Guten Morgen Mr. Bush - 500 Beiträge pro Seite (Seite 34)

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American forces, under attack, carried out airstrikes on Monday against armed supporters of the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr near the Shrine of Abbas in the holy city of Karbala, Iraq.

May 18, 2004
HOLY CITY
U.S. Forces, Under Attack, Strike Rebel Cleric`s Fighters Near Shrine
By EDWARD WONG

ARBALA, Iraq, May 17 — In its riskiest attack yet against the forces of a rebel Shiite cleric, the American military called in an airstrike early Monday morning to kill fighters standing about 160 feet away from one of the holiest shrines in Shiite Islam, military officials said.

The strike came after nearly a week in which tenacious insurgents supporting the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, fought daily battles in downtown Karbala against soldiers of the First Armored Division. The insurgents have killed 3 American soldiers and wounded at least 55, frustrating American commanders who had hoped to break the insurgency by raiding a mosque used as a rebel stronghold last Tuesday.

After hours of debate on Sunday, commanders called in an AC-130 gunship, which began pounding at insurgent positions with 40-millimeter cannon fire around 12:30 a.m. Monday. An American officer at the scene said the insurgents had clustered on a street corner about 160 feet from the golden-domed Shrine of Hussein, dedicated to the martyred grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

As many as 16 insurgents were killed in the airstrike and at least five were wounded, said Maj. Mark Grabski, executive officer of the First Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment of the First Armored Division. Thirteen other insurgents were killed in battles in the area, said Dan Senor, an occupation spokesman, citing a count by Polish forces here.

The intense, rhythmic pounding from the cannon fire could be heard as far away as Camp Lima, the military base five miles to the east.

Across the south, Mr. Sadr`s followers have launched fierce counterattacks against occupation forces. An Italian soldier died on Monday from injuries suffered the previous day in battle in the city of Nasiriya, The Associated Press reported. Militiamen chased Italian soldiers out of a military base and to the outskirts of the city, and civilian workers have abandoned the besieged office of the occupation authority.

Here in Karbala, ever since American soldiers raided and occupied the Mukhaiyam Mosque, the insurgent stronghold, Mr. Sadr`s followers have been regrouping around the Shrine of Abbas and Shrine of Hussein, just 600 feet east of the mosque.

American commanders had held back from attacking the insurgents there for fear of damaging the shrines and inflaming Shiite Muslims around the world. But insurgents continued firing mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades at the occupied mosque from the shrine area, including from a second-floor window in the Shrine of Hussein. Lt. Col. Garry P. Bishop, the commanding officer of American forces here, decided the fighters had to be killed.

Major Grabski and Capt. William Thomas Byrns, the commander of a tank company in the area at the time of the airstrike, said there had been no damage to the Shrine of Hussein. An Iraqi reporter working for The New York Times in Karbala said it appeared some tiles might have sustained minor damage.

"Things blow up when they engage targets, and they blow up pretty big," Captain Byrns said of the AC-130. But, he added, "those things are extremely accurate."

In April, after Mr. Sadr`s militia began fighting, Shiite leaders issued dire warnings to American commanders not to enter the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala or mosques. But since then, there have been signs that top Shiites have grown weary of Mr. Sadr. There has been little outrage from residents, even after American troops began using the mosque here as a base.

Mr. Sadr and his armed supporters have used holy sites as shields during a six-week uprising against the occupation forces. Shortly after he ignited the revolt, Mr. Sadr barricaded himself in the nearby city of Najaf and posted members of his militia, the Mahdi Army, around the Shrine of Ali there, dedicated to the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. The American military has occupied a former Spanish base on the outskirts of Najaf but has held back from entering the downtown area, despite statements by commanders that they intended to kill or capture Mr. Sadr.

Last Friday, American tanks and insurgents engaged in a battle in a sprawling Shiite cemetery close to the city center. Supporters of Mr. Sadr claimed afterward that American bullets had hit the golden dome of the Shrine of Ali. But a spokesman for the occupation forces denied that American soldiers were responsible.

On Sunday afternoon, insurgents with checkered scarves covering their faces and carrying AK-47 assault rifles, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers wandered around the shrine area. A freelance photographer for The New York Times reported seeing many armed men along a road surrounding the Shrine of Hussein. The men had at least a dozen rocket-propelled grenades, and some wore bulletproof vests.

Near one corner, fighters sat in a circle around a small fire brewing tea. Gunfire could be heard nearby. Several men leaned their AK-47`s against a wall and prayed, kneeling.

At one point, a group of about 10 men reloaded their weapons and peered around the corner to where they had set up a heavy machine gun 50 yards away on a median in the road. Insurgents fired the gun every minute or so in long bursts.

There were about 70 fighters on that corner of the shrine. They looked relaxed, joking and laughing. They seemed confident that the Americans would not attack them if they stayed in the shrine area.

"The situation is under control with the help of Allah and the Imam Mahdi," said a man in a blue ski mask who declined to give his name. "We`re fighting them with rifles and R.P.G.`s while they`re using tanks and helicopters. We want peace. We want the Americans to leave the holy cities."

After the 20-minute airstrike on Monday, an eerie stillness settled over downtown Karbala. "This morning it was very quiet, almost strangely quiet," Major Grabski said.

But by afternoon, insurgents had begun attacking the Americans again. Soldiers killed at least three militiamen. Gunfire and explosions echoed across the death zone of this holy city.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

An Army sniper in Karbala on Monday. At right is the Shrine of Abbas.

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Ever since American soldiers raided and occupied the Mukhaiyam Mosque (picture), the insurgent stronghold, Moktada al-Sadr`s followers have been regrouping around the Shrine of Abbas and Shrine of Hussein, just 600 feet east of the mosque.

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Bei solchen Freunden braucht man keine Feinde mehr.

May 18, 2004
ALLIANCES
U.S. to Halt Payments to Iraqi Group Headed by a Onetime Pentagon Favorite
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

ASHINGTON, May 17 — The United States government has decided to halt monthly $335,000 payments to the Iraqi National Congress, the group headed by Ahmad Chalabi, an official with the group said on Monday.

Mr. Chalabi, a longtime exile leader and now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, played a crucial role in persuading the administration that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power. But he has since become a lightning rod for critics of the Bush administration, who say the United States relied on him too heavily for prewar intelligence that has since proved faulty.

Mr. Chalabi`s group has received at least $27 million in United States financing in the past four years, the Iraqi National Congress official said. This includes $335,000 a month as part of a classified program through the Defense Intelligence Agency, since the summer of 2002, to help gather intelligence in Iraq. The official said his group had been told that financing will cease June 30, when occupation authorities are scheduled to turn over sovereignty to Iraqis.

Internal reviews by the United States government have found that much of the information provided as part of the classified program before American forces invaded Iraq last year was useless, misleading or even fabricated.

A Pentagon official said Monday night said he was not able immediately to confirm the status of the Pentagon`s relationship with Mr. Chalabi`s group. On April 27, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked at a news briefing about whether the payments to Mr. Chalabi`s group were going to end, said, "To my knowledge, that`s not been determined."

The official of Mr. Chalabi`s group said the classified program had originally been scheduled to end Sept. 30, 2003, but was extended twice — to Dec. 31, 2003, and then again, to June 30, 2004. The official said he did not know why the government decided not to extend the program again.

In recent months, Mr. Chalabi, once viewed as a potential leader of postwar Iraq, has been at odds with the Bush administration on a series of policy questions. He has criticized Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations official who is organizing an Iraqi government to take control of the country on July 1 and whose efforts have been embraced by the White House. He has also been at the center of a battle between the Governing Council and American occupation authorities over who should investigate corruption allegations in the United Nations oil-for-food program for Iraq.

The official of the Iraqi National Congress defended the group`s intelligence-gathering, saying its role providing weapons intelligence had been overblown and that it had helped capture 1,500 insurgents, mostly loyalists of Saddam Hussein.

Michael Rubin, who spent eight months in Iraq as an adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, the occupation administration, and is now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research center in Washington, said: "The truth of the matter is that the I.N.C.-provided information rolled up a lot of insurgent cells that were targeting American soldiers. It stopped bombings and terrorist attacks that were aimed at U.S. troops. That program saved a lot of lives."

But Mr. Chalabi`s critics characterize him as a political opportunist.

On Sunday, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, described Mr. Chalabi as a "darling of the vice president and of some of the civilians in the Defense Department," adding that Mr. Chalabi is "a problem" and "not part of the solution."

"There seems to be an unwillingness to break from him," Mr. Biden said on NBC`s "Meet the Press."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 18, 2004
Wolfowitz Target of Democrats Ire on Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 3:16 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As details of prison abuses in Iraq surfaced, many Democrats on Capitol Hill demanded that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld resign. But not Sen. Carl Levin. The top Senate Democrat on a key military committee said he is wary about who might be the post-Rumsfeld secretary.

``If it would be his deputy, I don`t see that that would represent a change at all in terms of the direction we should go,`` Levin told reporters this month.

Rumsfeld`s deputy is Paul Wolfowitz. If Democrats are dissatisfied with Rumsfeld, that doesn`t compare to the disdain some feel for the man seen as the intellectual architect of the Iraq war.

Some of their anger spilled out at last week`s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., told Wolfowitz his credibility had been undermined because he had ``made numerous predictions, time and time again, that have turned out to be untrue and were based on faulty assumptions.``

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., accused Wolfowitz of ``dissembling and avoidance of answers.``

His appearance Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee may not be much easier. Chairman Dick Lugar, R-Ind., top Democrat Joseph Biden of Delaware and other committee members have accused the Pentagon repeatedly of planning inadequately for post-Saddam Iraq.

Wolfowitz is at the center of the Iraqi storm because few other high-level Bush administration officials have argued as forcefully about the need to topple Saddam Hussein and as optimistically about prospects for post-Saddam Iraq.

To Republicans who supported the war, Wolfowitz was a prescient critic of U.S. policies in the 1990s, which sought to restrain Saddam without necessarily bringing him down. Wolfowitz spoke out about Saddam`s brutality to his people and how he threatened the Middle East.

He had criticized the first Bush administration, in which he served as undersecretary of defense for policy, for failing to ``deal with Saddam`` after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

In the 1990s, as dean of an influential think tank, Wolfowitz described the Clinton administration`s policy on Iraq as ``a muddle of confusion and pretense`` and urged it to move more forcefully against Saddam.

As the Bush administration began setting its sights on Iraq, it was Wolfowitz who frequently went to Capitol Hill to warn of Saddam`s dangers. He described how a liberated Iraq could spread democracy through the region and advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

He also sought to assuage lawmakers` worries about the difficulties and costs of winning the war and setting up a democratic government.

After Gen. Eric Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, said in February 2003 that several hundred thousand troops would have to stay in Iraq after the war, Wolfowitz told a House panel that ``we can say with reasonable confidence`` the estimate was ``way off the mark.``

He also suggested that countries that were unwilling to participate in the war against Saddam would be willing to send in peacekeeping troops after the conflict was ended.

A year after Saddam was toppled, no such surge in foreign troops has appeared, and the United States still has 135,000 soldiers in the country. Wolfowitz said last week he had rejected Shinseki`s estimate because it was different from that of Gen. Tommy Franks, who oversaw military operations in Iraq as head of Central Command.

Wolfowitz also predicted before the war that Iraqis ``are going to welcome us as liberators. And when that message gets out to the whole Arab world, it is going to be a powerful counter to Osama bin Laden.`` But surveys have shown that Iraqis have mixed opinions about the war, and U.S. prestige among Arabs in general has been especially hurt by the prison abuse scandal.

Wolfowitz had assured lawmakers that the costs of a war to U.S. taxpayers would be limited because of Iraq`s oil revenue and frozen assets. ``We`re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon,`` he told a House committee in March 2003.

As Congress considered an $87 billion package last September that mostly benefited Iraq, Levin read back that quote to Wolfowitz.

``Talk about rosy scenarios,`` Levin said.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Pres

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May 18, 2004
MAKING VOTES COUNT
Voting Machines for New York

As concerns have grown about the reliability of electronic voting machines, a nationwide groundswell has been forming to demand that the machines produce paper records of votes that voters can check. California will require all electronic voting machines in the state to produce such records by 2006, and Ohio adopted the same rule this month. New York State should have been in the forefront of this movement, but its elected officials have been dragging their feet. If New York acts quickly and resolutely now, however, it can not only protect the reliability of its own votes, but can also help make verifiable paper trails a national standard.

The Help America to Vote Act, a reform law passed after the 2000 election mess, makes billions of dollars available to the states for improved voting machines. As highly paid lobbyists have descended on Albany to fight for rules that favor the voting-machine companies that hired them, the Legislature has approached the critical question of voting machine standards in slow motion. It is critical that the lawmakers resolve the issue in the next few weeks, before the June adjournment. Further delay could leave manufacturers unable to produce acceptable machines in time for 2006 and could risk the loss of millions of dollars in federal funds.

To ensure the integrity of the voting system, the Legislature should require that all electronic voting machines in the state produce a voter-verifiable paper trail. It should also mandate manual audits of a reasonable percentage of the state`s voting machines to check their tabulations against the paper records. The Legislature should also insist that manufacturers reveal their computer code to state and local officials to show that there are no software errors or secret instructions to steal votes.

New York`s rules on voting machines should be drafted broadly enough that many manufacturers can compete for the business. There should not be variations in the quality of the machines from county to county, but there is nothing wrong with having different companies provide machines to different parts of the state. Some states, like Georgia and Maryland, have made the mistake of buying all their machines from one manufacturer, leaving them with little leverage in the case of bad performance.

To encourage competition, the Legislature should drop New York`s silly "full-face ballot" rule, which requires that all candidates and ballot questions must be seen at once by the voter. Incumbents like it because they do not want their names to be overlooked, but since almost no other states have such a rule, it could discourage voting machine companies from bidding for New York`s business.

In an age when consumers expect to be offered a receipt every time they use an A.T.M. or buy gasoline, it is hard to believe that there is opposition to paper records for electronic voting. But the opposition has been strong. Many local election officials and voting machine companies are fighting paper trails, in part because they will create more work and will raise difficult questions if the paper and electronic tallies do not match. Officials in places that have invested heavily in electronic machines that do not produce a paper trail, like Florida and Georgia, have been particularly vehement.

As many computer scientists have explained, voters cannot trust electronic machines that do not produce voter-verifiable records. If New York throws its weight behind California, Ohio and several other states to require them, the odds are good that such records will become the national standard and that even states like Florida will have to retrofit their machines to produce them. It is too late for New York to lead the movement for reliable electronic voting, but if it acts in the next few weeks, it can still be an important part of the solution.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 18, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
For Conservatives, Mission Accomplished
By JOHN MICKLETHWAIT and ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE

Last week Washington was the site of the biggest birthday party you never heard of. The occasion was the 40th anniversary of the American Conservative Union, and the guest list included all the grandees of right-wing America, from Senator Mitch McConnell to Phyllis Schlafly to Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association to, of course, President Bush.

In his speech, the President promised that "for our blessed land the best days lie ahead," and was greeted with several foot-stomping ovations and cries of "Four more years!" But the real flavor of the event was captured by what the president called the "fine group of decent citizens" gathered at the tables in front of him — members of the N.R.A., the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Foundation and countless other groups that make up Conservative America. One man wore a tie with the Ten Commandments; women carried handbags in the colors of the American flag; and when the narrator of a film about the conservative union used the phrase "right-wing nuts," the room roared its approval.

This is the type of partisan anniversary that only one side of America pays attention to — the side that watches Fox News Channel (the host for the evening was that network`s Tony Snow). Yet every Democratic politician in the land could have learned a great deal by attending. It would be going a little far to say that the A.C.U. ought to have celebrated under a banner labeled "Mission Accomplished," but it is because of such groups that the right has out-organized, out-fought and out-thought liberal America over the past 40 years. And the left still shows no real sign of knowing how to fight back.

To consider the ground that liberals have ceded, one must look back at the union`s founding in a cramped living-room in 1964, a few days after Lyndon B. Johnson had thrashed the first fully paid-up conservative presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. Back then, the self-styled "Mr. Conservative" seemed to come from another planet. "When in all our history," asked the political theorist Richard Hofstadter, "has anyone with ideas so bizarre, so archaic, so self-confounding, so remote from the basic American consensus got so far?"

Fast forward to today. A Republican Party that is more conservative than Mr. Goldwater could have imagined controls the White House, Congress, many governors` mansions and a majority of seats in state legislatures. Back in 1964, John Kenneth Galbraith smugly proclaimed: "These, without doubt, are the years of the liberal. Almost everyone now so describes himself." Today, a Gallup poll tells us, twice as many Americans (41 percent) describe themselves as "conservative" than as "liberal" (19 percent).

Democrats have come up with all sorts of excuses, from the evils of Richard Nixon`s "Southern strategy" to the "stolen" election of 2000. They usually ignore the fact that the right has simply been far better at producing agenda-setting ideas. From welfare reform in Wisconsin to policing in New York City, from the tax-cutting Proposition 13 in California to regime change in Baghdad, the intellectual impetus has, for better or worse, come from the right. As President Bush bragged at last week`s party, the right is "the dominant intellectual force in American politics."

Yet many Democrats insist this will change once Mr. Bush is ejected from the White House. This shows how little they have learned. First, the right has a history of advancing its agenda under Democratic executives (welfare reform came about under Bill Clinton). More important, it has organized itself for a much longer battle. Whenever it has been forced into retreat — as after Watergate — the flame has burned eternal at places like Heritage, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, and at their smaller cousins in virtually every state.

Brains are nothing without political brawn. That`s why the American Conservative Union disciplines Congressional Republicans by rating them according to their purity (the average rating for House Republicans has risen from 63 percent in 1972 to 91 percent in 2002). Yes, liberal environmental and abortion rights groups rate members of Congress too, but those figures are more effective as fodder for conservative attack ads than as a way to keep Democrats in line.

There are other battalions of foot soldiers, too. Americans for Tax Reform, which had a table at the dinner, rigidly enforces the party`s pledge not to raise taxes. Focus on the Family (which has a campus in Colorado Springs so big that it has its own ZIP code) concentrates on promoting family values. Sometimes these groups feud — Cato libertarians have plenty of differences with Focus on the Family`s social conservatives — but as all the back-slapping at the party showed, they share a sense of movement.

In theory, liberals have more than enough brain and brawn to match conservative America. The great liberal universities and foundations have infinitely more resources than the American Enterprise Institute and its allies. But the conservatives have always been more dogged. The Ford Foundation is as liberal as Heritage is conservative, but there is no doubt which is the more ruthless in its cause.

Now, perhaps, a few liberals are waking up to the task that confronts them. Americans Come Together, a group backed by the billionaire George Soros, already has 20 offices and 450 employees in Ohio alone. John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, has founded the Center for American Progress, which Democrats are calling "the liberal Heritage." But it still seems that liberals are purely reactive. Barry Goldwater may have been strong meat, but at least he had ideas. By contrast, Americans Come Together`s entire raison d`être (like that of the John Kerry campaign) remains negative: to send Mr. Bush back to Texas.

"There is no such thing as spontaneous public opinion," Beatrice Webb, the great British leftist, once said. "It all has to be manufactured from a center of conviction and energy." The American Conservative Union is just one of many such centers on the right; it`s a lesson that liberal America seems unable to learn.

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, writers for The Economist, are the authors of "The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

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May 18, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
In Iraq, America`s Shakeout Moment
By DAVID BROOKS

There`s something about our venture into Iraq that is inspiringly, painfully, embarrassingly and quintessentially American.

No other nation would have been hopeful enough to try to evangelize for democracy across the Middle East. No other nation would have been naïve enough to do it this badly. No other nation would be adaptable enough to recover from its own innocence and muddle its way to success, as I suspect we are about to do.

American history sometimes seems to be the same story repeated over and over again. Some group of big-dreaming but foolhardy adventurers head out to eradicate some evil and to realize some golden future. They get halfway along their journey and find they are unprepared for the harsh reality they suddenly face. It`s too late to turn back, so they reinvent their mission. They toss out illusions and adopt an almost desperate pragmatism. They never do realize the utopia they initially dreamed about, but they do build something better than what came before.

This basic pattern has marked our national style from the moment British colonists landed on North American shores. Overly optimistic about the conditions they would find, the colonists were woefully undercapitalized, underequipped and underskilled. At Jamestown, there were three gentlemen and gentlemen`s servants for every skilled laborer. They didn`t bother to plant enough grain to see them through the winter.

But they learned and adapted. Settlement companies were compelled to send more workers, along with axes, chisels, scythes, millstones and seeds. Eventually the colonies thrived.

Centuries later, it was much the same. The guides who aided and fleeced the pioneers who moved West were struck by how clueless many of them were about the wilderness they were entering. Their diaries show that many thought they could establish genteel New England-style villages in short order. They leapt before they looked, faced the shock of reality, adapted and cobbled together something unexpected.

And it is that way today. We are tricked by hope into starting companies, beginning books, immigrating to this country and investing in telecom networks. The challenges turn out to be tougher than we imagined. Our excessive optimism is exposed. New skills are demanded. But nothing important was ever begun in a prudential frame of mind.

Hope begets disappointment, and we are now in a moment of disappointment when it comes to Iraq. During these shakeout moments, the naysayers get to gloat while the rest of us despair, lacerate ourselves, second-guess those in charge and look at things anew. But this very process of self-criticism is the precondition for the second wind, the grubbier, less illusioned effort that often enough leads to some acceptable outcome.

Today in Iraq local commanders seem to be allowed to try anything. We are allowing former Baathists to man a Falluja Brigade to police their own city. We are pounding Moktada al-Sadr while negotiating with him. There is talk of moving up elections so when an Iraqi official is assassinated, he is not seen as a person working with the U.S., but as a duly elected representative of the Iraqi people.

Some of these policies seem incoherent, but they may work. And back home a new mood has taken over part of the political class. The emerging responsible faction has no time now for the witless applause lines the jeering jackdaws on left and right repeat to themselves to their own perpetual self-admiration and delight. Even in a political year, most politicians do not want this country to fail.

There are, for example, members of Congress from both parties who feel estranged from this administration. They feel it does not listen to their ideas. But in this troubled hour, they are desperate to help. If but a call were made, they would burst forth with intelligent suggestions: about Iraq, about political tactics, about getting additional appropriations.

Remember, the most untrue truism in human history is that there are no second acts in American life. In reality, there is nothing but second acts. There are shakeout moments and, redundantly, new beginnings. The weeks until June 30 are bound to be awful, but we may be at the start of a new beginning now.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 18, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Wastrel Son
By PAUL KRUGMAN

He was a stock character in 19th-century fiction: the wastrel son who runs up gambling debts in the belief that his wealthy family, concerned for its prestige, will have no choice but to pay off his creditors. In the novels such characters always come to a bad end. Either they bring ruin to their families, or they eventually find themselves disowned.

George Bush reminds me of those characters — and not just because of his early career, in which friends of the family repeatedly bailed out his failing business ventures. Now that he sits in the White House, he`s still counting on other people to settle his debts — not to protect the reputation of his family, but to protect the reputation of the country.

One by one, our erstwhile allies are disowning us; they don`t want an unstable, anti-Western Iraq any more than we do, but they have concluded that President Bush is incorrigible. Spain has washed its hands of our problems, Italy is edging toward the door, and Britain will join the rush for the exit soon enough, with or without Tony Blair.

At home, however, Mr. Bush`s protectors are not yet ready to make the break.

Last week Mr. Bush asked Congress for yet more money for the "Iraq Freedom Fund" — $25 billion for starters, although Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, says that the bill for the full fiscal year will probably exceed $50 billion, and independent experts think even that is an underestimate. And you know what? He`ll get it.

