Eight U.S. Soldiers and a Marine Wounded
One civilian was killed and another was wounded, witnesses said. The U.S. military said that eight U.S. soldiers and a Marine were wounded when a mortar round hit a roof.
03/20/04 TheAustralian: Policeman shot dead in Kirkuk
An Iraqi policeman was shot dead west of the northern city of Kirkuk today - hours after US troops arrested a police officer suspected of plotting anti-American attacks, Iraqi police said
03/20/04 AP: US Soldier Fatally Electrocuted Working On Equip In Iraq
A U.S. soldier was fatally electrocuted while working on communication equipment at a U.S. military base in Baqouba, north of Baghdad, the Army said Saturday
03/19/04 AP: West Virginia Native Dies From Wounds Received on 3/11
A Parkersburg native who joined the Army to get an education and see the world died Thursday, one week after a homemade bomb struck his Humvee in Iraq.
03/19/04 AP: Explosions In Central Baghdad
Several explosions were heard in Baghdad on Friday night, and sirens wailed briefly in the Green Zone, the area housing the U.S.-led coalition headquarters.
03/19/04 AP: 1st Infantry Division Soldier Died Early Friday From Injuries
A 1st Infantry Division soldier died early Friday from injuries suffered when the Bradley fighting vehicle he was traveling in rolled down an embankment into the Tigris River near Beiji, 120 miles north of Baghdad.
03/19/04 AP: Two U.S. Marines Killed in Iraq
Iraq - Insurgents killed two U.S. Marines who were on patrol in Iraq), a military statement said Friday.
03/19/04 AP: Reporter In Iraq Dies After Shooting By US Troops
A reporter for Arab satellite television station Al-Arabiya died from his wounds Friday after U.S. soldiers shot him hours earlier along with a cameraman, who died at the scene.
03/19/04 Reuters: US Marine Dies from Wounds After Iraq Attack
A U.S. Marine died from wounds sustained in a mortar attack two days ago, the U.S. military said

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March 21, 2004
European Leaders Seek to Separate Iraq and Terror Issues
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune

WASHINGTON, March 21 — As European leaders move to step up their fight against terror, some of them sought over the weekend to clearly separate those efforts from support for the Iraq war, and frictions with the United States remained in full view.

Spurred by the March 11 attacks in Madrid, intelligence chiefs from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are to meet Monday in Madrid to seek ways to accelerate the sharing of crucial information that might help prevent future attacks on European soil.

In Brussels, European Union foreign ministers placed terrorism atop their agenda for a meeting Monday, aiming to sidestep differences on Iraq and to overcome legal and even constitutional hurdles to closer coordination. European Union leaders will consider the ministers` recommendations in a meeting on Thursday.

But even as Europeans moved in closer step to confront the terror threat, they faced criticism in Washington that they were excluding Americans from their deliberations.

"Europeans have to be willing to ask us to come to some of the meetings, too," Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation." "We should have been together talking about how all of us deal with the Al Qaeda."

The Spanish prime minister-elect, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose vow to remove Spanish troops from Iraq has drawn sharp criticism from the United States, insisted that he would stand strong against terror and urged closer European unity in the face of the threat. "The absolute priority remains the struggle against terrorism," he said.

But Mr. Zapatero added that war was not the best way to defeat terrorists. Far more important were improved intelligence and efforts to address terror`s origins, he said. The Socialist leader said again that Spain would consider leaving its 1,300 troops in Iraq only if the United Nations took "political control" there. And he seemed to add a further condition: the involvement of "more multinational forces, including many Arab countries led by the Arab League."

Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, told an interviewer on "Fox News Sunday" that Europeans were "united against terrorism" but he called the war in Iraq "a mistake." The fight against terrorism was not going "better because of the war on Iraq," he said.

Italy, Mr. Prodi`s home country, was the scene of antiwar protests by hundreds of thousands over the weekend, and the Spanish move is thought to have raised pressure on the pro-war government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Still, Mr. Prodi said, "We must fight terrorists and be united against terrorism even if we think, interpret in a different way the effects of the Iraqi war."

Some American politicians have derided Spain`s turn to the anti-war Socialists, three days after the Madrid bombings, as "appeasement." Amid rumblings from a few other countries in the coalition led by the United States about leaving Iraq, President Bush warned on Friday against any country seeking a "separate peace with the terrorist enemy."

Such talk seems to be provoking a worried — sometimes angry or resentful — defense by Europeans who say they are fully committed to fighting terror but question whether Iraq is the place to carry out that fight.

Terrorism must be fought violently, Mr. Prodi said, but also through a broad effort to address its root causes. Foremost among these, he said, was the Israeli-Palestinian problem, a widespread view in Europe.

Mr. Zapatero, in an interview with El Pais newspaper a week after his party defeated a center-right government supportive of the Iraq war, said, "We can`t win against terrorism or rout it through wars, which are never an efficient way of eliminating or combating groups of fanatics, radicals and criminals."

Otto Schily, the German interior minister, said that Europeans needed to do more to penetrate terror groups, and also to improve cross-border cooperation. The London police commissioner, John Stevens, also called for a more coordinated European response to analyzing data on terror.

The European Union and individual European countries have done much to improve anti-terror cooperation since Sept. 11, 2001, when the United States was attacked by terrorists. In the months thereafter, European Union officials and national authorities gave fast-track approval to a range of measures that had in some cases been languishing for years.

They stepped up cooperation in law enforcement, intelligence sharing, judicial coordination and the control of financial assets to make it easier to find, detain and punish terror suspects. Trans-Atlantic cooperation improved as well.

But authorities were shaken that an attack as broad and well-coordinated as that in Madrid — in which 13 bombs were placed on four trains, presumably by a number of assailants — could have been planned and carried out without, apparently, a hint of warning.

The bombings have sparked debate over how vulnerable European countries are to Al Qaeda-style attack, and how prepared to deal with the consequences.

In London, where one official last week said such an attack seemed "inevitable," the chairman of the Emergency Planning Society said that resources to deal with a terror emergency had been reduced, not augmented, since 2001. "We are concerned that our own emergency plans are not going to meet public expectations," Patrick Cunningham said, according to The Independent on Sunday.

But Defense Secretary Geoffrey Hoon challenged that view, Agence France-Presse reported, saying that the country would react "properly and effectively."

At the European Union meetings this week, some anti-terror measures that failed to reach final passage in the post-Sept. 11 burst of energy will get a new look.

A draft declaration would commit the community`s 25 current and prospective members to "act jointly in a spirit of solidarity" if any member is attacked by terrorists, and to use "all the instruments at their disposal, including military resources," to assist those hit, or prevent further attacks. The language is reminiscent of Article V of the NATO Charter, which declares that an attack on any member country is tantamount to an attack on all.

While Senator Lugar suggested that the Europeans should be moving forward in closer cooperation with United States authorities, another Republican, Senator John McCain of Arizona, suggested that the Madrid bombings might puncture "a false sense of security" in Europe and ultimately bring closer trans-Atlantic ties.

"As tragic as this was," he said on "Fox News Sunday," "I think that perhaps we`re going to see much closer cooperation."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company