Before the war, officials refused to discuss costs, except to insist that they would be minimal. It was only after the shooting started, and Congress was in no position to balk, that the administration demanded $75 billion for the Iraq Freedom Fund.

Then, after declaring "mission accomplished" and pushing through a big tax cut — and after several months when administration officials played down the need for more funds — Mr. Bush told Congress that he needed an additional $87 billion. Assured that the situation in Iraq was steadily improving, and warned that American soldiers would suffer if the money wasn`t forthcoming, Congress gave Mr. Bush another blank check.

Now Mr. Bush is back for more. Given this history, one might have expected him to show some contrition — to promise to change his ways and to offer at least a pretense that Congress would henceforth have some say in how money was spent.

But the tone of the cover letter Mr. Bush sent with last week`s budget request can best be described as contemptuous: it`s up to Congress to "ensure that our men and women in uniform continue to have the resources they need when they need them." This from an administration that, by rejecting warnings from military professionals, ensured that our men and women in uniform didn`t have remotely enough resources to do the job.

The budget request itself was almost a caricature of the administration`s "just trust us" approach to governing.

It ran to less than a page, with no supporting information. Of the $25 billion, $5 billion is purely a slush fund, to be used at the secretary of defense`s discretion. The rest is allocated to specific branches of the military, but with the proviso that the administration can reallocate the money at will as long as it notifies the appropriate committees.

Senators are balking for the moment, but everyone knows that they`ll give in, after demanding, at most, cosmetic changes. Once again, Mr. Bush has put Congress in a bind: it was his decision to put American forces in harm`s way, but if members of Congress fail to give him the money he demands, he`ll blame them for letting down the troops.

As long as political figures aren`t willing to disown Mr. Bush`s debt — the impossible situation in which he has placed America`s soldiers — there isn`t much they can do.

So how will it all end? The cries of "stay the course" are getting fainter, while the calls for a quick exit are growing. In other words, it seems increasingly likely that the nation will end up disowning Mr. Bush and his debts.

That will mean settling for an outcome in Iraq that, however we spin it, will look a lot like defeat — and the nation`s prestige will be damaged by that outcome. But lost prestige is better than ruin.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com

As Violence Deepens, So Does Pessimism

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 18, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, May 17 -- With stunning brazenness, pinpoint timing and devastating force, the suicide car bomber who killed the head of Iraq`s Governing Council on Monday gave shape to a feeling among Iraqi and U.S. officials and common citizens that the country is almost unmanageable.

With the transfer of limited powers to a new Iraqi government scheduled to take place in six weeks, U.S. and allied forces have been unable to eradicate threats to Iraq`s stability, and no one has predicted a reduction in violence before the June 30 handover.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is trying to create the caretaker government that will assume authority, but on Monday debate over the details of his plan took a back seat to a more basic question: If Iraq`s titular president, Izzedin Salim, can be blown up at the gates of occupation headquarters, what kind of country is being handed over to Iraqis?

"We could not imagine the deterioration leading to such a point. It`s getting worse day after day, and no one has been able to put an end to it. Who is going to protect the next government, no matter what kind it is?" said Abdul Jalil Mohsen, a former Iraqi general and member of the Iraqi National Accord, a prominent party represented on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, which Salim headed this month under a rotating system.

"There`s no question: A small band of people can paralyze the country," said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of the council. "They are armed and organized and this is the difficulty. The people who did this have no respect for anything of value. It`s a real danger to Iraq, the Iraqis and to an agenda to achieve any kind of democracy."

Inside the Green Zone, the heavily fortified U.S. administration compound that Salim was about to enter when the suicide bomber struck, expectations are grim. "It will take a lot of doing for this not to end in a debacle," a senior occupation official said. "There is no confidence in the coalition. Why should there be?"

On Baghdad`s hot and dusty streets, Iraqi working people also expressed a deep sense of pessimism. "Our country is at a loss. I don`t think that even after the handover the government will control things," said Ali Fakhri, who owns a fabric store in the Kadhimiya district.

"Just look around," said Bakran Ohan, who sells baby clothes. "Do you see any police? Any soldiers? There is a complete lack of security. It won`t change from day to night on June 30."

Salim`s death was a high-profile reminder of the broader violence affecting Iraq. Central Iraq, home to a long-running revolt by Sunni Muslims, is plagued by daily roadside bombings, occasional car bombings and frequent assassinations of Iraqis working with the U.S.-led administration. To the south, frequent clashes over the past six weeks have pitted U.S. and allied forces against a persistent insurgency led by Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr. Fighting has all but paralyzed several southern cities.

Hostile bands operate freely in cities that straddle the main routes in and out of Baghdad. Foreigners who travel Iraqi roads run the risk of being kidnapped, and reconstruction projects in many parts of the country have come to a standstill.

Car bombs have been used repeatedly with devastating effect in Baghdad and other parts of the country since August, when the first of them destroyed the Jordanian Embassy. Since then, targets have included the U.N. headquarters, Red Cross headquarters, several police stations and two entrances to the Green Zone.

U.S. officials say assassinations and attacks on government buildings are designed to drive a wedge between the occupation authority and Iraqi citizens. When the Iraqi National Accord issued a letter of condolence after Salim`s slaying, it noted that six of its members have been killed over the past six months. Salim is the second Governing Council member to be killed since the group`s formation last summer.

Since late April, the Iraqi press has reported at least a dozen attempts to kill Iraqis working -- or suspected of working -- with the Americans. On April 28 in Baghdad, a mob hanged three men, each accused of working "as a spy for the enemies of Islam," according to a message left at their feet. The next day, gunmen shot an employee of Baghdad`s Sadr City district town hall at his home. The assailants left a letter in his pocket warning against holding a funeral. On May 8, gunmen in Yusufiya, south of Baghdad, killed the head of the town council as he drove on a main street. Farther south in Samawah the next day, gunmen ran the car of the deputy mayor off the road and shot him and three passengers.

Last week, a man in a red mask put a stick of dynamite at the door of a local tribal leader, Roukan Mughier Atwan. It exploded while Atwan was trying to douse it with water, killing him and one of his daughters. Atwan had met with U.S. officials, part of consultations that military authorities try to carry on with traditional leaders; his brother, Thayer, said a letter had been posted nearby promising death to anyone who helped the Americans.

"There was a list of 14 names in the marketplace," including that of his brother, Thayer said. "But later, it was refuted publicly. I guess someone did not listen."

Atwan`s death closely followed the May 8 detonation of a remote-control bomb outside the house of Muayyad Ayad, a police official from Habhab, 13 miles north of Baqubah. Ayad survived, but two female bystanders and a male cousin were killed. The same day in nearby Miqdadiyah, gunmen attacked the mayor`s house, injuring an Iraqi policeman.

To the west in Samarra, police were also a target last week. On Tuesday, insurgents raided a police station, drove off seven officers and blew up the building and two patrol cars. A group called the Army of Truth circulated a leaflet that called for U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces to leave town. They also said that any building flying the new, U.S.-approved blue and white Iraqi flag would be blown up.

In Fallujah, west of the capital, a U.S.-endorsed agreement to allow patrols by former members of ousted president Saddam Hussein`s army quieted the city after a month of combat. Nonetheless, the area around Fallujah is heavy with roadside bombs and ambushes. Over the weekend, U.S. Marines reported on a goodwill visit to the town of Kharma, on the road from Baghdad to Fallujah. As soon as they left, insurgents peppered the town with rockets, according to the 1st Marine Division.

The roads south from Baghdad have become alleys for ambushes and kidnapping, area residents say. Two Russian electrical workers, nabbed near Latifiyah, were released Monday after two weeks in captivity; one of their comrades was killed during the kidnapping.

Even residents of Latifiyah said they had been terrorized by gangs of insurgents. They insist the attackers are not local people, but fundamentalist Wahhabi Muslims hiding among the date groves. "We don`t use the main road to Latifiyah," said Ali Hamza Khazraji, a tribal leader who took a reporter to his home last week.

"These Wahhabis hate the Christians. Foreigners can`t come here," he said, explaining the kidnappings. "We have lots of trees. They can shoot and hide."

Violence in the south has forced U.S. troops originally slated for duty in and near Baghdad to fight far afield. U.S.-led forces killed about 50 members of Sadr`s militia on Monday, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit told reporters in Baghdad. U.S. troops killed 17 militiamen in Karbala and 13 more in other areas, including Najaf, where the 31-year-old Sadr has taken refuge. A helicopter rocketed some vehicles in southeast Iraq, killing insurgents who were loading weapons onto them, Kimmit said.

In Nasiriyah, Italian paramilitary police withdrew from a downtown government building to a base on the outskirts of the city after three days of taking fire from Sadr`s forces and suffering one fatality. Kimmit denied that the Italians had retreated. "They just moved to a more secure camp," he said.

He also brushed aside reports that plans to transfer U.S. troops from South Korea to Iraq had been prompted by the fighting in the south. On Sunday, Kim Sook, a Foreign Ministry official, told reporters in Seoul that "the U.S. government has told us that it needs to select some U.S. troops in South Korea and send them to Iraq to cope with the worsening situation."

The issue of who should be in charge of Iraqi security was hotly debated here in the aftermath of Salim`s assassination. Members of the Governing Council argued that Iraqis must be put in control -- now -- with forces drawn from existing militias. The United States is seeking to retain command of the Iraqi security services that are being assembled and trained with American money and has largely resisted creation of units from party or ethnic-based militias.

Ahmed Chalabi, a council member who heads the Iraqi National Congress and has close ties with the Pentagon, said at a news conference Monday that "the Iraqi government must have exclusive and complete control over the army and security services of Iraq."

Hamid Bayati, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, another party on the Governing Council, said: "Iraqis know the country. They are more capable in getting information. They should be responsible."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Set a Date to Pull Out
The danger is not that we will cut and run but that the Iraqis will insist that we get out.

By James Steinberg and Michael O`Hanlon

Tuesday, May 18, 2004; Page A19

American policy in Iraq faces a crisis. Mainstream U.S. political leaders, including President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry, have continued to insist that we must "stay the course" and that "failure is not an option." But these slogans are not enough to rescue a failing policy. The success of our mission has depended from the outset on the perception by the Iraqi people that our presence is necessary to secure their own future. Today that premise is increasingly in doubt.

Unless we restore the Iraqi people`s confidence in our role, failure is not only an option but a likelihood. Critical to achieving our goal is an announced decision to end the current military deployment by the end of next year, following the Iraqi adoption of a constitution, together with greatly intensified training for the Iraqi security forces. Otherwise, the issue may well be not how long we want to stay but how soon the Iraqis kick us out.

From the beginning the administration`s strategy assumed that the United States would be welcomed as "liberators" by most Iraqis. Yet the failure of the U.S.-led provisional authority to provide basic security for many, and the slow pace of reconstruction, has eroded support for our presence. The Abu Ghraib outrages and the recent escalation of fighting have further undermined our position. A majority of Iraqis now believe their country is worse off than before Saddam Hussein was overthrown, according to a recent poll.

This dramatic loss of support undermines the legitimacy of our continued military presence. It also makes our task of stabilizing the country nearly impossible.

The problem is compounded by our own ambivalence about the political transition in Iraq. Although we defined our mission as liberation, we have been deeply reluctant to trust the Iraqi people to set their own course. From the decision to install a handpicked interim governing council, to our initial reluctance to support early elections for the limited authority we plan to grant the transition government after June 30, the message is that we will not permit self-determination in Iraq until Iraqis choose a government that meets our goal: a Western-style democracy broadly supportive of U.S. interests in the region.

That objective was wildly ambitious even before the military operation began; today it is simply unattainable in the near term. The more we talk about staying "as long as it takes" the more it appears we are trying to impose our vision on Iraq -- further alienating the Iraqi public. The danger is not that we will cut and run but that the Iraqis will insist that we get out, leaving behind a security vacuum that could ignite civil war and wider regional strife.

How can we avoid such a disaster? First, we must make clear that our military presence in Iraq is designed to permit the Iraqis to freely choose their own future -- even if it is not fully to our liking. We should indicate not just that we will leave if asked but that we will ourselves plan to end the deployment of coalition forces following the election of an Iraqi government and the adoption of a new constitution next year. We should make clear that we (as part of a wider international coalition) would be prepared to stay beyond that time -- but only at the request of the new Iraqi government, and as part of a new, U.N.-sponsored mandate on terms that are acceptable to the new Iraqi government and to us.

Second, we must be clear about our legitimate security interests in Iraq. We have a right to insist that a new Iraqi government not threaten peace and security -- by developing weapons of mass destruction, harboring terrorists or attacking other nations. And we should certainly seek to use our influence to encourage a tolerant, pluralist society. But because this is a responsibility Iraq owes to all, not just us, we should shift the focus away from the United States as the enforcement arm of the international community to Iraq`s neighbors and others that share these interests, including NATO and the United Nations. We should begin by convening a major international summit on Iraq, involving not only Western allies but also Arab leaders and Iraqis, at the time of the NATO summit next month in Istanbul. And we should invite the International Atomic Energy Agency to play a role in ensuring that a new Iraqi government does not pursue weapons programs.

Third, we should accelerate the training and equipping of new security forces for Iraq. Less than 10 percent of the necessary numbers of soldiers and police have been properly trained to date. Filling this vacuum is critical to the success of this strategy, because indigenous forces are far more likely than foreign forces to succeed in defeating the residual Baathist and foreign fighters in Iraq. If Arab countries and NATO devoted just 10 percent of their police and military training capacity to Iraqi forces, we could complete an intensified training process by next year.

Some will see this as cut-and-run. It is not. Unlike the case with most previous stabilization missions, our own enduring commitment to success in Iraq is beginning to work against us. It breeds cynicism among Iraqis that we are like the colonialists of old, planning to stay indefinitely to keep our hands on their oil and to use Iraq for our own, broader foreign policy objectives. The lesson of our history is that our best partners are those who freely choose to be. We must give the Iraqis the opportunity to seize that possibility for themselves.

James Steinberg was deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration and is vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution; Michael O`Hanlon is a senior fellow there.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Pervasive Abuse Alleged by Freed Detainees, Red Cross
By Tracy Wilkinson and Alissa J. Rubin
Times Staff Writers

May 18, 2004

BAGHDAD — It begins with a blast at the front gate in the middle of the night. Troops pound their way into the home. Males are rounded up. They disappear into a chaotic system of U.S.-run jails and prison camps and emerge months later, sometimes battered and often never knowing of what crime they are accused.

That has been the experience of many of the nearly 40,000 Iraqis who have been detained and released by U.S. forces occupying Iraq for more than a year.

As much of the world focuses on Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, dozens of detainees and their families, along with scathing reports from international human rights groups, describe mistreatment at detention centers under U.S. control from Basra and Umm al Qasr in the south to Tikrit and Mosul in northern Iraq.

Even as the White House continues to argue that photographed abuse at Abu Ghraib was an isolated case, interviews with detainees and human rights reports demonstrate that abuse in various forms was systemwide.

"They just don`t know how to handle us properly," said Ghazwan Alusi, 26, a car dealer held in two prisons for four months late last year. He described being transported from one detention center to another 600 miles away, hogtied by the arms and legs to other prisoners in the back of an uncovered truck.

"We were treated worse than animals," he said.

Much of the treatment alleged by freed Iraqi prisoners does not constitute torture. Not everyone was subjected to the aggressive interrogation techniques, from sleep deprivation to threats and beatings, that now are banned. And it remains to be seen whether any other detention facilities were as bad as cellblock 1A at Abu Ghraib, where sexual torture was employed.

But Iraqis say even the routine treatment is humiliating and unjust, especially for the vast majority of those rounded up in sweeps by U.S. troops, who cast an ever-wider net, sometimes with faulty intelligence. The detainees were often denied access to lawyers and seldom charged with a crime.

Sheik Abdul Sattar, 71, was watching television with his wife of 50 years in the early morning of April 25 when he heard the sound of machine-gun fire, he said. Afraid that a grandchild had found the family Kalashnikov, he shouted out, "What`s going on?" and started to hoist himself off the sofa.

As he looked up, he saw a U.S. soldier towering over him and heard him shout: "Put your hands up!"

Sattar watched the soldiers throw his grown sons to the floor, handcuff them with plastic "flexicuffs" and pull hoods over their heads. A moment later, it was Sattar`s turn. He was pushed flat on his face, he said, a bag was pulled over his head and his hands were tightly cuffed behind his back. An ill man who walked with difficulty, he was dragged on the ground, suffering bruises and a twisted ankle.

Hours later, the hood was taken off and Sattar found himself in the total darkness of a closet so narrow that he could only stand. It was almost a day before he saw light again, he said, emanating from an electric bulb in a small, wood-frame cell.

The details of Sattar`s arrest are similar to those of thousands of Iraqis detained by U.S.-led occupation forces, according to a February report by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The report alleges that the abuses were part of a pattern at detention centers across Iraq. The Red Cross lists a dozen methods used, including three that involve sexual abuse.

Throughout the first months of the occupation, detainees frequently made an initial and indefinite stop at Baghdad`s international airport and its Camp Cropper, which housed a military intelligence section charged with running interrogations and screening new detainees.

Alusi, the car dealer, said he was picked up by a U.S. patrol on May 16, 2003, for a curfew violation. He was taken to a nearby school and told that he would be freed at dawn.

But in the morning, soldiers put a bag on his head, bound his hands and bundled him off to the airport, he said. He and 300 to 400 other detainees were corralled in a dusty patch of desert surrounded by concertina wire.

Alusi was jailed alongside Sadun Hamadi, the 75-year-old former speaker of the Iraqi National Assembly, who lay on a single blanket in a sweltering tent, using his shoes as a pillow.

Alusi said he offered to bring water to the respected statesman, but the guards required Hamadi to get it himself. In his underwear, before all to see, Hamadi crossed the sand to retrieve a bit of water.

"Oh my God," Alusi recalled thinking to himself. "If they do this to him, a man of his position, what is in store for the rest of us?"

According to the Red Cross, those who potentially could provide useful information at the airport were singled out for aggressive questioning. It "was part of the military intelligence process to hold a [detainee] naked in a completely dark and empty cell for a prolonged period, to use inhumane and degrading treatment, including physical and psychological coercion … to secure their cooperation."

As the hot summer dragged on, Alusi and other inmates protested. Some became violent.

About 1,200 were transferred to Camp Bucca, another detention facility in the southern port town of Umm al Qasr. Alusi and the others were loaded into the backs of metal-paneled trucks. Each prisoner was cuffed to the next, at both the arms and legs, bouncing painfully over the rutted back roads on the 600-mile journey, their heads slamming against the sides of the trucks.

At one point, an American soldier bumped his head and was evacuated by helicopter. But the prisoners, Alusi said, were swooning and retching from the heat, with little water and no relief. He claimed that several prisoners died, but that could not be confirmed.

Alusi said conditions were better at Camp Bucca. But the camp gets mixed reviews from human rights groups.

The Red Cross said intimidation and the threat of attack — such as aiming a rifle at a prisoner`s head — was used during interrogation at Camp Bucca, but beatings and hoodings were far less common than in other detention centers. Guards regarded their charges with hostility and "general contempt," the Red Cross said.

The Christian Peacemakers Team, a U.S.-based advocacy group, documented 72 cases of abuse at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq between May 31 and Dec. 20. It reported its findings to L. Paul Bremer III, the occupation`s top civilian official, in a letter dated Jan. 9 and to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of military forces, in a letter a day earlier.

Privately, the Red Cross began notifying occupation officials of abuse last year, and Amnesty International raised the alarm publicly last summer. The Los Angeles Times wrote about allegations of prisoner abuse as far back as July, as did other media sources.

Abu Ghraib figures prominently in the reports, but so do the other facilities. In its findings, the Red Cross also singles out seven smaller jails in Baghdad for allegations of abusive treatment.

One of them, the Salhiyye jail, is where Suad Mirza spent four of the six months she was in detention. Mirza was arrested in mid-July, and her two sons, Hussein and Ali, 2 1/2 weeks before that. Hussein, a high school senior, was studying for final exams when American soldiers burst into the Mirza home. Ali, 22, a university student, had just returned from a trip to Jordan.

Mirza understands that her husband`s close relationship with ousted dictator Saddam Hussein would have focused scrutiny on her family. A Kurd, Sabegh Mirza was a Hussein bodyguard for two decades. But Suad Mirza said her husband was forced out of government a dozen years ago. He suffered a series of strokes and has been a bed-ridden paraplegic for about five years.

"I swear to God, maybe my husband and I knew Saddam. But my son [Hussein]? He was 6 when my husband left the regime," she said. From the time she arrived at the jail, she was questioned regularly by an American officer she described as tall and fit with blondish hair and blue eyes, accompanied by an Iraqi interrogator.

Mirza is the rare woman who has come forward and talked about her imprisonment — most are too ashamed or terrified. Mirza said she was not physically abused. But her interrogators repeatedly threatened her family in an effort to extract information. They threatened to have her daughters raped and her house looted, she said. They jailed her, initially, in a crowded cell with common male criminals who she believed were on drugs.

"This woman is a terrorist," she said she overheard the U.S. officer telling the Iraqi. "Treat her in the worst possible way."

Most of the questioning centered on whether she knew anything about the insurgency and on a crate of pistols — her husband`s collection, she said — found in her house during last year`s raid.

She eventually was released without being charged. Her older son, Ali, remains at Abu Ghraib, and Hussein, 18, is at Camp Bucca.

"The Iraqi people are angry, primarily because so many people are being detained arbitrarily. It`s a harsh and inhumane detention," said Thamer Sultan, a tribal leader from the largely anti-American town of Tikrit. Now, with the Abu Ghraib scandal revealed, he said, "anger over the mistreatment is just an extension of that already pervasive anger. It only adds to the outrage."

Sultan, whose son, nephew and cousin are or have been detained, is a former army general who had a falling out with Saddam Hussein several years ago and now is a consultant to the occupation authority in the Tikrit region. His son, Omar, was held for a month and beaten by military police in December, he said, even though the young man was pointing out arms caches and providing other intelligence.

When Sultan complained about his son`s beating to Bremer`s representative in Tikrit, he was told that such treatment at the hands of U.S. soldiers was impossible.

"The bruises and marks were visible," Sultan said.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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The annual spring jacaranda bloom is on brilliant display on Myrtle Street in Santa Ana and throughout the Southland. A slight breeze can cause the faintly fragrant 2-inch-long flowers to cascade from a tree�s canopy. Lavender-colored streets and sidewalks are a beautiful sight, but the blooms can be a sticky nuisance underfoot.
(Don Bartletti / LAT)

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THE NATION
Inquiry Into Leak Looks to Reporters
By Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writer

May 18, 2004

WASHINGTON — The investigation into whether the Bush administration illegally exposed the identity of an undercover CIA operative has turned to some of the journalists covering the inquiry.

A special prosecutor has asked reporters for the Washington Post and Newsday to sit for questions in connection with the investigation of the case, the papers acknowledged Monday. Other journalists might also be targeted for questioning, sources said.

The informal requests suggest that the 5-month-old probe into the alleged "outing" of CIA operative Valerie Plame may be entering a critical phase. They also raise the possibility of journalists being subpoenaed to testify about the case before a federal grand jury.

The special prosecutor, U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald, is trying to determine how Plame`s CIA connection ended up in a Robert Novak syndicated column published July 14 and whether laws governing the intentional disclosure of agency operatives were broken in the process.

Plame`s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, has alleged that the exposure was political payback by the Bush White House for writing an op-ed article, published July 6 in the New York Times, challenging a claim made by the president in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking to purchase "significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Wilson had visited Niger, the African country cited in an intelligence report, to assess the claim for the CIA. Wilson concluded that it was baseless.

Eric Lieberman, associate counsel for the Post, said he received a call from Fitzgerald last week requesting an opportunity to speak with two Post reporters about the case. Lieberman said he had not yet responded to the request. He said that Fitzgerald had declined to discuss what information he was seeking.

Newsday also acknowledged being approached by Fitzgerald. "We were contacted. Our reporters have not spoken to the government," editor Howard Schneider said in a prepared statement, declining further comment.

A lawyer for Novak, James Hamilton, declined comment when asked whether the columnist had received such a request.

Since Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft chose him in December to head up the investigation, Fitzgerald, who is the top federal prosecutor in Chicago, has questioned members of the White House staff and subpoenaed various documents, including transcripts of phone calls from Air Force One.

Whether the latest requests are an indication that he is close to making a case — or is still struggling to make one — is impossible to tell. Fitzgerald is also said to be looking into whether any people he has interviewed may have lied under oath.

Criminal prosecutions arising from a leak of classified information are notoriously hard to prove without the cooperation of journalists, who by tradition decline to reveal their sources of information.

Some people close to the case viewed the requests as a prelude to subpoenaing the journalists.

"I take it they do not have a smoking gun," said one lawyer close to the case who requested anonymity. He noted that Justice Department policy requires that, before calling journalists to a grand jury, prosecutors must first make an attempt to talk with them on a voluntary basis.

A spokesman for Fitzgerald declined to comment about the investigation.

Both newspapers have reported critical facts about the events leading up to the identification of Plame, as well as the subsequent investigation.

Newsday was considered the first publication to report that the Novak column had blown Plame`s status as an undercover CIA officer. The Post reported that, two days before the Novak column appeared, one of its reporters had a conversation with an unnamed administration official who identified Wilson`s wife as an agency analyst, without mentioning her by name.

In his new book, Wilson recounts receiving a phone call around the same time from veteran Post national security correspondent Walter Pincus, "who alerted me that `they are coming after you.` "


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Scandal`s Shame, Massachusetts` Pride
Robert Scheer

May 18, 2004

What a wonderful image of democracy and tolerance the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has presented to the world by allowing same-sex marriages. At a time when elements of the U.S. military machine have perverted homosexual acts into a form of torture, the sight of responsible and joyful gay adults freely choosing the commitment of marriage could not be more timely.

The lesson is that freedom is indivisible. In Massachusetts, it is up to the individual and not the state to define the essence of the human experience when it comes to love and marriage. It should make us proud patriots that the battle for freedom has won new ground and that full human rights are sacred in at least one state of the nation that claims to lead the free world.

Yes, human rights, for unless homosexuals are granted full civil rights, no other rights are secure. Hitler proved that by exterminating the "abnormal ones," whose pink triangles marked them for death, alongside the Jews. Homosexuals were a favored target of the Taliban goons in Afghanistan, who routinely crushed gays to death under a wall of stones. And they were once interned in camps in Fidel Castro`s Cuba.

Sexual fascism — the violent denial of the fundamental right of human beings to define their essential nature in an open and accountable manner — is at the heart of totalitarianism, whether in an Islamic, a Christian or a Marxist context.

Yet, despite living in a democratic society, we are not immune to exploiting sex as a means of social control. U.S. sodomy laws — until last year`s Supreme Court ruling in a Texas case — made gay sex between consenting adults illegal. At the same time, the U.S. prison system practically institutionalizes male-on-male rape as a form of punishment and intimidation.

And now comes the scandal of Abu Ghraib, which appears to go far beyond a few reservists on an S&M power trip.

Because of the severe psychological consequences of sexual humiliation for conservative Muslims, U.S. military jailers have been routinely stripping Arab prisoners and taking nude photos of them in camps and prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. According to Seymour Hersh in the May 24 New Yorker, this practice was not devised by deranged reservists at the bottom of the military hierarchy at Abu Ghraib but came from the top — from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"Rumsfeld and [Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen] Cambone … expanded the scope of [a top-secret intelligence-gathering program], bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation," reports Hersh, relying on insider intelligence sources. The Pentagon denies it authorized abuse but has admitted to having a policy of routinely allowing prisoners to be stripped naked and in other ways humiliated.

If the goal in Iraq was really to win hearts and minds to the American model of democracy, why would Rumsfeld impose such a shortsighted policy of torture? Was this ends-justify-the-means cynicism or just an act of desperation to save a tragically stupid war?

In the end, the irony is grim: The U.S. military bans openly gay soldiers but apparently does not effectively screen out heterosexual sadists. Meanwhile, at home the president tries desperately to make an election-year issue out of preventing free adults from civilly consecrating same-sex partnerships.

Unfortunately, there are many in this country, at least in the political class, who claim to support the rights of the individual abroad while struggling to limit them at home. Yet, as with classic images from earlier civil rights movements, such as that of a poised black girl walking to school through a jeering crowd, the dramatic scenes of joy and love now unfolding in Massachusetts are likely to be looked back upon by future generations with a "what took us so long?" relief.

Bush has condemned the Massachusetts high court for tampering with the "traditional values" enshrined in the Constitution. But we should be grateful for such tampering, or we would still have slavery and women still would not be allowed to vote.

*

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).



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Eine Abrechnung mit der Afghanistan-Politik der UN.

COMMENTARY
The Wrong Way to Build a Nation
His Afghanistan mission fizzled. How can Brahimi be right for Iraq?
By Kathy Gannon

May 18, 2004

Afghanistan is pretty much off the international radar screen these days. But it wasn`t so long ago that the United Nations was called upon to bring stability, self-rule and security to the country — a mandate not unlike the one it faces today in Iraq.

Adding to the similarity is Lakhdar Brahimi, the man heading the U.N. team in Iraq, who also navigated Afghanistan`s post-Taliban transition.

Yes, they are two very different countries: Iraq with an educated people, an infrastructure that once worked and institutions with competent functionaries. Then there is Afghanistan, destroyed by more than two decades of war, with a largely uneducated population and no institutions to speak of.

Yet there are enough parallels to make an examination of how the U.N. fared in Afghanistan valid. Chief among these parallels are the ethnic and religious divisions that have plagued both countries for generations. So what can we learn from the first experience as we get started on the second? If we graded the U.N.`s performance in Afghanistan, here`s how it would rate:

• Security: This would have to be an F, given that Brahimi himself, in his farewell speech, admitted, "There is fear in the heart of every Afghan because there is no rule of law." How did this happen? Right from the outset, Brahimi and the U.N. made concessions that led to an insecure Afghanistan. The ink hadn`t even dried on the Bonn agreement that brought the first post-Taliban government to power in Afghanistan when the U.N. let armed militias flout the accord. These militias stayed in Kabul in defiance of this agreement, which demanded they be evicted.

The U.N. compromised away Afghanistan`s security step by step so that it could meet a series of deadlines: two loya jirgas (grand councils), a constitution and elections.

That Afghanistan today is a struggling nation, overrun by drugs and undermined by powerful militias and their warlord leaders-turned-government-ministers, reflects a United Nations that measures itself by successes on paper, not on the ground.

• Development: another failing grade. The Afghans` expectations following the collapse of the Taliban were high, maybe too high. Today, nearly three years later, they are a deeply disappointed people. They have seen very little development outside of the cities. Jobs are rare, the infrastructure is still woefully inadequate and little substantive change has come to their daily lives. Yet Afghans see international aid workers in fleets of large, four-wheel-drive vehicles, living in grandly refurbished and rebuilt homes.

• Self-governance: Another disappointment. Elections have been postponed until September, and most Afghans aren`t registered to vote. It`s still not clear whether elections will be just for a president or for the assemblies as well.



Any criticism of the former moujahedeen, who are now power brokers and government ministers, is met with death threats and demands for apologies. The new constitution does some good for women, giving them two representatives from each province. But the violent reaction from the men to criticism of moujahedeen from a woman delegate is just one example of how far women in Afghanistan still have to travel.

• Ethnic and religious rapprochement: The U.N. failed here as well. It did nothing in Afghanistan to stop a cycle of discrimination and linguistic chauvinism. Its inaction actually encouraged discrimination against ethnic Pashtuns because they had been the backbone of the Taliban. Worse, it created a feeling among Pashtuns that they had no political recourse.

Getting this right at the outset of a post-conflict situation seems critical. Pandering to ethnic and religious discriminations and giving one group prominence because it was previously the target of discrimination is a losing game. Such a course also doesn`t recognize that at the very heart of ethnic discrimination is power, either getting it or retaining it. Taking this path, as the United Nations always does, only promises further power struggles.

During the Taliban regime there was discrimination against Dari-speaking Afghans. But before the Taliban, Dari-speaking Afghans discriminated against Pashto speakers. It`s a cycle we can`t understand, but one we can easily — and wrongly — perpetuate through acceptance, which the United Nations does.

• Stability: It`s a tenuous stability that seems likely to collapse when international forces leave the country. Yet to Afghans, that`s what seems likely in the face of militia activity, ethnic divisions and little development or reconstruction.

The report card for the United Nations and its chief architect in Afghanistan speaks for itself. We can only hope they will do better in Iraq.

*

Kathy Gannon, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is on leave as Associated Press bureau chief for Afghanistan and Pakistan, where she has been a reporter for 15 years.

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

Da durch die Entscheidung des Gerichts in Massachusetts zu Gunsten der Homoehe das Thema wieder stark in den Vordergrund gerückt ist, hier eine Umfrage von Gallup von gestern. Es ist verwunderlich wie die Stimmung sich verändert hat.

May 17, 2004
Support for Gay Marriage/Civil Unions Edges Upward
Public remains divided on constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage

Ganze Umfrage:
http://www.gallup.com/content/?ci=11689

by David W. Moore and Joseph Carroll



GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- Same-sex marriages have been cleared to become legal Monday in Massachusetts after a federal judge last week refused a challenge to the Massachusetts court ruling that granted same-sex couples the right to marry. A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey finds a modest increase in the number of Americans who support giving gay couples some of the legal rights that heterosexual couples enjoy. The public is about evenly divided on a law that would establish gay civil unions with some of the same rights that marriages have, and it remains more opposed than supportive of giving gay marriages the same legal status as traditional marriages. However, for both proposals, there is somewhat greater support today than there was several months ago. Still, there has been little change in the ambivalence the public expresses about adopting a constitutional amendment that would effectively ban gay marriage, with slightly more people in support than opposed.

The poll, conducted May 2-4, 2004, finds that when the question on civil unions is asked before any mention of gay marriage, 49% of Americans favor and 48% oppose "a law that would allow homosexual couples to legally form civil unions, giving them some of the legal rights of married couples." These views are similar to those expressed a year ago, in a May 5-7, 2003, poll, which also found a divided public, 49% in favor and 49% opposed. But the following July, in the wake of a Supreme Court decision overturning a Texas law that prohibited sodomy between same-sex couples, there appeared to be a public backlash, as support for civil unions dropped to 40% and opposition increased to 57%.
Would You Favor or Oppose a Law That Would Allow Homosexual Couples to Legally Form Civil Unions?

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

Moore`s `Fahrenheit 9/11` ignites Cannes audiences
DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer
Monday, May 17, 2004
©2004 Associated Press

URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/05/17/entertainment0158EDT0183.DTL

(05-17) 22:58 PDT CANNES, France (AP) --

Michael Moore is usually his own leading man in his satiric documentaries. With "Fahrenheit 9/11," Moore turns the job over to his chief target: President Bush.

"I was the straight man, and Bush wrote the funniest lines," Moore said at the Cannes Film Festival, where his harsh condemnation of post-9/11 U.S. policy charmed, riled and disturbed audiences in its debut Monday.

The main figure in his previous documentaries, Moore spends far less time on screen here.

"The material didn`t need the help. It was strong enough already. And I feel that a little bit of me probably goes a long way," Moore said. "But the film I feel is clearly in my voice. My voice, my vision, and the way I see things. My sense of humor."

Interviews with Bush critics, comments by disillusioned U.S. soldiers in Iraq and mocking footage of often inelegant Bush speeches dominate the film.

In a clip of the president on the golf course, Bush stares sternly into the camera and calls "on all Americans to stop these terrorist killers. Now watch this drive," and Moore cuts to Bush swinging away. In another, Bush`s rendering of the adage "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" becomes almost unrecognizable.

If Moore gets the movie into U.S. theaters this summer as planned, the title "Fahrenheit 9/11" could become a rallying cry in the fall election for voters hoping to see Democratic challenger John Kerry defeat Bush.

"Will it influence the election? I hope it just influences people to leave the theater and become good citizens," Moore said. "I`ll leave it to others to decide what kind of impact it`s going to have on the election."

The movie reiterates other accusations about the Bush family`s financial connections to Saudi oil interests and the family of Osama bin Laden. Moore charges that the White House was asleep at the wheel before the Sept. 11 attacks, then used fear-mongering of future terrorism to muster support for the Iraq war.

Yet Moore -- the provocateur behind the Academy Award-winning "Bowling for Columbine," which dissected American gun culture -- packages his anti-Bush message in a way that provokes both laughs and gasps.

The film opens with a whimsical recap of the 2000 presidential campaign and the rancor after Florida`s photo-finish vote threw the election to Bush over Democratic rival Al Gore.

"Was it all just a dream?" Moore ponders. "Did the last four years even happen?"

The Sept. 11 attacks play out with no images of the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center or damaged the Pentagon. Instead, Moore fades to black and provides only the sounds of the planes crashing into the towers, before fading in again on tearful faces of people watching the devastation and a slow-motion montage of floating ash and debris after the buildings collapsed.

Moore examines Saudi financial ties to the Bush family and presents post-Saddam Iraq as an economic development zone for American corporations.

Graver in tone than "Bowling for Columbine," the film includes grisly images of dead Iraqi babies and burned children, along with amputees and other U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq.

Even those skeptical of Moore, who draws criticism that he skews the truth to fit his arguments, were impressed.

"I have a problematic relationship with some of Michael Moore`s work," said James Rocchi, film critic for DVD rental company Netflix, saying he found Moore too smug and stunt-driven in past work. "There`s no such job as a standup journalist."

Yet in "Fahrenheit 9/11," Rocchi said, Moore presents powerful segments about losses on both sides of the Iraq war and the grief of American and Iraqi families.

"This film is at its best when it is most direct and speaks from the heart, when it shows lives torn apart," Rocchi said.

Moore still is arranging for a U.S. distributor. Miramax financed the movie, but parent company Disney blocked the release because of its political overtones.

In the days before Cannes, Moore`s Disney criticism whipped festival audiences into a fever for "Fahrenheit 9/11." Hollywood cynics called it Moore`s usual showmanship, but when the movie finally unspooled, it earned resounding applause at Monday`s press screenings.

"You see so many movies after they`ve been hyped to heaven and they turn out to be complete crap, but this is a powerful film," said Baz Bamigboye, a film columnist for London`s Daily Mail. "It would be a shame if Americans didn`t get to see this movie about important stuff happening in their own backyard."

"Fahrenheit 9/11" seems assured of U.S. release, however. Miramax bosses Harvey and Bob Weinstein are buying back the film and finding another distributor. Moore hopes to have it in theaters by Fourth of July weekend.

Harvey Weinstein showed up outside the Cannes theater after the first "Fahrenheit 9/11" screening. He declined to speak at length, but as reporters asked if the film would be released, he said, "Have I ever let you down?"

The film takes its title from Ray Bradbury`s "Fahrenheit 451," which refers to the temperature needed to burn books in an anti-Utopian society. Moore calls "Fahrenheit 9/11" the "temperature at which freedom burns."

Moore revisits his hometown of Flint, Michigan, whose economic distress after General Motors plant closings was the subject of his first film, "Roger & Me."

Moore talks with Lila Lipscomb of Flint during her daily routine, hanging an American flag in front of her house. He returns later as Lipscomb reads the heart-wrenching final letter from her son, Michael Pedersen, killed in action in Iraq.

Her patriotism turned to bitterness against the federal government, Lipscomb journeys to Washington, D.C. Near the end of the film, staring at the White House, Lipscomb says, "I finally have a place to put all my pain and anger."

©2004 Associated Press

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

Tuesday, May 18, 2004
War News for May 18, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: British contractor assassinated in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers killed in fighting in al-Anbar province.

Bring ‘em on: Nine Iraqi militiamen killed in continued fighting in Karbala.

Bring ‘em on: Two foreign civilians killed, one wounded in Mosul shooting.

Bring ‘em on: Heavy fighting continues in Najaf.

Italian troops re-occupy their base near Nasiriyah.

Sistani urges US and Mahdi forces to withdraw from Karbala and Najaf.

UK sends 3,000 more troops to Iraq. “And the British military is said to be increasingly upset at the willingness of US troops to ‘kill, kill and kill again’, according to a former British officer. The British chief of the General Staff, Sir Michael Jackson, said there was "military friction" last month when he gave evidence to a parliamentary committee. As a result of the growing rift, British commanders are becoming increasingly reluctant to commit troops to zones not under British control, according to Newsweek magazine.”

Rummy’s happy-spin of the day. “Yesterday, in a speech to a warmly receptive audience at Washington`s conservative Heritage Foundation, Mr. Rumsfeld lashed out at supporters of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and at those battling the U.S. occupation. ‘There`s a lot of intimidation going on,’ Mr. Rumsfeld said. ‘The former regime elements, the Baathists and the terrorists are trying to intimidate the Iraqi people.’"

Desperate measures. “The Defense Department, strapped for troops for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, has proposed to Congress that it tap the Internal Revenue Service to locate out-of-touch reservists. The unusual measure, which the Pentagon said has been examined by lawyers, would allow the IRS to pass on addresses for tens of thousands of former military members who still face recall into the active duty. The proposal has largely escaped attention amid all the other crises of government, and it is likely to face opposition from privacy rights activists who see information held by the IRS as inviolate.” Would these be the same lawyers who examined Rummy`s interrogation policies?

Commentary

Analysis: “Indeed, intelligence and regular Army sources have told UPI that senior officers and officials in both communities are sickened and outraged by the revelations of mass torture and abuse, and also by the incompetence involved, in the Abu Ghraib prison revelations. These sources also said that officials all the way up to the highest level in both the Army and the Agency are determined not to be scapegoated, or allow very junior soldiers or officials to take the full blame for the excesses…. But what enrages many serving senior Army generals and U.S. top-level intelligence community professionals is that the "few" in this case were not primarily the serving soldiers who were actually encouraged to carry out the abuses and even then take photos of the victims, but that they were encouraged to do so, with the Army`s well-established safeguards against such abuses deliberately removed by high-level Pentagon civilian officials”

Analysis: “Acting out of weakness and haste, the CPA is simply folding these militias into the new Iraqi Army and police. Such militias owe their primary loyalty to religious groups like the Dawa and the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which have strong fundamentalist leanings. Others have ties to smaller, less well-known groups. But the general phenomenon of armed groups is on the rise—easy in a country in which virtually every male over 14 owns a Kalashnikov. Over time, these political groups will struggle for power—and their militias will help them do battle. When elections are held, they will use force and money to ensure that the results come out their way.”

Opinion: “Before the war, officials refused to discuss costs, except to insist that they would be minimal. It was only after the shooting started, and Congress was in no position to balk, that the administration demanded $75 billion for the Iraq Freedom Fund. Then, after declaring ‘mission accomplished’ and pushing through a big tax cut — and after several months when administration officials played down the need for more funds — Mr. Bush told Congress that he needed an additional $87 billion. Assured that the situation in Iraq was steadily improving, and warned that American soldiers would suffer if the money wasn`t forthcoming, Congress gave Mr. Bush another blank check.
Now Mr. Bush is back for more. Given this history, one might have expected him to show some contrition — to promise to change his ways and to offer at least a pretense that Congress would henceforth have some say in how money was spent.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: New Jersey soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Pennsylvania Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Virginia soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: California soldier dies in Iraq.

Local story: Texas soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Tennessee airman dies in Iraq.

Local story: Louisiana soldier dies in Iraq.

Local story: Utah Marine wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Michigan soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Arkansas soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: New York soldier wounded in Iraq.


Rant of the Day

The Bushies claim that releasing more pictures of Iraqi prisoner abuse would violate the Geneva Convention. Here’s a little blast from the past, when broadcasting humiliating pictures of an Iraqi prisoner was policy and the Bushies didn’t need no stinking Geneva Conventions. “Dec. 22 Issue - In a part of the world where pride and dignity mean everything, the images were clearly intended to shame. A nameless doctor or medical technician, wearing rubber gloves, was seen closely examining the man`s hair, perhaps looking for vermin. Prodded with a tongue depressor, the man opened his mouth; the doctor peered at the pink flesh of his throat and scraped off a few cells for DNA identification. Then the world saw the man`s face. Haggard, defeated, slightly disgusted and unquestionably Saddam Hussein, tyrant and terrorist, sadist and murderer, object of one of the greatest manhunts in history.”

In the Army, this is called leading by example. Piss-poor leadership, to be sure, but leadership none the less.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 2:57 AM
Comments (9)

[Joerver]

May 18, 2004. 06:51 AM

Anti-Bush polemic funny, emotional yet very powerful
Confident it will be released before the U.S. election

GEOFF PEVERE

It took five separate screenings to accommodate the press demand to see Michael Moore`s heavily anticipated anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday, and when it came to turning up the political heat here, neither the movie nor its maker failed to disappoint.

The audience at a afternoon gala screening responded with a 20-minute standing ovation. Festival artistic director Thierry Fremaux told the New York Times it was the longest he had ever witnessed in Cannes.

A scorching indictment of the current U.S. administration`s military engagement in Iraq that colours the entire enterprise as being rooted in the Bush family`s business relations with Saudi oil money and members of Osama Bin Laden`s family — and featuring some harrowing footage shot by freelance camera crews of prisoner abuse, bombed Iraqi civilians and dead-of-night military raids on Iraqi homes — Fahrenheit 9/11 is a considerably more sober, impassioned and focused film than Moore`s previous record-breaking box office documentary success Bowling For Columbine. It also features, for better or worse, considerably less Michael Moore on screen.

Following a narrative line that traces President George W. Bush`s military record, business ventures, political history and pre- and post-9/11 presidency, the film meticulously lays out a deeply sinister and cynical conspiracy that ends up with powerfully graphic — and many previously unseen — images of dead and mutilated bodies on both sides of the current conflict.

The implication is as clear as it is unsubtle: Moore is laying the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and coalition forces right on the front steps of the White House, and purely for the purposes of economic gain.

While inescapably a partisan and flatly polemical work, Fahrenheit 9/11 makes its case meticulously and convincingly, and uses all of the pop cultural rhetorical methods that have made the director not only the most popular documentary maker of his generation, but one of the most prominent American figures lashing out against the Bush administration: He knows how to talk in the language of TV.

At one point in the film Bush is seen in the primary school classroom where he first learned of the planes being flown into the World Trade Center towers, and Moore slows the footage down so that Bush is seen to be blinking uncomprehendingly and endlessly, a child`s storybook open ridiculously before him, as a counter in the corner of the screen counts out the nine minutes before the President seemed to react.

"What was he thinking?" Moore`s voiceover asks. Later, he surmises what the President might have been thinking over an image of Saddam Hussein: "I think I`d better blame this guy."

Elsewhere, the plane carrying certain Bush-connected members of the Bin Laden family out of the United States on the morning of the attacks takes to the air with the Animals` "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" roars on the soundtrack.

In possibly the most emotionally powerful moment of the film, a mother who lost her son in the war goes to the White House and to be confronted by another woman who insists that all the anti-war activity going on there is just "staged."

"My son is dead," she says, tears and fury rising in her eyes. "That wasn`t staged."

Certain to be divisive and controversial, and already the subject of considerable discussion concerning its troubled distribution history first with Mel Gibson`s Icon Pictures (which Moore alleges dropped the film because of high-level and possibly even administration interference) and more recently the Walt Disney Company, Fahrenheit 9/11 seems expressly designed to mobilize viewers to get out and vote against George W. Bush this November.

First it needs to find distributor, however. Currently without one, Moore is nevertheless completely confident that someone will pick up the film and get it out a widely and immediately as he`d like.

He`s undoubtedly right — if as much for economic as political reasons. If Columbine was any indication, this movie could make a pile.

Yet, while Moore`s insistence that "this film will open in the United States before the election" and in "shopping malls and multiplexes" instead of art houses — he has also said he`d like to see it available on DVD by October — he played curiously coy in the post-screening press conference when asked directly if he hoped the movie might serve to hinder President Bush`s chances of re-election in November. "I just make movies I`d like to see on a Friday night," he shrugged.

It was perhaps the only question that suggested such a neutrally entertaining agenda. On every other matter, from Bush`s relationship with Tony Blair ("What`s Blair doing with this guy?" he asked of British journalists), to what he`d like viewers to get from the film ("I want them to be in shock and in awe") to the current climate of mainstream media silence on Iraq ("Americans do not like things being kept from them"), Moore seemed to stress both the urgency and immediacy of the movie`s mission. But he wouldn`t agree that the movie has been designed to vote Bush out.

Describing a relationship with the Miramax production company that allowed him to add any additional material he needed between now the release to keep the film up to date, he said he remained undecided as to whether he`d change the film to accommodate either current or future developments from Washington or Iraq. "I might, but this is a complete work."

On the issue of his own relative absence in the film — in which he appears on screen perhaps one-fifth of the time he was on in Bowling For Columbine — save for voiceover and general editorial point of view, Moore said, "This time I was the straight man. Bush wrote all the best lines."

"The subject just didn`t need the help," he added. "Besides, a little of me tends to go along way. And sometimes less is better."

When no one stood to take issue with Moore on this point, he was asked if he planned on screening Fahrenheit 9/11 at the White House.

It was his turn to laugh. "I would love to have a White House screening," he deadpanned.

"I would attend it. And I would behave."

Seems unlikely. God knows, if there`s any place where a little Michael Moore will go a long way, especially after this movie opens this summer across America, it will be in the White House.

Additional articles by Geoff Pevere

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

George Soros: `The war on terror: Victims turning perpetrators`
Date: Tuesday, May 18 @ 09:52:33 EDT
Topic: Foreign Policy

By George Soros

Commencement Address, delivered at the Columbia School of International & Public Affairs, Monday, May 17, 2004m Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City

Today, you are graduating from the School of International & Public Affairs. This ought to be an occasion for celebration. You have successfully completed your studies and you are about to enter the real world. But the real world is a very troubled place and international relations are at the core of our troubles. So it may be appropriate to pause for a moment and reflect on the world you are about to face.

Why are we in trouble? Let me focus on the feature that looms so large in the current landscape - the war on terror. September 11 was a traumatic event that shook the nation to its core. But it could not have changed the course of history for the worse if President Bush had not responded the way he did. Declaring war on terrorism was understandable, perhaps even appropriate, as a figure of speech. But the President meant it literally and that is when things started going seriously wrong.

Recently the nation has been shaken by another event: pictures of our soldiers abusing prisoners in Saddam`s notorious prison. I believe there is a direct connection between the two events. It is the war on terror that has led to the torture scenes in Iraq.



What happened in Abu Ghraib was not a case of a few bad apples but a pattern tolerated and even encouraged by the authorities. Just to give one example, the Judge Advocate General Corps routinely observes military interrogations from behind a two-way mirror; that practice was discontinued in Afghanistan and Iraq. The International Red Cross and others started complaining about abuses as early as December 2002.

It is easy to see how terrorism can lead to torture. Last summer I took an informal poll at a meeting of eminent Wall Street investors to find out whether they would condone the use of torture to prevent a terrorist attack. The consensus was that they hoped somebody would do it without their knowing about it.

It is not a popular thing to say, but the fact is that we are victims who have turned into perpetrators. The terrorist attacks on September 11 claimed nearly 3,000 innocent lives and the whole world felt sympathy for us as the victims of an atrocity. Then the President declared war on terrorism, and pursued it first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. Since then the war on terror has claimed more innocent victims than the terrorist attacks on September 11. This fact is not recognized at home because the victims of the war on terror are not Americans. But the rest of the world does not draw the same distinction and world opinion has turned against us. So a tremendous gap in perceptions has opened up between us and the rest of the world. The majority of the American public does not realize that we have turned from victims into perpetrators. That is why those gruesome pictures were so shocking. Even today most people don`t recognize their full import.

By contrast, the Bush administration knew what it was doing when it declared war on terror and used that pretext for invading Iraq. That may not hold true for President Bush personally but it is certainly true for Vice President Cheney and a group of extremists within the Bush administration concentrated in and around the Pentagon. These people are guided by an ideology. They believe that international relations are relations of power not law and since America is the most powerful nation on earth, it ought to use that power more assertively than under previous presidents. They advocated the overthrow of Saddam Hussein even before President Bush was elected and they managed to win him over to their cause after September 11.

The invasion of Afghanistan could be justified on the grounds that the Taliban provided Bin Laden and Al Qaeda with a home and a training ground. The invasion of Iraq could not be similarly justified. Nevertheless, the ideologues in the administration were determined to pursue it because, in the words of Paul Wolfowitz, "it was doable." President Bush managed to convince the nation that Saddam Hussein had some connection with the suicide bombers of September 11 and that he was in possession of weapons of mass-destruction. When both claims turned out to be false, he argued that we invaded Iraq in order to liberate the Iraqi people.

That claim was even more far-fetched than the other two. If we had really cared for the Iraqi people we would have sent in more troops and we would have provided protection not only for the Ministry of Oil but for the other Ministries and the museums and hospitals. As it is, the country was devastated by looting.

I find the excuse that we went into Iraq in order to liberate it particularly galling. It is true that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and it is good to be rid of him. But the way we went about it will make it more difficult to get rid of the likes of Saddam in the future. The world is full of tyrants and we cannot topple them all by military action. How to deal with Kim Jong-il in North Korea or Mugabe in Zimbabwe or the Turkmenbashi of Turkmenistan is the great unsolved problem of the prevailing world order. By taking unilateral and arbitrary action, the United States has made it more difficult to solve that problem.

I am actively engaged in promoting democracy and open society in many parts of the world and I can testify from personal experience that it cannot be done by military means. In any case, the argument has become unsustainable after the revelations about the torture of prisoners. The symbolism of Saddam`s notorious prison is just too strong. We claimed to be liberators but we turned into oppressors.

Now that our position has become unsustainable, we are handing over to local militias in Falluja and elsewhere. This prepares the ground for religious and ethnic divisions and possible civil war à la Bosnia, rather than Western style democracy after we transfer sovereignty.

The big difference between us and Saddam is that we are an open society with free speech and free elections. If we don`t like the Bush administration`s policies, we can reject him at the next elections. Since President Bush had originally been elected on the platform of a "humble" foreign policy, we could then claim that the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq constitute a temporary aberration induced by the trauma of September 11.

I would dearly love to pin all the blame on President Bush and his team. But that would be too easy. It would ignore the fact that he was playing to a receptive audience and even today, after all that has happened, a majority of the electorate continues to have confidence in President Bush on national security matters. If this continues and President Bush gets reelected, we must ask ourselves the question: "What is wrong with us?" The question needs to be asked even if he is defeated because we cannot simply ignore what we have done since September 11.

We need to engage in some serious soul-searching. The terrorists seem to have hit upon a weak point in our collective psyche. They have made us fearful. And they have found a willing partner in the Bush administration. For reasons of its own, the Bush administration has found it advantageous to foster the fear that September 11 engendered. By declaring war on terror, the President could unite the country behind him. But fear is a bad counselor. A fearful giant that lashes out against unseen enemies is the very definition of a bully, and that is what we are in danger of becoming. Lashing out indiscriminately, we are creating innocent victims and innocent victims generate the resentment and rage on which terrorism feeds. If there is a Single lesson to be learned from our experience since September 11, it is that you mustn`t fight terror by creating new victims.

By succumbing to fear we are doing the terrorists` bidding: we are unleashing a vicious circle of violence. If we go on like this, we may find ourselves in a permanent state of war. The war on terror need never end because the terrorists are invisible, therefore they will never disappear. And if we are in a permanent state of war we cannot remain an open society.

The war on terror polarizes the world between us and them. If it becomes a matter of survival, nobody has any choice but to stick with his own tribe or nation whether its policies are right or wrong. That is what happened to the Serbs and Croats and Bosnians in Yugoslavia, that is what happened to Israel, and that is the state of mind that President Bush sought to foster when he said that those who are not with us are with the terrorists.

That attitude cannot be reconciled with the basic principles of an open society. The concept of open society is based on the recognition that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. Might is not necessarily right. However powerful we are, we may be wrong. We need checks and balances and other safeguards to prevent us from going off the rails. After September 11, President Bush succeeded in convincing us that any criticism of the war on terror would be unpatriotic and the spell was broken only 18 months later when the Iraqi invasion did get us off the rails.

Now it is not enough to reject the Bush administration`s policies; we must reaffirm the values and principles of an open society. The war on terror is indeed an aberration. We must defend ourselves against terrorist attacks but we cannot make that the overarching objective of our existence.

We are undoubtedly the most powerful nation on earth today. No single country or combination of countries could stand up to our military might. The main threat to our dominant position comes not from the outside but from ourselves. If we fail to recognize that we may be wrong, we may undermine our dominant position through our own mistakes. We seem to have made considerable progress along those lines since September 11.

Being the most powerful nation gives us certain privileges but it also imposes on us certain obligations. We are the beneficiaries of a lopsided, not to say unjust, world order. The agenda for the world is set in Washington but only the citizens of the United States have a vote in Congress. A similar situation, when we were on the disadvantaged side, gave rise to the Boston Tea Party and the birth of the United States.

If we want to preserve our privileged position, we must use it not to lord it over the rest of the world but to concern ourselves with the well-being of others. Globalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent and there are many problems that require collective action. Maintaining peace, law and order, protecting the environment, reducing poverty and fighting terrorism are among them. We cannot do anything we want, but very little can be done without our leadership or at least active participation. Instead of undermining and demeaning our international institutions because they do not necessarily follow our will, we ought to strengthen them and improve them. Instead of engaging in preemptive actions of a military nature, we ought to pursue preventive actions of a constructive nature, creating a better balance between carrots and sticks in the prevailing world order.

As graduates of a school of international affairs, I hope you will have an opportunity to implement this constructive vision of America`s role in the world.

Thank you.



The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=16225

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

Anthony Sampson: Brahimi: the UN can play only a limited role in exit strategy
The Independent
18 May 2004

While Washington and London continue publicly to put much hope in the United Nations as a key part of their exit strategy for Iraq, the UN is making it clear that it can only play a very limited role. Lakdhar Brahimi, the UN representative in Baghdad, has now left no doubt about those limitations.

"I have been suggesting to everyone to stop speaking about a `vital` role for the UN," he told me yesterday. "A role would be enough. The coalition must define it and give the UN the tools to do the job." And he emphasised: "I won`t be involved myself."

Mr Brahimi made that clear to Tony Blair, with whom he talked two weeks ago, and he has made the same point to foreign ministers and heads of government in Europe, including President Jacques Chirac. But both Mr Blair and Mr Bush are continuing to talk as if the UN, led by Mr Brahimi, can take much of the burden of responsibility for Iraq`s future.

Behind Mr Brahimi`s unease lie the growing problems of assembling a new Iraqi council to take responsibility in Baghdad after 30 June, a task that will become more difficult after the assassination yesterday of Ezzedine Salim, the man who was president of the existing Governing Council.

Mr Brahimi has been determined to select a "technocratic" council, which would not be subject to powerful political pressures, like the existing council, which has been strongly influenced by the current American appointee Ahmed Chalabi.

Mr Chalabi has been widely discredited in Iraq, as an autocratic former exile in America with a shady past as the head of a collapsed bank in Jordan. He was thought to be responsible for much of the wrong information about Iraq before the Allies went to war.

And he has been blamed for many of the the post-war decisions in Baghdad, as the chief Iraqi adviser to the American pro-consul Paul Bremer, including the decision to purge all Baathists from all the responsible positions.

Mr Chalabi has now lost the confidence of Mr Bremer, who has reversed his decision about excluding all Baathists, but he retains the backing of powerful friends in Washington and is fighting hard to maintain his influence on the new council, from which Mr Brahimi has been determined to exclude him.

Mr Chalabi has been has also been currying favour with Shia by adopting a more religious style, and he has also been visiting Israel, to gain support from Ariel Sharon`s government. Mr Sharon`s spokesmen have been turning their guns on Mr Brahimi, particularly after he publicly stated that Israeli-Palestinian conflict was poisoning the Middle East.

At the same time, conservatives in Washington have been seeking to undermine the UN by attacking its handling of the oil for food programme before the Iraq war. Large sums of money were siphoned off that scheme by Saddam Hussein and his cronies. Despite warnings from the UN about the corruption, neither the US government nor the Security Council took effective action.

Senior UN officials are therefore very wary of agreeing to take further heavy responsibilities for Iraq`s future, without a much more binding commitment from the US, the UK and other members.

They are concerned that Mr Bush and Mr Blair will use the UN as a convenient receptacle to take the blame for future disasters, while not allowing it the independence required to inspire the confidence of the Iraqi people. They further believe that Allied military forces will retain real control over security in Iraq.

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May 18, 2004
Senators Press Wolfowitz on Duration of U.S. Security Role
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune

WASHINGTON, May 18 — Members of Congress pressed the Bush administration today to accelerate Iraqi elections, speed the handover of full sovereignty and step up talks on a new United Nations resolution.

But a top Pentagon official said it was too soon to say how long a large United States military force might have to remain in the deeply unsettled country.

As the June 30 deadline nears, the administration is under intense pressure, militarily and politically, to turn over greater powers to an interim government, whose members have yet to be named. The pressure grew further with the Iraqi prison abuse scandal, and with the killing Monday of the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Ezzedine Salim.

Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the Republican who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, has pressed the administration for weeks to answer key questions about what will happen on June 30 and afterward. Today he urged officials to do everything possible to accelerate the political transition and to speed elections.

Delays, he said, "undercut United States credibility and increase suspicions among Iraqis." Lugar called for opening a United States embassy in Baghdad even before June 30, and accelerating the negotiations on a United Nations resolution covering sovereignty and other matters.

While administration officials agreed on the need for speed, the deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, could not answer one key question on which foreign support for Iraq will largely turn: how long United States forces would retain chief responsibility for security in Iraq.

"The course of war is simply not something one can determine," Wolfowitz told a Democratic questioner in the Lugar committee, but "very substantial" Iraqi security forces would be trained and ready by year`s end.

Did that mean, Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin asked him, that by the year`s close the United States would no longer be primarily responsible for security?

"Senator," Wolfowitz replied, "that`s more than what I just said."

Senators pressed some basic questions, such as who will lead the interim government, and what authority it will have over Iraqi security forces, courts and prisons. Just last week Secretary of State Colin L. Powell addressed one key point of uncertainty, saying that an interim government could order coalition forces, including United States troops, to leave, though he viewed that as unlikely.

Of late, congressional committees have been plunging into their oversight role in an activist way that tends to happen most in time of war or crisis. Iraq was the focus today in several congressional venues. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who spent a full day before congressional committees May 7 explaining and apologizing for the abuse scandal, met behind closed doors with members of the House Armed Services Committee.

The confluence of the funding requests with the latest Iraqi violence and the abuse scandal, along with polls showing eroding public support for the war amid the uncertainties of transition, produced some unusually anguished questioning.

Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said that she senses Americans were as distraught over setbacks in Iraq as had ever been, and that the two top administration officials appearing before the Foreign Relations Committee — Mr. Wolfowitz and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage — appeared not to appreciate this.

"Listening to you," she said, "one would never know what`s happening in America, how people are so distraught over this.

"And I think if you look at the faces of the colleagues, my colleagues, I`ve never seen us quite look this way."

And Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, quoted senior army officers as criticizing what they considered an incoherent strategy for Iraq that might mean that "we will lose strategically."

"The American people may not stand for it," he said. "There`s cause for alarm."

Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat who has frequently criticized administration conduct in Iraq, warned that "we`re losing the support of the Iraqi people" and appeared to lack "an effective political strategy" to regain it.

Senator Lugar said that he feared the Bush administration would lose support at home and abroad, as well, unless it furnished a detailed plan to "prove to our allies and to Iraqis that we have a strategy and that we are committed to making it work."

The prison abuse scandal was a powerful undercurrent throughout the day, though not to the extent of last week, when it spilled into hearings meant to focus on other matters.

Lawmakers said they were only partly satisfied with the answers they obtained today.

Mr. Wolfowitz, when asked whether American troop strength would remain around its current level of more than 135,000 through next year, would not venture a guess. "I have no idea what it will — I mean, I really don`t know," he said.

Mr. Armitage confirmed that Iraq forces would operate after June 30 under an Iraqi general "in partnership" with coalition forces led by a United States general.

But could they, he asked rhetorically, "opt out of an operation" if they objected to it? "The answer to that has to be yes," Mr. Armitage said.

"They are sovereign and they will be in charge of their forces."

Mr. Armitage also said that control of military prisons would be given to Iraqis "as rapidly as possible."

Mr. Lugar urged the officials to accelerate the opening of the new United States Embassy, a huge facility with perhaps 1,400 employees, an annual budget of $1 billion, and control, once the Coalition Provisional Authority shuts its doors June 30, over yearly reconstruction spending of $20 billion.

But Mr. Armitage said the administration wanted to avoid overlap between the outgoing provisional authority and the embassy, which will use some of the same buildings. "We want to make sure that there is a clean break," he said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com

Bush Renominates Greenspan as Chairman of the Fed

By Nell Henderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 18, 2004; 5:09 PM

President Bush today nominated Alan Greenspan to serve a fifth term as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, providing financial markets with a source of stability at a time of economic transition.

Bush said more than a year ago that he intended to nominate Greenspan, 78, whose term as chairman expires June 20. And Greenspan had indicated then he would happily accept. But the lack of movement on the matter since then had provoked some speculation among analysts that either of the two men might have had a change of heart.

The president put that to rest today, issuing a statement announcing his intention to renominate the chairman and adding, "Alan Greenspan has done a superb job . . . and I have great confidence in his economic stewardship."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan went further, saying that "the president wants [Greenspan] to continue to serve as long as possible."

Greenspan, who met with Bush today, responded with a statement saying he was honored by the nomination and the opportunity "to continue my service" as central bank chief.

Financial markets had little reaction to the news, a welcome respite from recent swoons that pushed some stock indexes Monday to five-month lows, as investors worried about record oil prices, rising interest rates and higher inflation.

"If it hadn`t happened, there would have been great instability" in the markets, said Diane Swonk, chief economist for Bank One Corp. The action provides "much needed certainty in what was becoming an uncertain world."

Senate confirmation should be swift, given the breadth of Greenspan`s support on the Senate Banking Committee. The panel`s chairman, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), "believes Chairman Greenspan has done an outstanding job and looks forward to supporting his nomination in the Senate," said Andrew Gray, communications director for the panel.

Greenspan was first appointed Fed chairman in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan to replace outgoing chairman Paul Volcker, who has been credited with launching the long, painful and ultimately successful central bank campaign to bring inflation down from the double-digit highs it hit in the late 1970s.

Greenspan was reappointed as chairman once by the President George H.W. Bush, father of the current president, and twice by President Clinton. His current four-year term as Fed chief expires June 20.

If confirmed, his next four-year term as chairman would expire June 20, 2008. But it`s not clear whether he will continue that long because his term as a Fed board member expires in less than two years.

The Fed chairman must be selected from the seven Fed Board members. Although the chairman can be reappointed, a board member may not serve more than one full 14-year term. Greenspan served out the last years of Volcker`s board term, and was reappointed to a board term that will expire Jan. 31, 2006.

Greenspan could choose to step down as chairman then, if he felt it inappropriate to continue in an expired board seat. But under the law, he also could continue in the board seat until the Senate confirms a successor. If the president did not nominate a successor, Greenspan could continue in the seat and as chairman for the next four years.

McClellan, responding to reporters` questions, declined to speculate about what will happen when Greenspan`s board term expires.

In 2000, Clinton renominated Greenspan as chairman early in the year, removing it as a campaign issue or source of financial market jitters in an election year.

Clinton had not acted so preemptively in 1996. Instead, he allowed Greenspan`s term as chairman to lapse, forcing him to serve as chairman "pro-tem" from March 3 until he was confirmed by the Senate June 20.

In 1991, the first President Bush waited until Aug. 9, two days before Greenspan`s term as chairman was about to expire, to give him a recess appointment to continue as chairman.

Some of the jitters about Greenspan`s prospects this year arose from memories of how the first Bush White House blamed the Fed chairman for not cutting interest rates fast enough in response to the 1990-91 recession, costing that president the 1992 election.

The elder Bush once said of Greenspan, "I reappointed him and he disappointed me."

This presidential election year, Greenspan has made clear that the Fed will start raising interest rates soon to prevent the rapidly growing economy from fueling a takeoff in inflation. Many analysts and investors expect the Fed to raise its target for short-term rates from 1 percent to 1.25 percent at the next policymaking meeting in late June. Many other interest rates determined by the markets, such as mortgage rates, have already jumped higher in anticipation and appear headed up farther.

But Bush emphasized the positive today, crediting his tax cuts and the Fed`s low interest rate policy with stimulating the economy`s robust recovery from the 2001 recession. "Sound fiscal and monetary policies have helped unleash the potential of American workers and entrepreneurs and America`s economy is now growing at the fastest rate in two decades," Bush said in the statement.

Another set of rumors about the Fed chairman`s future swirled around Greenspan`s age and health, provoked apparently by the fact that he cancelled a scheduled public appearance earlier this year because of a bad cold.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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"Earlier today, President Bush delivered a commencement speech at a university in Wisconsin. Very nice, yeah. Very inspirational speech. Apparently, Bush told the students, `You can do anything in life if your parents work hard enough.`" Conan O`Brien

Jay Leno: "I saw an embarrassing incident in a casino earlier today. A guy from Florida standing in one of those -- in front of one of those video poker machines, trying to cast his vote for President."

"Donald Rumsfeld made a surprise visit to Iraq and he told everyone, `No pictures.` ... He visited that famous prison and he said he has all those guards under control now. In fact, he said he`s got them all on a very short leash." —Jay Leno

"A Bush administration official told Congress yesterday that the war in Iraq could cost almost 60 billion dollars. President Bush said he plans to pay for it with a video series called `Prison Guards Gone Wild." —Conan O`Brien

"Donald Rumsfeld made a surprise visit to Baghdad this week where he told reporters, `If anyone thinks I`m here to throw water on a fire, they`re wrong.` So, more bad news for Iraqi prisoners who are on fire." —Jimmy Fallon, Saturday Night Live`s "Weekend Update"

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Ein Katastrophenszenarium?

Domino-Effekte können zum totalen Blackout an den Börsen führen

Artur P. Schmidt und Markus R. Ginsig 18.05.2004

Die Entwicklung an den Finanzmärkten verheißt nichts Gutes, Millisekundenpleiten können Märkte in Rekordzeiten einbrechen lassen

Jeder Markt hat seine eigenen Gesetzmäßigkeiten. Zu diesen gehört, dass es nach einem Crash normalerweise Jahrzehnte dauert, bis sich ein ähnlicher Bubble wiederholt. Paradoxerweise liegen an der Nasdaq aktuell die Kurs-/Gewinn-Verhältnisse wieder über 80 und die Aktienkäufe auf Kredit übersteigen sogar die Rekordmarke vor dem Crash 2000. Ein abermaliger Vertrauensverlust dürfte die USA jedoch in eine Depression stürzen, von deren Konsequenzen sich Amerika, ähnlich wie Japan in den 90er Jahren, erst wieder nach 10 bis 15 Jahren erholen dürfte. Die Alarmzeichen an den Börsen stehen trotz der aktuellen Konjunkturerholung auf dunkelrot. Wegen der zunehmenden Inflationsgefahren, der Schwäche des US-Dollar und dem damit verbundenen Rückgang der Ausländerkäufe bei US-Staatsanleihen werden die US-Zinsen in naher Zukunft zu steigen beginnen. Hinzu kommt, dass der durch eine ausufernde Überschuldung aufgeblähte US-Immobilienmarkt, die geringen Volatilitäten, der starke Optimismus sowie hohe Insiderverkäufe an den Aktienmärkten zu äußerster Vorsicht mahnen.

Vieles deutet darauf hin, dass die Finanzmärkten gerade das Auge des Hurricane verlassen und sich auf einen Baisse-Markt zubewegen, der sich in den kommenden Monaten zu einem "Perfect Storm" entwickeln kann. Hier gilt es, das neue Phänomen der Millisekundenpleite an den Finanzmärkten zu beachten, d.h. dass Märkte bei extremen Störeinflüssen und internen Systemschwächen in Rekordzeit einbrechen können, wie der gestrige Crash am indischen Aktienmarkt verdeutlichte.

Weltpaniken und Crash-Situationen

Der deutsche Medienphilosoph Peter Sloterdijk hat die Weltpanik als das alltägliche Ereignis des 21. Jahrhunderts identifiziert. Auslöser für eine Weltpanik an den Finanzmärkten, die zu einem Mega-Crash führen kann, sind z.B. ein sehr starker Ölpreisanstieg, ein hoher Kursverlust des US-Dollar oder Terroranschläge vom Ausmaß des 11. September. Wenn die amerikanische Währung bereits gegen einen instabilen Euro schwächelt, dann könnte den Märkten bei extremen Störgrößen ein regelrechter Dollar-Crash bevorstehen, der zu einer Kapitalflucht aus Amerika führen würde. Ein Zinsanstieg wäre dann unvermeidbar, wenn der Schuldner USA seine eigenen Schulden refinanzieren muss.

Dieses Szenario könnte einen Domino-Effekt für die US-Ökonomie zur Folge haben, der eine der größten Kontraktionsphasen der amerikanischen Wirtschaftsgeschichte einleiten würde. Der heute immer mehr ausufernde Handel von Derivaten und Hedge-Fonds könnte ebenfalls einen solchen Effekt herbeiführen. Die heutige Generation der Anleger hat bisher nur Haussephasen an den Weltbörsen und noch nie eine langanhaltende Phase der kreativen Zerstörung erlebt, wie diese der österreichische Ökonom Schumpeter beschrieben hat. Sollte diese kommen, ist kaum ein Anleger strategisch auf diese Situation vorbereitet.

Die Logik des Misslingens

Wenn in Folge eines starken Abschwunges der Märkte US-Anleger, die ihre Häuser auf Kredit gekauft haben, diese unter dem Einkaufspreis verkaufen müssen, so verringert sich deren Kaufkraft erheblich. Dies könnte viele Haushalte in den privaten Konkurs treiben.

Dann wird sich der Kaufrausch der 90er Jahre bitter rächen. Die ausgewiesenen Produktivitätsfortschritte der US-Wirtschaft werden sich als das erweisen, was diese wirklich sind, nämlich Charlie Chaplins Vision der "Modernen Zeiten", bei denen Roboter und Automatisierung eine "Jobless Recovery" anführen, die die Ouvertüre für eine Wirtschaftstragödie bilden wird, deren Höhepunkt in einer bisher nie dagewesenen Massenarbeitslosigkeit kulminieren wird.

Schuld an dieser Misere sind die heutigen linearen Steuerungsmodelle, die in einer ökonomischen Schönwetterphase entstanden sind, jedoch in einer komplexen Welt mit hohen Volatilitäten, großen Verwerfungen und unbekannten Störgrößen versagen. Fehlende Navigationssysteme führen zu einer Logik des Misslingens, deren finales Ende in einer Schuldenwirtschaft, der Manipulation von Statistiken und letztlich auch in der Arbeitslosigkeit vieler Menschen gipfelt.

Lenkungs-Cockpits sind ein Muss!

Bei unerwarteten Störgrößen oder Katastrophen sind die psychologischen Wirkungen auf die Finanzmärkte direkt sichtbar und die Stimmung in der Wirtschaft kann in Echtzeit kippen. Moderne kybernetische Ansätze für die Ökonomie sind in der Lage, die Faktoren Komplexität und Feedback im Rahmen von Modellen zu berücksichtigen.

So wirken sich beispielsweise die Konsequenzen einer niedrigen Sparquote in Japan in einer schwierigeren Refinanzierung der amerikanischen Staatsdefizite aus, was zu einem starken Anstieg der langfristigen Zinsen führt. Ein anderes Beispiel ist die verspätete Anhebung der Zinsen trotz einer sehr hohen Inflationsrate. Dies führt zu einem Bubble im Bereich der in Anspruch genommenen Kredite, was im Falle eines starken Zinsanstieges Schwierigkeiten im Immobilienbereich sowie bei den Konsumentenkrediten heraufbeschwört.

Kybernetische Modelle erlauben die Steuerung und Lenkung der Wirtschaft durch eine Navigation und Früherkennung von Risiken wie in einem Flugzeug-Cockpit. Wer will schon in einem Flugzeug sitzen, in dessen Cockpit die Monitore falsche Werte anzeigen.

Domino-Effekte sind vorhersagbar

Die heutige Netz-Ökonomie braucht kybernetische Modelle, welche in allen Phasen von Wirtschaftszyklen funktionieren, um Bubbles frühzeitig entgegenzuwirken. Die bisherige Ignoranz gegenüber Systemrisiken führt nicht zu Lösungen, sondern zu vorhersehbaren Domino-Effekten und Katastrophen. Deshalb benötigen wir kybernetische Modellansätze und Lenkungs-Cockpits nicht nur im Management, sondern auch in der Politik, wenn wir überlebensfähige Strategien entwickeln und die Risiken minimieren wollen.

Stafford Beer, der berühmte britische Managementkybernetiker, hatte vor, ein derartiges Cockpit einst für das Land Chile zu etablieren. Die Ermordung Salvador Allendes durch den von Amerika unterstützten späteren Diktator Pinochet bereitete jedoch dem bereits im fortgeschrittenen Stadium befindlichen Projekt ein jähes Ende. Stafford Beer wollte, dass die Politik nicht mehr durch Wahlzyklen gesteuert wird, sondern durch Wechselwirkungen berücksichtigende Indikatoren, die unabhängig von der jeweiligen Regierungspartei eine wirksame Lenkung eines Staates ermöglichen.

Wie sicher ist die Zukunft der Arbeitsplätze?

Wirtschaftliche Erholungsphasen ohne eine genügende Zahl neuer Arbeitsplätze sind das besondere Kennzeichen einer auf Pump finanzierten Ökonomie. Niemand möchte das Risiko eingehen, wenn die Zinsen steigen, auf dem falschen Fuß erwischt zu werden. Dem angeblichen Mangel an qualifiziertem Personal steht heute eine dramatische Verschlechterung der Rahmenbedingungen gegenüber.

Immer mehr Firmen überlegen sich, im Ausland zu produzieren und verlagern dorthin ihre Standorte. Die Verlagerung von Hightech-Arbeitplätze nach Indien und China ist für Hochlohnländer die ökonomische Höchststrafe, da es die oben erwähnten Krisengefahren verstärken wird. Zukünftig werden jedoch nicht nur Arbeitsplätze sondern durch die neuen wirtschaftlichen Attraktoren auch das Kapital die Hochlohnländer in Nordamerika und Europa verlassen. Dies hat erhebliche Konsequenzen, denn ohne Konsumenten mit Arbeitsplatz gibt es keine Kaufkraft, ohne Kapital gibt es keine neuen Arbeitsplätze und ohne Wirtschaftswachstum keinen Abbau der Staatsschulden, die in den USA mittlerweile das gigantische Ausmaß von 34 Trillionen US-Dollar angenommen haben. Ein ähnliches Szenario gilt auch für Europa, welches ja bekanntlich die Grippe bekommt, wenn Amerika hustet.

Konsequenzen für Deutschland

Die Zeiten der hohen Löhne dürften sich in Deutschland definitiv dem Ende nähern. Wo es immer weniger zu verteilen gibt, muss man sich einschränken. Diese Erkenntnis setzt sich erfahrungsgemäß in den reichsten Ländern der Welt am langsamsten durch. Wem es jahrzehntelang zu gut gegangen ist, kann sich nicht vorstellen, welche Einschränkungen noch auf einen zukommen können. Zwar wird langfristig der absehbare, demographisch bedingte Rückgang der Erwerbsbevölkerung den Arbeitsmarkt entlasten, jedoch darf hierbei nicht außer Acht gelassen werden, dass eine rückläufige Erwerbsbevölkerung das Wachstum des Bruttosozialproduktes negativ beeinflusst und im Extremfall sogar zu einer längeren Rezession oder sogar Depression führen kann.

Die einzige Möglichkeit, hier entgegenzuwirken, ist eine proaktive Zuwanderungspolitik fremder Arbeitskräfte kombiniert mit einer wirksamen Bildungspolitik. Beide Faktoren stellen sicher, dass neue Ideen und Kreativität die Innovationsrate erhöhen. Nur wenn Deutschland im Bereich der Innovationen wieder weltweit eine Führungsrolle übernehmen kann, wird es gelingen, die Phase der kreativen Zerstörung, die vor uns liegt, zu überwinden und gestärkt aus dieser hervorzugehen.

Links


Telepolis Artikel-URL: http://www.telepolis.de/deutsch/special/eco/17446/1.html

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May 19, 2004
Officer Says Army Tried to Curb Red Cross Visits to Prison in Iraq
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, May 18 — Army officials in Iraq responded late last year to a Red Cross report of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison by trying to curtail the international agency`s spot inspections of the prison, a senior Army officer who served in Iraq said Tuesday.

After the International Committee of the Red Cross observed abuses in one cellblock on two unannounced inspections in October and complained in writing on Nov. 6, the military responded that inspectors should make appointments before visiting the cellblock. That area was the site of the worst abuses.

The Red Cross report in November was the earliest formal evidence known to have been presented to the military`s headquarters in Baghdad before January, when photographs of the abuses came to the attention of criminal investigators and prompted a broad investigation. But the senior Army officer said the military did not start any criminal investigation before it replied to the Red Cross on Dec. 24.

The Red Cross report was made after its inspectors witnessed or heard about such practices as holding Iraqi prisoners naked in dark concrete cells for several days at a time and forcing them to wear women`s underwear on their heads while being paraded and photographed.

Until now, the Army had described its response on Dec. 24 as evidence that the military was prompt in addressing Red Cross complaints, but it has declined to release the contents of the Army document, citing the tradition of confidentiality in dealing with the international agency.

An Army spokesman declined Tuesday to characterize the letter or to discuss what it said about the Red Cross`s access to the cellblock.

In an interview, however, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, whose soldiers guarded the prisoners, said that despite the serious allegations in the Red Cross report, senior officers in Baghdad had treated it in "a light-hearted manner."

She said that she signed the Army`s response on Dec. 24, but that it had been drafted primarily by Army lawyers who reported to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq.

General Karpinski said she did not see the Red Cross complaint until late November, and questioned how the staff judge advocate for General Sanchez, and his team of lawyers, had dealt with the matter. "It was an unusual routing because they had possession of it before I knew the letter existed," she said of the Red Cross complaint.

"If I had been informed, and I had been drawn into this in any way, I would have said, `Hold on a second, because not in my facility you don`t,` " General Karpinski said of the abuses detailed in the report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which she said she did not see until at least two weeks after it was submitted. "We followed the rules, and we gave unrestricted access to the I.C.R.C., and it validated our operations, actually."

General Karpinski, who has been disciplined for her performance as commander at the prison, would not say whether she had objected to any part of the Dec. 24 letter at the time. It was unclear whether she had felt compelled to sign a letter drafted by aides to her superiors.

For several months in Iraq, Red Cross inspectors had exercised the right to drop in on Army-run prisons without notifying prison officials in advance.

The senior Army officer questioned the rationale for the Army`s assertion in November that Red Cross visits should be scheduled.

"I know what they were communicating in that letter: They wanted the I.C.R.C. to schedule visits for those particular cellblocks, because it could interrupt any of the military intelligence," said the officer. "The position that they were taking was that the I.C.R.C. could not have unrestricted access to those particular cellblocks."

Other top Army officers in Washington have said the behavior described by the Red Cross in October had warranted a criminal investigation.

"I do not know if she in fact started an investigation into those, because they are serious," Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of Army intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 11. "As soon as we hear about one of those allegations, an investigation should begin right away and we shouldn`t wait for it."

General Alexander told senators that the abuses Red Cross inspectors witnessed "sounded the same as some of the abuses that we`re seeing" in photographs taken by military guards that are now circulating worldwide.

In an interview on Tuesday, the White House general counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, said he had not been aware that the issue of whether the Red Cross should be allowed to conduct such inspections was a point of dispute. He added, however, that he might have had "concerns" about allowing such inspections.

"Part of the concerns is whether or not there were interrogations that might be interrupted under a spot check," Mr. Gonzales said. "Obviously, we would work with the I.C.R.C. to arrange visits" under appropriate circumstances, he said.

While he said he could not speak for everyone at the White House, he added that "I don`t recall being made aware" of the issue.

The Red Cross report and General Karpinski`s comments seem at odds with the accounts of other senior military officials.

Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the deputy commander of American forces in the Middle East, told senators that the military had no inkling of the magnitude of the prisoner abuses until a soldier turned over copies of incriminating pictures to investigators on Jan. 13.

"There were reports that there was trouble in those places, but not of the character we`re talking about here," General Smith said. He said that after General Karpinski`s Dec. 24 letter, improvements were made at the prison.

"The I.C.R.C. came back and visited 4 through 8 January and they — the indication from there was that there were improvements," he said.

The disclosures about the Army`s response to the Red Cross complaints came as new details emerged about the death of an Iraqi prisoner in C.I.A. custody last fall.

Central Intelligence Agency officers who brought a hooded man to Abu Ghraib ordered military guards at the prison not to remove the empty sandbag that covered his head, according to the sworn testimony of a military guard. Only after the prisoner slumped over dead during questioning was the hood removed, revealing that the man had severe facial injuries.

The incident was described in testimony at a closed hearing early last month in the case of Sgt. Javal S. Davis, one of the accused prison guards. The statements were made by two members of Sergeant Davis`s unit, Specialists Bruce Brown and Jason A. Kenner. Their testimony appears to provide fresh clues to the mysterious death of a man identified by the American authorities only by his last name, Jamadi.

Mr. Jamadi is believed to be the man whose body was packed in ice and photographed at Abu Ghraib. The picture, among a group that depicted degrading treatment of detainees, has circulated widely on computer networks as one of most graphic images in the prisoner abuse scandal.

Neither Specialist Brown nor Specialist Kenner identified Mr. Jamadi by name, but Mr. Jamadi appears to be the man they described because C.I.A. officials have said he is the only person who died during an interrogation carried out by an agency employee. Both men said that the detainee had been brought to Abu Ghraib by an "O.G.A.," or other government agency, which usually referred to the C.I.A. or another intelligence agency.

The two witnesses` statements are significant because the C.I.A.`s inspector general is investigating the death of Mr. Jamadi, along with two other deaths in which C.I.A. or contract workers for the agency were involved. One was in western Iraq in November 2003, the other in Afghanistan in June 2003. The Justice Department is also examining the three deaths to decide whether to open a criminal investigation into the matter.

A senior intelligence official said that Mr. Jamadi was hooded when he was picked up at the Baghdad airport after being captured earlier in the day by Navy Seals and that he had never been touched by C.I.A. interrogators or translators. A spokesman for the Seals has said the detainee had not been mistreated by its personnel. The witness accounts were first reported Tuesday by The Los Angeles Times.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon formally adopted regulations for dealing with the hardest-core detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who might be held for years, because they are judged to remain a threat to United States forces. The regulations provide for a quasi-parole board of three military officers who would conduct an annual review to determine if the detainees have ceased to be a threat and may be released.

The prisoners could have their home governments and family members take part in the review. Officials said, however, that the proceedings would be closed to the public because they would involve discussion of classified issues.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld met for about three hours behind closed doors with House Republicans on Tuesday to discuss a range of Iraq issues, but Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said lawmakers had agreed to say nothing after the session, and Mr. Rumsfeld did not speak publicly.

On Wednesday, the first court-martial of a soldier accused of abusing Iraqi detainees, Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits of the Army, opens in Baghdad. On Tuesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch said the American occupation authorities had denied Iraqi and international human rights groups requests permission to attend the trial.

Reporting for this article was contributed by David E. Sanger, David Johnston, Carl Hulse and Neil A. Lewis.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 19, 2004
INSURGENTS
Cleric Tells Fighters and Occupiers to Leave Iraq Sacred Cities
By EDWARD WONG

KARBALA, Iraq, May 18 — The country`s most influential cleric called Tuesday for the withdrawal of all armies from two holy cities, Karbala and Najaf, in an effort to end days of bloody fighting and preserve the sanctity of Shiite shrines.

The Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, demanded in a statement that "armed forces" must "leave the holy cities and open the way for the police and tribal forces." His remarks were directed at both American troops and militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, a young rebel cleric who ignited an insurrection against the occupation forces six weeks ago.

Ayatollah Sistani also asked people to stage peaceful protests in the cities against the fighting.

In a parallel development, two of Washington`s strongest allies in Iraq, Italy and Poland, called for the transfer of real authority to the Iraqis on June 30.

American and other occupation troops have been clashing in cities across southern Iraq with rebel Shiite militias.

The fiercest battles have been in Karbala, where American soldiers are dug in at a mosque once held by the insurgents. Last Friday, violence erupted in the sprawling cemetery near the center of Najaf, as American tanks encircled the area to kill militiamen who were firing mortars from among the graves.

The battles have been inching ever closer to the Shrine of Ali in Najaf and the Shrines of Hussein and Abbas in Karbala, dedicated to the three most revered martyrs of Shiite Islam.

Ayatollah Sistani`s statement, issued by his office, was his strongest criticism of the fighting between the Americans and Mr. Sadr. Though Ayatollah Sistani is believed to dislike Mr. Sadr, and the Americans are relying on him to rein in the rebel cleric, the ayatollah noticeably did not single out either side. The Shiite religious establishment has yet to condemn Mr. Sadr, presumably because senior clerics are reluctant to turn on one of their own.

Some clerics have already asked Mr. Sadr to withdraw from the holy cities, but he has yet to comply, and it is unlikely that he will heed Ayatollah Sistani`s demands, even though he has said he will disarm his militia if the grand ayatollahs demand it.

Mr. Sadr`s influence is based on the popularity of his martyred father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who denounced Ayatollah Sistani and other senior clerics for what he called their complacency in the face of Saddam Hussein`s oppression.

On Tuesday afternoon, occupation officials said they had not received a copy of Ayatollah Sistani`s statement. "We have to obviously look closely at it, make a determination as to whether or not Ayatollah Sistani has expressed wishes on this particular issue," said Dan Senor, a spokesman for the occupation.

An American officer said in an interview in Karbala that the military would press its campaign against Mr. Sadr.

"He is going to either have his militia lay down their arms, or we`re going to defeat them," said the officer, Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, assistant division commander for support of the First Armored Division, which is trying to crush Mr. Sadr`s forces.

General Hertling, on a visit from Baghdad, said there were indications that a steady flow of fighters from outside the cities was bolstering the insurgent Mahdi Army, which is generally made up of young, poor Shiite men. The general declined to give more details on the fighters, but field commanders here in Karbala said members of Mr. Hussein`s elite Special Republican Guard, mostly well-trained Sunni Arab warriors, could be joining the insurgent forces here.

After American soldiers occupied the Mukhaiyam Mosque in downtown Karbala, an insurgent stronghold, on May 12, they found identification cards that an Iraqi interpreter said were Iranian. The military is still examining the cards and other documents to determine their origins, said Capt. Noel Gorospe, a spokesman for the First Armored Division.

While Ayatollah Sistani`s demands would hold little sway with non-Shiite insurgents, among many Shiites his word as a member of the marjaiah, a council of four grand ayatollahs of Najaf, is tantamount to an edict from Allah. Many Sunni Muslims also respect him, but they do not accord him the same level of reverence.

In his statement, the ayatollah also asked people to stay away from the Shrine of Ali in Najaf because of the potential for danger there, and he called for a demonstration in Karbala on Wednesday morning to protest the violence in the two holy cities.

Occupation forces and insurgents have battled each other on the very edge of the Shrine of Hussein here in Karbala. American commanders say insurgents are firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades from the shrine area and from a second-floor window in the shrine itself.

Early Monday morning, the Americans called in an airstrike on insurgents about 160 feet from the shrine, pounding them with 40-millimeter cannon fire from an AC-130 gunship.

Few Iraqis have protested such attacks despite the proximity of the strikes to the holy sites, a possible indication of the unpopularity of Mr. Sadr and his militia.

American officers here say the best evidence that outside fighters are working with the Mahdi Army is the obvious skill of some of the insurgents, especially the snipers. Mortar fire has become very precise.

American soldiers killed at least three militiamen in fighting on Tuesday, military officials reported.

[Early Wednesday, four Iraqis were killed in clashes between American troops and followers of Mr. Sadr near the Shrine of Hussein, Reuters reported, quoting hospital officials.]

General Hertling rode in a convoy of Humvees down to the Mukhaiyam Mosque on Tuesday afternoon to survey the scene. Two M-113 armored personnel carriers were parked on the edges of the courtyard, which was covered with glass and rubble from the constant mortar shelling. Toilet stalls along one side of the courtyard reeked of human waste.

In a four-story hotel adjacent to the mosque, soldiers crouched behind machine guns and sandbags and stared through holes in the walls at the dense cityscape. Two Polish snipers stood in one room, their rifles trained east, in the direction of the holy shrines. Automatic gunfire could be heard in the distance.

"Right now, we just need to be able to go into the city," said Lt. Col. Garry R. Bishop, referring to the central shrine area. "They`re using it as a sanctuary."

He said the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an influential Shiite party, had promised it would keep the Mahdi Army from entering the shrines. For whatever reason, it failed to do so.

G.I.`s Transferred From Korea

WASHINGTON, May 18 (Reuters) — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday officially ordered the transfer of about 3,600 American soldiers from South Korea to Iraq. The one-year deployment, which the Pentagon said would begin in late summer, will mark the first cut in the 37,000-soldier Korean mission since the end of the cold war.

The announcement of the deployment, of the Second Infantry Division, Second Brigade, stressed Washington`s commitment to South Korea as North Korea seems to be building a nuclear arsenal. "The Department of Defense will maintain its commitment to the defense of Korea and to the security and stability of the region," the statement added.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 19, 2004
THE COMMANDER
Officers Say U.S. Colonel at Abu Ghraib Prison Felt Intense Pressure to Get Inmates to Talk
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, May 18 — As he took charge of interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison last September, Col. Thomas M. Pappas was under enormous pressure from his superiors to extract more information from prisoners there, according to senior Army officers.

"He likened it to a root canal without novocaine," a senior officer who knows Colonel Pappas said of his meetings with his superiors in Baghdad. Often, the officer said, Colonel Pappas would emerge from discussions with two of them, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, without a word, but "clutching his face as if in pain."

Colonel Pappas, commander of the 205th Intelligence Brigade, relocated his headquarters from Camp Victory, near the Baghdad airport, to Abu Ghraib just days after a visit to Iraq last fall by another high-ranking Army officer, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller. General Miller encouraged the Army colonel to have his unit work more closely with military police to set the conditions for interrogations.

By the end of September, Colonel Pappas had asserted control of Tier 1 of the prison`s "hard site," used for interrogation of Iraqi prisoners, which he maintained until February, when he and his brigade were transferred to Germany at the end of their yearlong tour. After Nov. 19, by order of General Sanchez, Colonel Pappas and his brigade took command of all of Abu Ghraib prison, taking over authority from the 800th Military Police Brigade.

Now Colonel Pappas, who in sworn testimony to a senior Army investigator acknowledged that his subordinates directed military police officers to strip Iraqi prisoners naked and to shackle them, is the highest-ranking officer on active duty known to be under investigation for the abuses committed at Abu Ghraib prison.

From his current post in Wiesbaden, Germany, he has declined all interview requests, but people who know him well described him as a smart, quiet, studious officer who was intent throughout his command on pleasing his superiors.

Less than a year ago, Colonel Pappas, then 44 and newly promoted, graduated from a one-year master`s course at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., where he impressed professors as thoughtful, articulate and well-grounded.

In heading to Iraq to take charge of the 205th Intelligence Brigade, he was embarking on the most important assignment of a 22-year career.

"He was excited; he had been promoted, and he knew that the new challenges that he was taking on were important," said Prof. Jeffrey H. Norwitz, who taught Colonel Pappas in a three-month seminar on making national security decisions and described him as a superb student who appeared headed for the Army`s highest ranks.

On Tuesday, however, the colonel`s younger brother, John, said that he had called from Germany recently to say that he and his wife, Becky, were "maintaining" in the middle of the storm.

"They`re just waiting for all the stuff to be finalized, and then whatever happens, happens," John Pappas, of Middletown, N.J., said.

He said he found it hard to believe his brother could have been involved in the worst of the abuses.

"It doesn`t seem to me that he would throw away his career to do something like that," he said. "I don`t see him as giving an order to sodomize a prisoner. If he had gotten directives or orders that they could strip someone down or something, maybe."

Colonel Pappas was born in Washington in 1959, and grew up on a quiet, leafy street in Belford, N.J., about two miles west of Sandy Hook. His father, Thomas A. Pappas, was a systems analyst at Bell Labs, John Pappas said, and the young Tom Pappas was a Boy Scout who took an early interest in camping and military affairs, a former neighbor said.

"The whole family would take camping trips, and Thomas, as far as I know, was always one to stay out of trouble," said Mary Beth Hall, who still lives in Belford, two doors down from the ranch-style house where the Pappas family lived for 30 years. "He was just a good kid."

A photograph of the young Thomas Pappas in the Rutgers yearbook of 1981, when he graduated with degrees in political science and English, shows a thin man with dark, penetrating eyes in a coat and tie. After graduation, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army.

He climbed the Army ranks as an intelligence officer, with posts in South Korea, Europe and the United States, including stints at Fort Meade, Md., as commander of a unit that serves under the National Security Agency, and, in Fort Huachuca, Ariz., headquarters of the Army Intelligence School, from 2001 to 2003, where he served as a senior officer involved in planning and designing the future of the Army intelligence corps.

A former senior Army intelligence officer described Colonel Pappas as highly regarded, "with a reputation for professional competence and for being a straight shooter."

There is no indication that Colonel Pappas, whose expertise was in strategic and tactical intelligence, ever worked or was trained as a military interrogator, Army officials said. An Army officer who served with him at Abu Ghraib said that as far as interrogations at the Iraq prison were concerned, "he seemed to be learning on the fly."

During his year at the Naval War College, which serves as a prestigious finishing school for promising officers, Colonel Pappas was the highest-ranking officer in the seminar taught by Professor Norwitz. In that role, he was a leader as well as a student in the class of about 18, the professor said.

"Flat out, Tom was probably my best student in the seminar," Professor Norwitz said. "Here at the War College people say it`s very hard to fail and very hard to get an A. That`s true. In my seminar, Tom was an A-plus student."

In Iraq, as the new commander of the 205th Brigade, Colonel Pappas first set up his headquarters at Camp Victory, which was also the site of the home and office of General Sanchez and his staff.

But in September, at General Miller`s encouragement, he moved to Abu Ghraib, and by the end of that month, by several accounts, his military intelligence unit had effectively taken control of Tier 1 from the 800th Military Police Brigade. The brigade was commanded by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, an Army Reserve officer, although military police from that unit remained as guards.

It was in that part of Abu Ghraib that the acts of sexual humiliation and other abuse are reported to have taken place in a period that began after early October, as the anti-American insurgency was mounting.

To date, seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company have been charged in that affair. But a report completed in February by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba identified Colonel Pappas and three others, two of them civilians, as having been "directly or indirectly responsible" for the actions.

"I know that they were absolutely pressuring him to get more out of the intelligence teams," a senior Army officer said of Colonel Pappas`s superiors, including Generals Sanchez, Fast and Miller. "Tom was really really smart, but he was very much — I don`t know if the right word is in awe or intimidated. But it was mostly them telling him what he was going to do."

John Holl contributed reporting from Belford, N.J., for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 19, 2004
Kerry Is Expected to Meet With Nader
BY JODI WILGOREN

WASHINGTON, May 18 - Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, plans to meet Wednesday afternoon with Ralph Nader, whose independent bid for the White House has many Democrats worried about losing votes on their party`s left flank.

The meeting comes amid rising concern in and around the Kerry camp that Mr. Nader`s strong opposition to the war in Iraq could gain traction as approval for President Bush`s handling of the war plummets. Mr. Nader has ratcheted up his rhetoric on Iraq in recent days.

Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Kerry`s communications director, said there was no set agenda for the meeting, but predicted they would "discuss the obvious," an apparent reference to many Democrats` urging Mr. Nader to drop out or risk securing President Bush`s re-election. Many in the party blame Mr. Nader, who won more votes than the Republicans` margin of victory in key states like Florida and New Hampshire, for Mr. Bush`s ascension to the White House.

Mr. Nader could not be reached for comment late Tuesday night but told The Associated Press that leaving the race was not an option. He said he planned to discuss "certain common policies" with Mr. Kerry, adding, "I think that`s for the good of our country and for the benefit of the American people that are being ignored or repudiated by the Bush regime."

Mr. Kerry returned here Tuesday after campaigning in Portland, Ore., where Mr. Nader is popular.

Mary Beth Cahill, Mr. Kerry`s campaign manager, said this week that she paid close attention to Mr. Nader`s campaign but that she was confident his movement would fade. "The people who know Ralph Nader best are the most adamant about what the 3 to 5 percent he would get would mean in November," she said.

Last month, Mr. Kerry said he respected Mr. Nader and that he would not attack him. "I`m just going to try to talk to his people and point out that we`ve got to beat George Bush," Mr. Kerry said. "And I hope that by the end of this race I can make it unnecessary for people to feel they need to vote for someone else."

Kevin Zeese, a spokesman for Mr. Nader, said that he was unsure of Mr. Kerry`s agenda for the meeting but that the question of Mr. Nader dropping his campaign was "not going to come up."

"We don`t plan to ask Kerry to withdraw from the race, and we don`t think he`ll ask us because it`s pretty clear were not going to drop out," he said. "From our perspective, we`re going to say the kind of thing that Ralph has already been saying, which is to explain how our second front against George Bush is going to help remove him from power."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 18, 2004
Nato warned of danger to Afghan role
By Judy Dempsey in Brussels

Nato`s top official warned on Tuesday that the alliance`s peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan was at a critical juncture and could fail.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato secretary general, has been anxious about the progress of Nato`s first mission away from its European base, but he told ambassadors during a lunch near alliance headquarters in Brussels that member states had to immediately deliver promised personnel and equipment.

A senior diplomat at the lunch said: "Today [the secretary general] considers the situation not only extraordinarily frustrating. There is even talk about the future of the mission itself. The mission is at a critical juncture."

Iraq was complicating matters, another diplomat added, by sucking away from Afghanistan valuable military and personnel resources from Nato nations engaged in both countries.

Afghanistan is seen as the test case for Nato`s ability to operate "out of area". Nato, which took over command of international force in Afghanistan last August, has 6,500 troops in the country.

A senior military official said: "Failure will completely damage Nato`s credibility in finding a role in the post-cold-war era".

It has been unable to establish five small military and civilian units to provide security and extend the government of Hamid Karzai beyond Kabul. Even if the teams are set up, Nato can not provide back-up, such as logistics, communications and aircraft, which could make it harder to provide security during September`s planned elections.

Another Nato diplomat said: "We can provide only limited security. This has been an extraordinarily bruising experience".

The blunt warnings reflect a collapse of morale inside the alliance just as it was recovering from the bitter disputes during the run-up to the US-led war in Iraq last year.

Diplomats said the low morale stemmed from frustration among Nato`s top civilian and military staff after attempts to persuade the 26 member nations to deliver to Afghanistan military capabilities promised six months ago.

An alliance diplomat said: "We are asking for only single-digit contributions [of materiél]. Even that seems impossible, despite Nato having on paper access to over 1,000 helicopters".

Turkey has yet to deliver four helicopters pledged last January. It said it had neither money nor transport to fulfil its promise - breaking a "golden rule", which makes Nato states responsible for paying the costs of equipment or staff deployed abroad, diplomats say.

In Kabul, the medical team provided to Nato by Norway for a limited period has not yet been replaced. Nato is still short of heavy cargo aircraft vital in a such a large country.

© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2004.

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The bald eagle, which was nearly extinct 40 years ago, is now the focus of "a fantastic conservation story.

Das nationale Symbol der USA wird nicht aussterben.

May 19, 2004
Thriving Bald Eagle Finding Its Way Off Endangered List
By FELICITY BARRINGER

WASHINGTON, May 18 - The bald eagle, whose majestic profile was in danger of disappearing from the American wild 40 years ago, has returned in such force that only two states lack breeding pairs and the bird is likely to be removed from the list of threatened species by the year`s end.

"As a lot of people have recognized, the bird`s numbers are terrific," David Smith, the deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks in the Department of the Interior, said Tuesday.

"If the numbers bear out," Mr. Smith added, "we hope to get to final delisting" by the end of the year.

The tentative decision, likely to go into effect more than five years after it was first proposed by the Interior Department, is being hailed by some environmentalists as a tribute to the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act, although some biologists have expressed concern that the expansion of subdivisions and summer homes will deprive the burgeoning eagle population of nesting sites.

Nonetheless, "There`s no question it`s a fantastic conservation story," said Bryan D. Watts, the director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

The expected change was first reported by The Associated Press.

In Virginia alone, the number of nesting pairs of eagles has risen to 435 from 260 in the last five years, according to the federal Fish and Wildlife Service; Virginia has more nesting pairs than the entire country did in 1963, when the effects of chemicals like DDT, which weakened the birds` eggshells, and PCB`s, which poisoned their diet, had brought the species to its low ebb.

Nationwide last year there were 7,678 nesting pairs; only Vermont and Rhode Island had none, according to federal statistics.

The driving force behind the eagle`s strong recovery was "the banning of DDT and PCB`s and the protection that the Endangered Species Act did give to the habitat, which allowed the birds to come back and to repopulate some of their historic areas," said Bruce E. Beans, the author of "Eagle`s Plume: The Struggle to Preserve the Life and Haunts of America`s Bald Eagle" (University of Nebraska Press, 1997). And, he added, "particularly in the East, it`s required a lot of intensive hands-on work by both biologists and volunteers."

Mr. Smith said he believed that a separate law protecting bald and golden eagles should provide more than adequate protection to warrant taking away the protections of the Endangered Species Act.

The decision, Mr. Smith said, "has been evolutionary. We`ve been working on it for quite a while." He also said that when the department presents its proposal this summer, it will seek comments on both the current status around the country and how the eagle`s condition can be monitored and safeguarded.

Michael J. Bean, the chairman of the wildlife program for the legal group Environmental Defense, which a week ago called for Interior to delist the eagle, welcomed the decision, saying: "It has clearly recovered. Its recovery needs to be recognized with a delisting. Second, there is a pervasive sense that E.S.A. has failed because so few have been taken off the list. The eagle has clearly recovered. It`s an enormous success. Taking it off the list will drive that point home."

The Fish and Wildlife Service`s Web site lists 1,288 species as endangered or threatened as of the end of 2002. Since the act was passed in 1973, 30 species have been removed from the list. Of these, 13 have been recovered; many of the others are extinct.

The bald eagle will remain protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, originally passed in 1940. That law prohibits the "taking" of and commerce in the birds; "taking" is defined as pursuing, shooting or shooting at, wounding or killing, poisoning, trapping, molesting or disturbing.

Professor Watts said in a telephone interview on Tuesday: "The question has been over the past couple of years: What is going to be the day-to-day use of the eagle act to protect eagle territories? That`s what everyone was waiting for. If we felt it would be protected similarly under the eagle protection act as under the Endangered Species Act, I don`t think anyone would be concerned."

Mitchell Byrd, an emeritus professor of biology at William and Mary who, like Professor Watts, has cautioned about the impact of development on eagle populations, said in an interview Tuesday, "The eagle population is progressively increasing and habitat progressively decreasing and our contention has been that some time in the future these lines are going to cross."

Professor Byrd added, "One potential salvation is that eagles seem to be adapting" to humans.

But, he said, it remains unclear if the birds` adaptation is widespread. And it is also not clear if the birds that live close to humans, like those in Florida that frequent commercial centers, "are going to be as successful as they would have been in more pristine environments."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 19, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Nuts With Nukes
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

There is one force that could rescue Iran`s hard-line ayatollahs from the dustbin of history: us.

For all its denials, Iran seems to be pushing for nuclear warheads and for missiles to carry them. It could make its first weapon in two years, and it could eventually produce enough enriched uranium at Natanz for 25 weapons a year.

Iran`s leaders have regularly gotten away with murder. They apparently helped bomb U.S. marines in Lebanon in 1983, a Jewish center in Argentina in 1994 and U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996. So it`s easy to understand why President Bush declared recently that it`s "intolerable" for Iran to be on the road toward nuclear weapons, adding, "Otherwise they will be dealt with, starting through the United Nations."

To Mr. Bush, not unreasonably, Iran conjures up a frightening combination: nuts with nukes. The push for a tougher approach toward Iran isn`t partisan, and a President Kerry might also pursue a more confrontational, albeit more multilateral, approach to Iran.

But that would be a mistake.

First, it won`t work. If we haul Iran before the Security Council, it will restart its programs (it has suspended at least some) and kick out inspectors. Iran will respond to more pressure not by dropping its nuclear program, but by accelerating it.

Second, we`ll create a nationalistic backlash in Iran that will keep hard-liners in power indefinitely. Our sanctions and isolation have kept dinosaurs in power in Cuba, North Korea and Burma, and my fear is that we`ll do the same in Iran.

What I fear is this: Over the next year or two, the West will press Iran harder, Iran will halt its nuclear cooperation and evict inspectors, Israel will bomb a couple of Iran`s nuclear sites (a possibility widely discussed in security circles, although it would slow Iran`s nuclear progress without ending it), and Iran`s ayatollahs will benefit from a nationalistic surge to stay in power and rule more rabidly than ever.

"We love America," began Mansour Jahanbakhsa, a businessman, in a typical comment, but he added that Iran should develop nuclear weapons. "Iranians would become angry at meddling by America," he said, and his demeanor changed. "We are an old country with an ancient civilization, and we are proud of it. How come Israel can have them and we can`t? It makes me angry."

A young woman, Maryan Nazeri, complained about the regime but said she would support it in a confrontation over nuclear weapons. "We`re going to have them," she said. "Maybe we do already. It`s our right. We`re Iranians, so what do you expect? Just as you want America to be strong, we want Iran to be strong."

Then Massoud Taheri scolded: "Your president calling us a rogue nation and disrespecting our 5,000 years of civilization is offensive. How many years of civilization do you have?"

Our goal should be regime change in Tehran. But if Mr. Bush (or Mr. Kerry) pushes Tehran too hard over nukes, we`ll fail to get rid of either the nuclear program or this regime.

The only alternative is engagement — the precise opposite of the sanctions and isolation that have been U.S. policy under both Presidents Clinton and Bush. Sanctions are even less effective against Iran than against, say, North Korea, because Iran oozes petroleum and is independently wealthy. Isolation by the U.S. has accomplished even less in Iran than it has in Cuba.

So we should vigorously pursue a "grand bargain" in which, among other elements, Iran maintains its freeze on uranium enrichment and we establish diplomatic relations and encourage business investment, tourism and education exchanges.

"What would destroy the conservatives [in Iran] would be a money flood" of American investment, says Hooshang Amirahmadi, the president of the American Iranian Council. "In just a few years, the conservatives would be finished."

The bottom line is that we could soon have a pro-American Islamic democracy as a beacon for hope in the Middle East — in Tehran, not Baghdad. The risk is that we`ll blow it.

*

Iran is a dazzling smorgasbord, from its "Death to America" murals to its winding bazaars. You can join me on a multimedia tour of Iran here.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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FIRE THE WAR PIMPS
Zero Tolerance for Iraq War Pundits

NEW YORK--A year and a half late and 30,000 lives short, supporters of the war in Iraq finally admit that they were wrong.

When I appeared on Bill O`Reilly`s show recently, his bellicose bravado was MIA. We argued about Bush and war, but he studiously avoided talking about Iraq. The Fox News demagogue limited his attacks to my opposition to the war against Afghanistan. To his credit O`Reilly, formerly a ferocious advocate of the Iraqi invasion, was one of the first media war promoters to concede that Iraq had never been a threat to the United States. "I was wrong," he told ABC in February. "I think every American should be very concerned" that weapons of mass destruction have not been found.

Over at The New York Times, two pro-war columnists who repeatedly parroted the Bush party line--arguing that Gulf War II was a noble experiment in Middle Eastern democracy, accusing opponents of appeasing Saddam and repeatedly ridiculing skeptics as knee-jerk pacifists who didn`t care about the long-suffering Iraqis--have ordered up a heaping plate of crow. "We went into Iraq with what, in retrospect, seems like a childish fantasy," allows Republican war pimp David Brooks. "We were going to topple Saddam, establish democracy and hand the country back to grateful Iraqis. We expected to be universally admired when it was all over. For us to succeed in Iraq," he concludes now, "we have to lose [to the insurgency]."

"I supported the war and now I feel foolish," says CNN`s Tucker Carlson.

Thomas Friedman, a 1949-style Cold War liberal who spilled tens of thousands of words pushing a war sold using lies, confesses that he projected good intent on a White House where idealism was in short supply: "I thought the administration would have to do the right things in Iraq--from prewar planning and putting in enough troops to dismissing the secretary of defense for incompetence--because surely this was the most important thing for the president and the country. But I was wrong."

Back in August 2002, Newsweek hawk Fareed Zakaria argued: "Done right, an invasion would be the single best path to reform the Arab world. Were Saddam`s totalitarian regime to be replaced by a state that respected human rights, enforced the rule of law and created a market economy, it could begin to transform that world." And if done right, tax cuts could have stimulated the economy. But Bush hadn`t done anything right when Zakaria wrote that. The Administration`s brazenly dishonest and inept post-9/11 record--not the right`s fictional knee-jerk "Bush-bashing"--is why half the country never trusted his blandishments about WMDs, the fictional Saddam-Osama link, or nation-building.

Ah, but the new and improved Zakaria finally gets it: "On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq, [Bush`s] assumptions and policies have been wrong. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw."

We`re supposed to be grateful that Zakaria and his fellow war pimps are--finally!--recognizing reality. At least they`re better than Bush, who still thinks torture can convert the Iraqis to democracy: "I won`t yield," he said May 13. But these prominent pundits too have blood on their hands.

Had they stood firmly against the war and Bush, on the right side of history, they might have helped slow or even reverse the rush to war during the winter of 2002-3. Their failure to accurately assess the case for war, coupled with their willful blindness to this Administration`s neofascist tendencies, contributed to needless carnage, attacks on individual rights and the creation of dozens of covert CIA gulags around the world. Every time someone was raped at Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Base or Gitmo, Tom Friedman and Christopher Hitchens and Bill O`Reilly and David Brooks were de facto accomplices.

The WordPerfect Warriors` journalistic failings are even more pronounced than their moral ones. On an issue with enormous political and historical ramifications for our country, they got the story wrong. They believed in WMDs at a time when the vintage of the government`s evidence (none of it was more recent than 1998) ought to have tripped BS detectors. They trusted the White House`s promises to rebuild Iraq despite its dismal record in Afghanistan. They never considered that removing a dictator who had killed all of his major opponents might open up a power vacuum. And they never questioned Bush`s original sin, his partisan politicization of 9/11.

They should have known better--lots of us did. Or they did know better and lied about it. Whether their integrity or their intelligence was compromised, they should never again be taken seriously.

The pro-war pundits got the biggest story of their careers dead wrong. Now a lot of people are wrongly dead. The fact that this sorry lot still draw paychecks is a tribute to America`s infinite capacity for forgiveness.

COPYRIGHT 2004 TED RALL

RALL 5/18/04

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This handover in Iraq is not a policy - it is a cynical public relations gimmick
The price for allowing policy to be determined by Mr Bush`s electoral needs will be paid in blood
Patrick Cockburn
The Independent
19 May 2004

Soon after United States occupation officials took over Saddam Hussein`s palace complex in central Baghdad as their headquarters last year there was an alarming development. The lavatories in the palaces all became blocked and began to overflow. Mobile toilets were rapidly shipped into the country and installed in the palace gardens.

It turned out that American officials, often bright young things with good connections with the Bush administration in Washington, did not know that lavatories are used in a slightly different way in the Middle East compared to back home. In particular water fulfills the function largely performed by paper in the West. The water pipes in Saddam`s palaces were not designed to deal with big quantities of paper and became clogged, with spectacularly unsavoury results.

It was the first of many mistakes made by the Coalition Provisional Authority, which has now ruled Iraq for a year-based on inadequate local knowledge. It has been one of the most spectacularly incompetent regimes in history. If Paul Bremer, the US viceroy in Iraq, decided important issues by flipping a coin he would surely have had better results.

At moments Mr Bremer has the manic activity and self-confidence of Inspector Clouseau as he bounces from crisis to crisis, many of his troubles of his own creation. In April he managed to turn the insurgents in Fallujah, previously regarded by most Iraqis as dangerous hillbillies, into nationalist heroes. At the same time he went after Muqtada Sadr, the Shia cleric, whose popular base was always small, and allowed him to pose as a martyr. The main feature of American policy-making in Iraq is division. Nowhere in the world is it more necessary for military and political strategy to be united than Iraq. But Mr Bremer and the uniformed army hardly seem to communicate. The civilians in the Pentagon and the Neo-Cons have their own policy as do the State Department and the CIA. The White House is mainly concerned that, whatever is really happening on the ground in Iraq, it can be presented in a way which will not lose Mr Bush the presidential election in November.

Out of this mélange of rivalries it would be surprising if any sensible policy emerged and there is, indeed, no sign of one doing so. Downing Street and the White House are now both talking up the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis on 30 June and the creation of new Iraqi security forces to, in time, replace the 135,000 US and 7,500 British soldiers.

This is less a policy than a cynical public relations gimmick. The allies have been trying to build up the Iraqi security forces for over a year. But when the uprisings began last month, 40 per cent of the US-trained forces promptly deserted while 10 per cent mutinied and changed sides, according to the US army. The reality, as Dr Mahmoud Othman an independent member of the Iraqi Governing Council says, is that Iraqis will not fight other Iraqis on behalf of a foreign power.

Of course the purpose of the exaggerated significance now being given to the handover of sovereignty to an interim government in six weeks` time is to pretend that now there will be a legitimate authority in Iraq. Over the past year, the CPA has repeatedly said it will delegate power to Iraqis. It has never happened and is unlikely to happen now. The US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council found that it was expected to give an Iraqi flavour to decisions taken by Americans. They were told they would be consulted on important security decisions only to wake up one morning to find US marines besieging Fallujah. They were seen by more and more Iraqis as collaborators with an increasingly detested occupation.

The council is now to be replaced by a government of technocrats supposedly more acceptable to Iraqis than their predecessors. It will be chosen in part by Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy, and is to pave the way for elections in Iraq next January.

Again the most striking aspect of this plan is gimmickry. There was a moment straight after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein when the UN might have played a role in Iraq. But at that point, as one Iraqi leader put it, the US was drunk with victory and determined to keep the UN out. Since then the UN headquarters in Baghdad has been reduced to heap of ruins and many of its staff killed.

It is unlikely that many countries belonging to the UN would at this stage want to risk any of its officials or soldiers in Iraq. Mr Brahimi, supposedly a key player in creating a new Iraqi administration, hardly dared set foot outside the heavily defended green zone, where the Coalition has its headquarters, during his recent visit. The UN also has a shrewd suspicion that all it is being asked to do is to take a share in responsibility for a crisis over which it will have no influence.

After 30 June the US army will retain control over the Iraqi security forces in Iraq. It is unclear if Iraq will even be able to spend its own oil revenues. Nobody knows who will be in the new government. It does not even have a building from which it will function because the Coalition shows no sign of leaving Saddam`s palaces. The degree to which important decisions about the handover of sovereignty have been left to the last minute underlines that, at the end of next month, real power will not change hands.

British officials who admit this say that the really important date will come in seven months` time when there is an election in Iraq. Here they are on slightly firmer ground. The occupiers should have organised an election as soon as possible after the invasion. They would then have been able to deal with elected Iraqi leaders with some claim to legitimacy.

But there were no elections before because the Americans feared Shia parties beyond American control would win. So US officials cancelled local elections. Mr Bremer certainly did not want the elections over the summer because he feared they would be won by Islamic parties, even though British and American military commanders confirmed privately that a poll could be organised.

In Najaf, the Shia shrine city, the occupying forces even managed to appoint a Sunni governor, which was a bit like giving Rev Ian Paisley a position of responsibility overseeing the Vatican. Fortunately the governor did not last long in that role. He was arrested for kidnapping and is now in jail.

The important point about the Iraqi elections is the timing. They will not take place before the US presidential elections in November. This allows Mr Bush to say that Iraq is on track towards democracy.

There will be a price to pay for allowing Iraq policy to be determined by Mr Bush`s electoral needs. It is a price which will be paid in blood. I have met no Iraqis who think anything is going to change at the end of next month. More and more they believe that the only way to end the occupation is by armed resistance. If the British Government believes that 3,000 extra soldiers will really do anything to restore order then they have once again underestimated the gravity of the crisis.

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Doctrine of `kill, kill and kill again` angers British officers
By Kim Sengupta

19 May 2004

Senior British officers are angry and despondent at what they see as a US doctrine in Iraq of "kill, kill and kill again", and are determined that their troops should not be under direct American command, according to a report.

The simmering tension between the militaries of the two allies has been highlighted in the American magazine, Newsweek, which also describes how a British officer unsuccessfully urged his US counterparts to do the "decent thing" and free the Iraqi inmates from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

The British protest over Iraqi prisoners is said to have taken place at a staff meeting attended by American Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who was subsequently suspended for failure to prevent abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib by troops under her command, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq, and a military legal team.

The British officer said: "The best solution is to find a way to release these people instead of building more and more detention facilities. Why don`t we just do the decent thing?" Brig Gen Karpinski recalled that the British "effrontery" was received with incredulity by American commanders. "They looked at him like, `who asked you?`"

The report states: "The difference in style - Do the decent thing...who asked you?- is stark. So much so, Newsweek has learnt, as to become a serious obstacle to military cooperation."

The report of discord between the US and British commanders comes at an especially critical time, with continuing turmoil in Iraq and the Government about to announce the large scale deployment of extra troops.

Senior British officers have been resisting pressure from Downing Street both on the deployment and also on placing troops outside the British controlled zone at flashpoints like Najaf.

Tony Blair`s official spokesman said yesterday that the sending of extra troops would be tied to a drive towards forming an Iraqi army, and police and intelligence services. The Prime Minister is said to have won agreement on this from President George W Bush during two telephone conversations in recent weeks.

Mr Blair`s spokesman said this speeding up of the political and security "twin track" was "a recognition that the key to success is to give the Iraqis what they want, which is as much control and responsibility as quickly as possible."

Major General David Petraeus, a senior US officer in Iraq, has been asked to study how British forces are training Iraqi forces in policing and counter-terrorism in the Basra region.

However, some British trained Iraqi policemen, carrying British supplied arms, joined with the militia of the Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr when they took over the governors` mansion in Basra. And a recent Amnesty International report accused the same force of being involved in the killing of prisoners.


19 May 2004 11:14

© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Seymour Hersh, At the Front Lines On War Scandals

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page C01

Is Seymour Hersh becoming . . . respectable?

Thirty-five years after breaking the news of the My Lai massacre, the tenacious, hot-tempered reporter is winning praise for his disclosures about U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. He`s on the tube touting his findings with Bob Schieffer, George Stephanopoulos, Wolf Blitzer, Bill O`Reilly. He`s just won a National Magazine Award. "If there`s a journalistic equivalent to Viagra, he`s on it," gushes Newsweek.

A Pentagon spokesman is ripping him for "outlandish" and "conspiratorial" reporting, but the media establishment is embracing the Cleveland Park resident as never before.

"He is doing what he is built to do and is obsessed with doing," says New Yorker Editor David Remnick, who has been up late crashing Hersh`s pieces into the magazine. "He`s just boiling with energy."

Remnick says he enjoys editing Hersh because "anyone that passionate about what they`re doing is gold to me. . . . Even if the phone is hung up abruptly or someone shouts at someone, it`s forgotten five minutes later."

Hersh, 67, is of the story-is-more-important-than-me school and declined to be interviewed. "Oh my God, this is all so tedious," he told a Washington Post reporter who asked about his background in 2001. "What the hell does it have to do with anything I write?"

There is a trust-me aspect to Hersh`s reporting, given his heavy reliance on unnamed sources. His latest piece quotes a "senior CIA official," "former high-level intelligence official," "military analyst," "government consultant" and "Pentagon consultant."

"I know every source that`s not named," Remnick says. "The [fact] checkers talk with those sources. Would he and I want people to be on the record? Of course. It`s a trade-off we sometimes have to make."

It was Hersh who helped force the Abu Ghraib prison scandal out in the open. While "60 Minutes II" beat him by a hair, the CBS program went ahead -- after delaying at the Pentagon`s request -- upon hearing that Hersh was close to publishing. Hersh disclosed the report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba on "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at the prison, and obtained the disturbing photo of dogs being used to threaten a cowering, naked Iraqi.

He followed up last weekend with a report that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had approved the expansion of a secret program allowing harsh interrogation of detainees that Hersh contends led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita says Hersh "threw a lot of crap against the wall and he expects someone to peel off what`s real. It`s a tapestry of nonsense. To some degree he became the story." DiRita declined to discuss whether Rumsfeld had authorized tougher interrogation tactics, and Remnick dismissed the comment.

Hersh has a pugilistic quality that seems to invite such attacks. A onetime volunteer for Eugene McCarthy`s antiwar campaign, he doesn`t pretend to be a neutral observer.

Appearing with two senators Sunday on "Face the Nation," Hersh challenged them: "If you convene a serious hearing and I assure you some senior officers will come and -- if you give them enough protection -- and tell you things that will really knock your socks off. So go for it."

And on "Late Edition," Hersh didn`t hesitate to invoke a Nazi parallel: "You`re seeing two attack dogs, German shepherds, snarling, it`s a scene from, you know, Third Reich, you name it."

Hersh`s stock has risen and fallen over the years as he has gotten into scrapes with some of the capital`s most influential power brokers. But he keeps bouncing back.

Though Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize for his story about U.S. soldiers killing civilians in Vietnam -- he sold it to a tiny news service after national magazines had turned it down -- he has always seemed an outsider. While he spent much of the 1970s at the New York Times, where he scored some Watergate scoops and broke a huge story about CIA domestic spying, it was never a comfortable fit.

In 1983 Hersh made another big splash with a tough book about Henry Kissinger that tarnished the former secretary of state even as critics accused the author of pushing his evidence too far.

His lowest point came in 1997, when Hersh acknowledged he had been peddled some phony JFK documents. Though the bogus papers never made it into his book "The Dark Side of Camelot," Hersh was pilloried, and criticized as well for including so much salacious sexual material about Jack Kennedy.

In 2000 Hersh got into a huge public fight with former Gulf War Gen. Barry McCaffrey, charging that his division had destroyed a retreating Iraqi unit. Even before the piece ran, McCaffrey, insisting that the Iraqis were still fighting, accused Hersh of conducting "defamatory" interviews out of "personal malice." One McCaffrey supporter, retired Col. Ken Koetz, maintained that Hersh had said, "I really want to bury this guy." Hersh denied making such a comment.

When Hersh charged last year that administration defense adviser Richard Perle was inappropriately mixing business and politics in his dealings with two Saudi figures, Perle likened him to a "terrorist." Perle threatened to sue Hersh, but never did.

"A lot of Washington journalists act like hedge-trimmers or pruning shears," says Time defense correspondent Mark Thompson. "Sy is a noisy, smoke-spewing chain saw -- and a relentless stump-grinder, to boot."

Bill Kovach, who once edited Hersh as the Times`s Washington bureau chief, says that "he`s maintained a kind of groundfire of anger at abuses of power unlike any I`ve ever seen."

And how does Hersh unearth his information? "He`s relentless," Kovach says. "He`s rapid-fire. He asks two or three questions at a time. He just keeps going and going until he gets where he wants to go. He religiously tracks these sources, he talks to them all the time."
The Bib Brouhaha

The Baltimore Sun has barred reporter Pat Meisol from writing about state government.

The reason: She gave a baby bib to Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich and his wife, Kendel, after their son was born, and her name turned up on a 22-page list of presents at the gubernatorial mansion.

A childish overreaction? "I`m pretty outraged," the feature writer says. "I`ve been really loyal to this newspaper and I think they treated me unfairly. Buying a bib for the baby is a business expense -- no different from taking someone out for dinner or a drink. . . . I`m spending hundreds of dollars on dinners with some of these guys in Annapolis."

The bib cost $22.

Managing Editor Anthony Barbieri says that unlike the "institutional" expense of entertaining a source, "my feeling is a gift is a personal expression of affection for a public official." While Meisol is "perfectly capable of writing an absolutely objective story" about the Ehrlichs, "we need to be extraordinarily careful" about perceptions.

But Meisol says it`s all about "maintaining relationships" with people like Kendel Ehrlich. "I`m not a friend of hers."

Also on the gift list was Sun editorial writer Karen Hosler, who told her paper she had been "thoughtless" in joining in her husband`s gift of tree-planting in the baby`s honor. The paper says Hosler, who was avoiding state politics because of a friendship with the Ehrlichs, now can`t write anything related to Maryland issues.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Sistani Demands Exit of Najaf Combatants
Top Shiite Cleric Rebuffs Rival`s Call to Arms

By Daniel Williams and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A17

BAGHDAD, May 18 -- Iraq`s supreme Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, demanded Tuesday that all armed forces leave the holy city of Najaf and called on fellow Shiites not to join in a bloody uprising there against U.S. forces. It was his first public effort to end a weeks-old rebellion mounted by the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr.

Sistani was apparently responding to a call to arms issued earlier in the day by Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia has largely controlled Najaf for weeks. Sistani`s words are often heeded by Shiites, although his call Tuesday was not a religious order, or fatwa.

Sadr had invited all Iraqis to come to the southern city and support his uprising, which U.S. troops are struggling to contain. The revolt is one of several serious security issues that U.S. officials face before the scheduled transfer of limited authority to an Iraqi interim government on June 30.

U.S. military options are constricted in part because Najaf is home to one of the most revered sites in Shiite Islam, the Shrine of Imam Ali, and a vast graveyard that is the most favored burial spot among Shiites because of its proximity to the mosque.

For the past month, U.S. officials have been hoping that Sistani would challenge Sadr, whose authority stems largely from his militia, which numbers in the thousands. Sadr has said he would follow a request from Sistani to withdraw from the city, but his rhetoric has grown increasingly militant the longer he has kept U.S. forces at bay.

"So rise up my beloved people," Sadr said in the statement issued by his office in Najaf. He called on "the people of great Iraq to express your opinion" in Najaf "as a reply to the serial violations, in order to be the best people for the best sacred shrines."

Sistani has traditionally shied from political matters. His boldest such overture came last November, when he called for direct elections to establish a post-occupation government, rather than a caucus system favored at the time by U.S. officials.

Tuesday`s formal statement, a rare personal message to the public by a man who usually communicates indirectly through aides, came a day after his offices in Najaf were fired on -- by Sadr`s men, according to some accounts.

The conflicting statements by Sistani and Sadr appeared to open the way for a test of wills between two clerics with vastly different views of Islam`s role in the political future of Iraq. After years of suffering under former president Saddam Hussein`s Sunni-led government, Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq`s population, are seeking a representative stake in a post-occupation government.

Shiite communities were once largely receptive to the U.S. invasion as the only viable way to oust Hussein. But the current divisions among Shiites are not only complicating U.S. efforts to establish a broadly acceptable interim government, they are also raising the specter of violence between armed militias loyal to rival Shiite groups.

"We could have a confrontation between Shiite groups in Najaf, and this would be dangerous," said Fatih Kashif Ghitta, a prominent Shiite cleric.

Sadr, who is wanted by U.S. authorities in connection with the killing last year of a rival Shiite cleric, has used his militia, made up largely of disenfranchised young men, to become a major player in Iraq`s sectarian politics. Shiite leaders have suggested that Sadr, 31, be given a role in the next government as an incentive for him to demobilize his militia.

On Tuesday, Sadr`s forces struck again at U.S. troops, after suffering heavy casualties on Monday. Using mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, his men fired on a small U.S. military camp located between Najaf and Kufa, a town six miles to the northeast that is also a Sadr stronghold. Two U.S. tanks maneuvered toward the camp from a police station in town and were ambushed. There were no reports of casualties on either side.

Sustained fighting in the south has engaged U.S. troops for more than 10 days.

U.S. commanders initially urged patience, hoping to avoid damage to the shrine in Najaf and a pair of shrines in Karbala, a holy Shiite city farther north, where Sadr`s militia has also mounted resistance to occupation forces. Rather than confronting U.S. troops directly at the outskirts of the cities, Sadr`s men have taken up positions deep inside them and near religious sites. U.S. forces have pursued militia forces, risking damage to the shrines.

So far, Shiite religious leaders who want Sadr removed have complained little about the American tactics. In neighboring Iran, whose population is almost entirely Shiite, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme religious leader, this week called on Shiites worldwide to condemn the U.S. offensive across southern Iraq.

U.S. officials had hoped that Shiite leaders could persuade Sadr to abandon his rebellion, disband his militia and give himself up either to U.S. forces or religious leaders and face charges in the killing of Abdel-Majid Khoei, a cleric who was stabbed in April 2003 after returning to Iraq from exile in Britain.

Talks between Sadr and Shiite mediators have broken down over terms that would have put Sadr in their hands rather than in U.S. custody. Without specifying the exact cause, Shiite officials are blaming the United States for the breakdown. "The Americans have added a condition," said Hamid Bayati, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which wants Sadr out of Najaf.

The continuing violence has exasperated Najaf residents. "From the first day of the crisis, our business stopped. We depend on tourists, and now there are none," said Hadi Basheer, 50, who sells souvenirs.

Ali Hussein, 28, a taxi driver, accused Sadr`s militia of harboring common criminals and sympathizers of Hussein. "I want the Americans to solve this, because the Mahdi Army is growing in power," he said.

Special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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U.S. Faces Growing Fears of Failure
Wolfowitz Concedes Errors as Damage Control Continues

By Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A01

The Bush administration is struggling to counter growing sentiment -- among U.S. lawmakers, Iraqis and even some of its own officials -- that the occupation of Iraq is verging on failure, forcing a top Pentagon official yesterday to concede serious mistakes over the past year.

Under tough questioning from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a leading administration advocate of the Iraq intervention, acknowledged miscalculating that Iraqis would tolerate a long occupation. A central flaw in planning, he added, was the premise that U.S. forces would be creating a peace, not fighting a war, after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

"We had a plan that anticipated, I think, that we could proceed with an occupation regime for much longer than it turned out the Iraqis would have patience for. We had a plan that assumed we`d have basically more stable security conditions than we`ve encountered," Wolfowitz told the senators.

The testy hearing reflected growing anxieties with only six weeks left before political power is to be handed over to Iraqis. The United States is now so deeply immersed in damage control -- combating security problems and recriminations from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and making a third attempt at crafting an interim government in Baghdad -- that lawmakers and others say Iraq faces greater uncertainty about the future than it did when the occupation began with great expectations a year ago.

"There are a lot of people across this country who are very, very worried about how this is progressing, what the endgame is, whether or not we are going to achieve even a part of our goals here -- and the growing fear that we may in fact have in some ways a worse situation if we`re not careful at the end of all this," warned Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), echoing comments of several committee members.

President Bush acknowledged yesterday that the United States is facing "hard work" in Iraq that is "approaching a crucial moment." But he said he will not be swayed from the goal of helping Iraq become a "free and democratic nation at the heart of the Middle East."

"My resolve is firm," he said in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. "This is an historic moment. The world watches for weakness in our resolve. They will see no weakness. We will answer every challenge." But lawmakers challenged Wolfowitz with their fears that the U.S.-led coalition still does not have a viable plan in place for the transition -- and that failure could be costly.

"A detailed plan is necessary to prove to our allies and to Iraqis that we have a strategy and that we are committed to making it work. If we cannot provide this clarity, we risk the loss of support of the American people, loss of potential contributions from our allies and the disillusionment of Iraqis," said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the panel.

U.S. successes in Iraq have been "dwarfed" by two deficits created by the administration -- a "security deficit" and a "legitimacy deficit," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.).

The public criticism on Capitol Hill mirrors growing alarm expressed in private throughout the U.S. foreign policy community as well as among Iraqis about the political transition and deteriorating security. The U.S.-led coalition has dramatically lowered its goals, they say, from an early pledge to create a stable, democratic country that would be a model for transforming the greater Middle East, to scrambling to cobble together an interim government by June 30 that will have only limited political authority and still depend on more than 130,000 foreign troops.

"We`ve sacrificed the preferable to that which is most expedient," said a U.S. official involved with Iraq policy. "We`ve gone from hoping for a strong and empowered government to one that can survive, literally, until a new constitution is drafted."

With mounting instability, from the assassination of a top Iraqi politician to kidnappings for ransom of prominent professionals and their children, Iraqis close to the negotiations by U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi are now warning that credible politicians or technocrats may not be willing to accept jobs in the interim Iraqi government.

"Anyone in his right mind would say, `What you`re giving me is an impossible task and a no-win situation,` " said an Iraqi adviser to a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

The crisis over mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib has also complicated the political transition, with fears among Iraqis that any association with an interim government named by U.N. and U.S. diplomats will undermine their political aspirations.

Some military officers are also concerned that Washington is now cutting back on its original goal of eliminating major flash points in Iraq before June 30. They say the United States has basically retreated in Fallujah, handing over control of the Sunni city to a former Iraqi general who is now commanding some of the very insurgents U.S. forces were fighting -- again, in the name of expediency.

"What we`re trying to do is extricate ourselves from Fallujah," said a senior U.S. official familiar with U.S. strategy who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. "There`s overwhelming pressure with the Coalition Provisional Authority and the White House to deliver a successful Iraq transition, and Iraq is proving uncooperative."

In his testimony, Wolfowitz expressed optimism about trends in Iraq. "We`re not trying to suggest by any means that this is a rosy scenario, but we do think that Iraq is moving forward toward self-government and self-defense, and that`s the key to winning," he said.

But in response to persistent questioning, Wolfowitz said the United States had been "slow" in creating Iraqi security forces and too severe in its early policy of de-Baathification, or barring from government jobs and political life tens of thousands of Iraqis who were members of Hussein`s ruling Baath Party.

He listed other shortcomings in planning, including underestimating the resilience of Hussein or his supporters, their postwar operational capabilities and financial resources. Wolfowitz also said he did not know how many U.S. troops would remain posted to Iraq over the next 18 months. "It could be more, it could be less" than the level of 135,000 troops the Pentagon has said it plans to keep in Iraq through 2005.

And he conceded that the question of how Iraq will operate after June 30 remains unsettled, adding that officials would have a better idea of how Iraqi sovereignty will work "as soon as we know who our counterparts are."

In Britain, the closest U.S. ally in Iraq, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also conceded that the Iraq situation is more troubled than the coalition predicted. "It`s palpable that the difficulties which we faced have been more extensive than it was reasonable to assume nine months ago," he said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.

Researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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The Security Dilemma



Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A22

THERE HAS been general agreement in and outside of Iraq for more than a year that security is the country`s biggest single problem. The Bush administration has tried to tackle it in various ways -- from training Iraqi police forces to recruiting foreign troops to making deals with former Baathist generals -- and yet the violence worsens. In the wake of Monday`s car bombing, which killed the president of Iraq`s governing council, senior coalition officials were conceding that the country was close to anarchy. Still, the administration remains curiously and disturbingly unwilling to reconsider its strategy or adopt more dramatic measures.

To be sure, there are no quick fixes, despite the tone of some of the rhetoric in Washington. Many Democrats in Congress, for example, have suggested variations on the theme of handing Iraq over to NATO and the United Nations. We endorsed those ideas a year ago and still like them in principle. But key NATO governments, including France and Germany, remain opposed to any alliance deployment in Iraq, and they command the only substantial reserves of troops that might be made available for such a mission. The United Nations, too, long ago opted out of any large-scale mission. Nor does it seem likely that Middle Eastern states will send forces; Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told a Senate hearing yesterday that they were "neuralgic" on the subject.

A number of senators, both Democratic and Republican, have called for the dispatch of tens of thousands more U.S. troops, on top of the administration`s recent decision to cancel a planned drawdown of 20,000 soldiers. This, too, strikes us as a step that should be tried -- and one the administration is wrong to resist. But more troops will be difficult to muster -- one brigade is already being withdrawn from U.S. forces in South Korea -- and senior officers have said the Army and its reserves already are under severe strain. Nor will Iraqis welcome the deployment of more GIs; any security gains will come at the risk of compounding the anti-American political backlash that helps sustain the insurgents.

The administration clings to its own plans to rapidly train tens of thousands of new Iraqi security forces; Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry agrees but says it should be done better and faster. This, too, should be pursued with more urgency -- but Iraqi units will not solve the security problem anytime soon. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz told the Senate hearing that it might be a year or 18 months before they are fully trained, equipped and organized.

It may be, as pessimists contend, that there is now no way to restore order to Iraq -- that chaos and civil war are inevitable. But we believe a solution may still lie in the aggressive embrace of all the strategies under discussion. Iraq needs more American troops, and more of its own security forces and any other foreign allied troops that can be collected, and it needs them soon, to make possible the staging of elections by early next year.

Only dramatic steps by President Bush will make such reinforcements possible. He must address Congress and the American public and explain why more soldiers must be sent, and how the resulting costs and disruption will be managed. He should agree to a permanent increase in the size of the U.S. Army, which will, at least, mean that there will be relief on the horizon for overtaxed divisions and reserve units. He should publicly and personally appeal to U.S. allies, in Europe and elsewhere, for help in providing the necessary security for elections; an extraordinary summit meeting on Iraq would be one way to do it. Above all, Mr. Bush should make clear that he is prepared to take bold and creative action to improve security in Iraq -- and not just "stay the course."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Crutch of Cheap Credit

By Robert J. Samuelson

Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A23

Here`s a big story that didn`t happen: The U.S. economy did not collapse, dragging down the rest of the world. Considering all the bad news (the stock and tech bubbles, Sept. 11, corporate scandals, the Iraq war), it might have. The escape from calamity had many causes, including optimistic American consumers and the Bush tax cuts. But none mattered more than the Federal Reserve`s policy of cheap credit. Alan Greenspan and others have now signaled that its days are numbered. What comes next? The fear is that everything puffed up by cheap credit (including housing prices and stocks) will go flat. The hope is that the recovery no longer needs the crutch of cheap credit.

A crutch it`s clearly been. From Jan. 3, 2001, to June 25, 2003, the Fed reduced its overnight interest rate (the federal funds rate) from 6.5 percent to 1 percent -- the lowest in more than four decades. The cuts worked. In a recession, auto sales and housing construction typically suffer. Not this time. "We didn`t lose the jobs in automobiles and housing that we usually lose in a recession," says economist Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University. Because automakers could borrow cheaply, they could lend cheaply (aka buyers` "incentives``). Car and light-truck sales slipped only slightly, from 17.3 million in 2000 to 16.7 million in 2003.

Housing did even better, because mortgage rates declined from an annual average of 7.5 percent in 2000 to 5.8 percent in 2003 (on 30-year fixed-rate loans). Home construction rose from 1.57 million units in 2000 to 1.85 million in 2003. Millions of homeowners also refinanced existing mortgages at lower rates. They reduced monthly payments, shortened maturities or borrowed more against rising housing values, which were pumped up by low mortgage rates. Since the end of 2000, household debt has increased a third, to $9.4 trillion. The extra cash financed home improvements and more shopping.

All this helped offset corporate cutbacks. After the economic boom, companies had surplus workers and investments -- factories, machinery, offices. To restore profits, they cut payrolls and investment spending. Cheap credit also helped this recuperative process. It enabled businesses to reduce interest costs and refinance short-term debt at favorable rates. Among large nonfinancial corporations, interest costs dropped from 20 percent of cash flow in 2001 to 14 percent in 2003, reports the Fed.

Finally, cheap credit went global. As Americans spent, U.S. imports rose. Dollars flowed abroad. When those dollars arrived elsewhere, they were often converted into local currencies by foreign central banks (the Fed`s counterparts). America`s easy money fostered easy money abroad, particularly in Asia. "Central banks have colluded . . . to keep the global economy afloat," says Robert Gay of Commerzbank Securities.

What`s tricky is that, except for the overnight federal funds rate, the Fed doesn`t control any interest rate. Banks, pension funds and others actually set market interest rates (on mortgages, business loans, bonds) based on their views of inflation and risk. When the Fed cuts the funds rate, it simply buys U.S. Treasury securities from banks and others. The cash used to pay for those securities gives banks more lending funds, which -- other things equal -- could reduce other rates. The Fed succeeded because inflationary expectations were subsiding and because the Fed itself reduced the perception of risk.

It influenced long-term rates by encouraging the "carry trade``: Investors borrow short-term money at low rates (say 2 percent) and lend it at higher long-term rates (say, 5 or 6 percent). A lot of that happened. From 2000 to 2003, bank lending rose about $1 trillion. Banks used cheap deposits to buy mortgages and bonds. As more money moved into these investments, their interest rates fell. But the carry trade is risky: if short-term interest rates rise, it can become unprofitable. So, last year the Fed reassured investors. The Fed funds rate would stay low for "a considerable period," it said. The Fed shaped "expectations of long-term bond investors in a very creative way," notes Mark Zandi of Economy.com.

Unfortunately, cheap credit cannot last indefinitely, because, once the economy improves, it will rekindle inflation: too much money chasing too few goods. Worsening inflationary psychology will push up market interest rates. With better job growth, Greenspan and the Fed have reached this juncture. The Fed has withdrawn its "considerable period" pledge and indicated that the Fed funds rate will soon rise from 1 percent. Market interest rates have already increased, because views of inflation and risk have deteriorated. In mid-March, the rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage was 5.4 percent; now it`s above 6 percent.

What`s unknown is the economy`s ability to withstand higher rates. One favorable sign: about 80 percent of household debt (mainly mortgages) is at fixed interest rates, estimates the Fed. Most borrowers won`t be hit with higher monthly payments. Another good sign: Corporate America has experienced a shakeout. The survivors have restored profitability and captured sales from weaker competitors; they`re expanding. But dangers lurk. Higher interest rates could lure money from stocks. Tighter credit could spread abroad. Higher interest rates could hurt auto sales, home construction and real estate values. Borrowing against higher housing prices will drop. In 2003 household debt was already 113 percent of disposable income; in 2000 it was only 97 percent. Overborrowed consumers could become more cautious.

For Greenspan, this may be his last hurrah; by law, his Fed appointment ends in early 2006. The Fed needs to raise rates fast enough to prevent market rates from taking off -- and slowly enough not to choke the recovery. It`s a delicate maneuver. By pulling it off, Greenspan would ensure his reputation.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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LIMA, OH (IWR News Parody) - President Bush this afternoon broke his nose by running head first into his limo door. According to White House sources Mr. Bush was suffering from `psychological relapse`http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=b… brought on when Mr. Bush came in contact with powdered sugar at the Nickles Bakery in Lima.

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Death of a Salesman

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A23

"Nobody dast blame this man," says Charley in a spontaneous eulogy for his neighbor, Willy Loman, in the concluding scene of Arthur Miller`s tragedy. "A salesman is got to dream, boy."

And certainly nobody blames Nicholas Berg, beheaded in Iraq by ghouls from the Dark Ages. Berg had his dreams, and they weren`t just of business opportunities in Iraq. Though just 26, Berg was already something of a globetrotter in the cause of building a better world. Working through the American Jewish World Service, he`d gone to Kenya to help construct a water access project -- the kind of project that Africa needs most, and for which Berg`s idealism, engineering skills and evident affability suited him to a tee.

Ruth Messinger, the former Manhattan borough president and a practical idealist who knows one when she sees one, called Berg "an unbelievable person -- highly skilled, highly humanitarian."

But what on earth possessed Berg to venture off to Iraq by himself to maintain and repair radio transmission towers? Berg`s family says the idea sprouted after he attended a government-sponsored trade fair for businesses considering investments in Iraq. When Berg got to Iraq, however, State Department officials tried to talk him out of the idea and apparently even offered him a free ticket home.

In a sense, the battle between the Defense Department`s deadly fantasies and the State Department`s sober realism was being played out for the destiny of Nicholas Berg. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) -- established by and answerable to Donald Rumsfeld and his merry band -- has determinedly been recruiting U.S. businesses to come to Iraq, even as the State Department has been warning Americans to stay far away.

But U.S. businesses -- save for construction and security companies whose costs are picked up by the U.S. government -- have not been coming, much less investing. To date, PepsiCo is the only U.S.-based company to have made a sizable investment in Iraq. Despite the fact that the CPA has decreed a series of right-wing business panaceas that the Iraqis themselves might balk at (and that Americans have balked at), such as a flat tax on personal and corporate income, U.S. businesses still place a higher premium on security than on the economic brainstorms of Steve Forbes.

Though the Bush administration has failed to persuade its corporate friends to plunge into Iraq, all is not lost. In George W. Bush`s America, there are plenty of low-wage workers desperate for the middle-income wages and health benefits that our construction and security companies are offering in Iraq -- with the cost picked up by U.S. taxpayers. Wal-Mart can afford not to follow PepsiCo into the swirl of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, but workers in the Wal-Mart economy have far less discretion.

A remarkable story in the May 17 Post profiled a number of low-wage, non-union truck drivers, machine operators, cooks and the like who are going to work for Halliburton`s KBR and other such firms in Iraq. In most cases, the workers profiled had the gravest misgivings about going over, but decided in the end to go because their families needed the health insurance or the money to buy a decent house.

This puts a whole new light on what many of us have considered one of America`s gravest problems. At first glance, the fact that one-quarter of the U.S. workforce makes no more than $8.70 an hour (as one recent Russell Sage study concluded), or that 44 million Americans have no health coverage, is proof positive of a dysfunctional political economy.

But it turns out to be plenty functional after all. Who would run the risk of meeting the fate of the four contract security workers in Fallujah if they could make decent wages and cover their families` medical expenses by doing the same job here at home? Wilsonianism abroad -- belligerent but on the cheap -- meets social Darwinism at home: Clearly, this is one instance where Bush`s foreign policy and domestic policy work well together.

And that foreign policy, it becomes clearer every day, was rooted in the dreams of our salesmen. No, not Nicholas Berg`s. The dreams that mattered were those of the administration`s war hawks, from George W. Bush on down: that reconstruction would be easy; that there would be no consequences from our preemptive, unilateral war that we couldn`t handle; and that we could remake Iraq in our flat-tax image even though we didn`t know the territory. Bush and his crew sold this dream to Berg even as, in 2002 and 2003, they sold it to the American people and Congress. It was one part fantasy and one part fraud, and it created a self-defeating occupation from which there`s no easy exit. These salesmen took credit and now deserve blame. As Willy Loman`s widow insists, "Attention must be paid."

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From AxisofLogic.com

Iraq
Our man in Baghdad: his gray eminence, John Negroponte
By W. E. Gutman
May 20, 2004, 15:02

Any lingering doubts that the inmates have taken over the asylum were recently dispelled with the nomination by President George W. Bush (and the virtually unopposed confirmation by Congress) of John Negroponte, as Ambassador to Iraq. Mr. Negroponte is now U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

A man with skeletons in his political closet, Negroponte will be charged with the "pacification" and "democratization" of a nation that has never known democracy and which is now at war with itself -- a case of déjB vu for the veteran civil servant.

Described as a career diplomat "devoid of convictions, only unflinching loyalty to the body politic," Negroponte is accused of concealing from Congress human rights abuses in Central America. While ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte directed the secret arming of Nicaragua`s "contra` rebels and is charged by human rights groups of overlooking a CIA-funded Honduran death squad -- the infamous Battalion 3-16 -- while at his post.

Although Negroponte has vehemently denied any knowledge of the atrocities, declassified documents and disclosures by former death squad members cast doubt on his sincerity. Former embassy colleagues interviewed by this writer affirmed with manifest cynicism that Negroponte, who professes to be a staunch advocate of human rights, was indeed involved in human rights, "but not quite the way he claimed."

A former U.S. Embassy official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that "dispatches about the human rights situation in Honduras [under Negroponte`s watch] were so sanitized that cadres at the embassy in Tegucigalpa joked that they were written about Norway...."

José Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch/Americas, called Negroponte "the ostrich ambassador: He never saw anything wrong. He never heard about any human rights violations. It was like he was living on a different planet."

The hasty expulsion from the U.S. of several former death squad members has also raised question. The men, who had been granted asylum in the U.S. and Canada in exchange for their discretion, were deported to Honduras within days of Negroponte`s nomination to the U.N.

One of them, General Luis Alonzo Discua Elvir, who served as Honduras` deputy ambassador to the U.N. until the State Department revoked his visa in 2001, went public with details of U.S. support for the death squad he co-founded.

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Negroponte was "at the center of a clash over deep disagreements we had about the role the U.S. should play in Central America and, more importantly, the way -- often secretive or, at best, unclear -- in which policy was being conducted."

Kerry added that "new information suggests that the U.S. Embassy in Honduras knew more about human rights violations than was communicated to Congress and the public."

Negroponte, a long-time protégé of Secretary of State Colin Powell, has spent 37 years in the foreign service. He was an envoy in Vietnam and served as ambassador in Mexico and the Philippines.

In 1981, President Reagan sent Negroponte to Honduras, the "banana republic" Washington commandeered as a base for covert military operations against the leftist Sandinistas who controlled neighboring Nicaragua.

On several occasions Jack Binns, Negroponte`s predecessor in Honduras, warned the State Department that violence against political opponents of the puppet Honduran government had been on the rise. He first got the cold-shoulder treatment then was summoned to Washington and reprimanded by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Enders for reporting human rights abuses through official channels.

"He [Enders] was afraid it would leak and make it more difficult for us to continue our economic and security assistance to the contras," said Binns, now retired. Binn`s stint at ambassador lasted only a year, ending shortly after protesting the violence in Honduras.

At Negroponte`s behest, U.S. military aid to Honduras ballooned from $4 million to $77.4 million. He also helped orchestrate a cabal now known as the "Iran-Contra Affair," during which arms were funneled through Honduras to help the contras overthrown the constitutionally elected Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

Negroponte looked the other way when atrocities were committed in Central America. In light of recent revelations of prisoner abuse at the hands of U.S. military in Iraq, one wonders what kind of message the Bush administration is sending about human rights by posting Negroponte to represent the U.S in Baghdad. Worse, what kind of message does Mr. Bush send about his own moral values?

© Copyright 2004 by AxisofLogic.com

W. E. Gutman is a veteran journalist on assignment in Central America since 1991. He lives in southern California.

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Gestern las ich noch etwas anderes.

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Funding for Chalabi`s Group Will End
Pentagon had drawn fire from lawmakers over its support of the Iraqi National Congress.
By Mary Curtius
Times Staff Writer

May 19, 2004

WASHINGTON — Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi exile once favored by high-ranking Bush administration officials to lead postwar Iraq, is losing his Pentagon funding, a senior U.S. official told a Senate committee Tuesday.

For months, congressional critics have complained about the $340,000 a month the Pentagon has been paying Chalabi and his group, the Iraqi National Congress, money that continued to flow even after U.S. intelligence agencies found that prewar information provided by the INC about then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein`s weapons programs was at times misleading, inflated or even fabricated.

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of Chalabi`s strongest supporters in the administration, said the Pentagon had decided to stop funding the INC.

Wolfowitz`s explanation was terse. The decision, he said, "was made in light of the process of transferring sovereignty to the Iraqi people. We felt it was no longer appropriate for us to continue funding in that fashion."

Wolfowitz also praised the INC`s efforts in Iraq.

"There`s been some very valuable intelligence that`s been gathered through that process that`s been very valuable for our forces," he said. "But we will seek to obtain that in the future through normal intelligence channels."

A spokesman for the INC said the payments would probably end June 30, the day the U.S. is scheduled to hand over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government.

It was unclear whether the cutoff marked a final break between Chalabi — who for years was one of the most effective Iraqi exiles in lobbying for help to overthrow Hussein`s regime — and the Bush administration.

So-called neoconservatives, who have been among Chalabi`s strongest supporters in Washington, expressed anger Tuesday.

"I think that the Iraqi National Congress and Ahmad Chalabi in particular are the best hope for Iraq, so of course I think it is a mistake," said former Pentagon advisor Richard Perle.

The Pentagon`s money was "funding an intelligence operation which I am reliably informed saved American lives," Perle said. "If it isn`t reconstituted in some other form, it is possible that lives will be lost because we`ll be deprived of that intelligence."

But Chalabi also had harsh opponents, both in the U.S. and in the Arab world. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), one of Chalabi`s most consistent critics, welcomed the Pentagon`s decision.

"Too many of the members of the administration banked too much on Chalabi," Biden said in an interview. "That is part of the reason why we lacked legitimacy in Iraq in the first place."

A spokesman for the INC in Washington said Tuesday that the group had expected the cutoff.

"It was natural" that the Pentagon`s financial support for the INC would end June 30, said Entifadh Qanbar, the spokesman. It would be improper, he said, for the U.S. to continue funding Iraqi political parties in a newly sovereign nation.

The INC, he said, has other sources of funding that will make it possible for the group to continue its political activities in Iraq, and the loss will not affect the group`s relationship with the U.S.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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THE NATION
Mentally Ill Killer Is Put to Death in Texas
Gov. Perry disregards a prison board`s recommendation that the schizophrenic man`s sentence be commuted to life in prison.
By Scott Gold
Times Staff Writer

May 19, 2004

HOUSTON — Texas prison officials executed a killer Tuesday who was a diagnosed schizophrenic and once claimed that a plate of beans had spoken to him.

Kelsey Patterson, 50, was killed by lethal injection. His execution brought to an end a case that had ignited debate over condemning the mentally ill to die.

Patterson was convicted in the 1992 slaying of a businessman and the man`s secretary in his hometown of Palestine, Texas. After the shootings, Patterson went home, took off all his clothes except his socks and stood in the middle of the street until the police came. Investigators never determined a motive.

Delusional and paranoid, Patterson believed until the end that he had been granted amnesty from execution, said his attorney, J. Gary Hart. As a result, Patterson refused to fill out forms that are associated with executions here, which meant he did not request a final meal. Guards made sandwiches and cookies available to him.

Relatives of both victims, 63-year-old Louis Oates and 41-year-old Dorothy Harris, watched as prison officials asked Patterson whether he wanted to make a last statement. Patterson replied: "Statement to what?" He then launched into a rambling defense of sorts, including: "My truth will always be my truth. There is no kin and no friend, no fear [of] what you do to me, no kin to you, undertaker."

The U.S. Supreme Court has outlawed executing the mentally retarded, calling such an act cruel and unusual punishment. No similar protections are offered to the mentally ill, and civil rights advocates and death penalty opponents seized on the Patterson case in recent months to illustrate what they perceive as a disparity. They have argued, for instance, that professional mental health experts, not judges, should determine a suspect`s competency to stand trial.

On Monday, that campaign gained traction when the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 5-1 that Patterson`s sentence should be commuted to a life prison term. The vote, a recommendation to Gov. Rick Perry, was seen as extraordinary in a state that executes more people each year than any other.

Commission members were swayed by a petition written by Hart, who has fought to spare Patterson`s life for more than seven years — though Patterson has never cooperated or participated in his defense. The petition argued that because of Patterson`s severe mental deficiencies, an execution would not "serve either the retributive or deterrence goals of capital punishment."

Less than an hour before Patterson was scheduled to die, however, Perry announced that he was rejecting the board`s advice. The U.S. Supreme Court also declined to intervene.

"Death penalty decisions are never easy, and this one is particularly difficult," Perry said. "This defendant is a very violent individual. Texas has no life without parole sentencing option, and no one can guarantee this defendant would never be freed to commit other crimes were his sentence commuted."

Hart called the decision shortsighted. Considering that both the mental health and criminal justice systems had failed to protect Patterson or prevent him from harming others, the case was tailor-made for executive clemency, he said.

For example, Hart said, Perry argued that courts "have reviewed this case no fewer than 10 times," but judges have questioned Patterson`s competency repeatedly during those proceedings. Patterson told authorities that someone else controls his movements by remote control. He had a history of irrational, angry behavior, had been hospitalized on antipsychotic medication and had been ruled incompetent to stand trial on two assaults before the fatal shootings.

"The governor either ignored or misunderstood the purpose of executive clemency," Hart said. "It is not to ratify what courts have done. The system was unable to handle Kelsey Patterson and his mental illness. I would be the last person to say that any kind of mental illness should excuse someone from the death penalty. But when someone is profoundly disturbed … my God."

Anderson County, Texas, Dist. Atty. Doug Lowe, whose office won the original conviction in the case, said the governor`s decision was correct.

"I`m not making a moral judgment," he said. "All I`m saying is that there were 12 citizens in this case who felt that the just punishment was the death penalty. Their judgment should be realized."



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY
In God, and the GOP, They Trust
A belief in free will puts frequent churchgoers in the Republican fold.
By David Klinghoffer

May 19, 2004



If the last presidential election was any indication, the outcome of November`s contest will be decided in large part by voters` religious commitments. The more often you attend church, the more likely you are to vote Republican. What polling data don`t tell us is why the religiously observant vote as they do.

The statistical trend is striking. In 2000, Voter News Service reported that the 14% of voters who attended religious services more than once a week voted for George W. Bush over Al Gore by 63% to 36%. Meanwhile, the 14% who never went to services supported Gore over Bush by an equally commanding margin, 61% to 32%.

What is it about the policy positions and cultural attitudes described as Republican or conservative that makes them so attractive to religious voters? What principle links, say, a passionate defense of gun ownership and a strong preference for low taxes? The link can be summarized in three words: individual moral responsibility.

For more than a century, our culture has been divided on the question of whether individual moral actors may justly be held responsible for their deeds. Marx and Freud rocked the 19th century faith in moral responsibility and freedom of will, arguing that human beings are unknowingly in the grip of, respectively, powerful economic and psychosexual forces. Later analysts would discover other latent structures in society that supposedly determine our moral choices.

Today, the ideological struggles of liberals and conservatives mirror the clash initiated by Marxists and Freudians with 19th century individualism. Conservatives encourage individuals to make their own choices, except where those choices invariably harm the innocent (as in abortion) or undermine the pillars of civilization itself (as in gay marriage). Liberals see the function of government as parental, with citizens in the role of children too unaware and irresponsible to cross the street by themselves.

Consider the following admittedly broad generalizations:

The gun control debate pits conservatives, who are content to place moral responsibility on the gun owner, against liberals, who think that that responsibility can safely be placed on only the state.

Liberals tar conservatives for their apparent stinginess on government social spending, but conservatives respond that society should depend more on individuals to support the needy. Heavy taxes are a sign that society has relieved the individual of that responsibility.

Affirmative action bothers conservatives, who think even a person from a historically oppressed race is free to rise above the suffering of his ancestors. Liberals doubt that transcending the structure of institutionalized racism is always possible.

The Iraq war troubles liberals, who think that only the collectivity — in this case, the international community in the form of the United Nations — should take responsibility for making war. Conservatives argue that the individual moral actor, or a single country when it comes to war, can make that decision for itself.

Conservatives dislike the myriad safety regulations — for example, anti-smoking laws and lawsuits — promulgated by liberals. The question is whether a person is responsible for his own health, or whether the collectivity, the state, needs to step in and assume responsibility.

On education, conservatives accept the judgments of individual parents as to children`s best interests; hence the enthusiasm for school choice and home schooling. Liberals feel better when society — the state, the teachers unions — takes the responsibility to educate children on itself.

And so on. Generally speaking, liberalism distrusts the individual, while conservatism trusts him enough to give him a chance to make the right, or the wrong, decision. If he makes the wrong one, he will have to answer to his own conscience, or to his God.

Looked at this way, it becomes apparent why religious Americans gravitate to conservatism. By far the majority of them are Christians and their biblical religion is premised on the idea of individual moral responsibility. Traditionally, religious faith presumes that God commands us to act in certain ways — which in turn presumes moral freedom. Otherwise, how could God hold us responsible if we refuse to obey?

Not all Democrats fully accept the strictly "liberal" view, of course, but they belong to a party that, of the two main parties in American political life, is the one identified with the belief that moral choices are profoundly conditioned by circumstance and therefore aren`t truly free. It may be too much to suggest that God himself is a Republican. Then again, it may not.

David Klinghoffer is a columnist for the Jewish Forward. His most recent book is "The Discovery of God: Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism" (Doubleday, 2003).

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 19. Mai 2004, 11:56
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,299817,00.h…

Medienchaos im Irak

Pixel statt Patronen

Von Hans Michael Kloth

Seit Saddams Sturz rauscht auch im Irak ein freier Blätterwald, doch seriöser Journalismus hat es schwer. Unprofessionalität und Propaganda beherrschen die Medien, wer auf Unabhängigkeit und Qualität setzt, bekommt schnell Probleme. Die Amerikaner versuchen, den selbst entfachten Bildersturm unter Kontrolle zu bringen.

Am 29. März stürmten schwer bewaffnete GIs die Räume der Wochenzeitung "al-Haussa" in Bagdad. Sie schickten die Redakteure nach Hause und verriegelten die Eingangstür mit Ketten. Das Blatt stachele zu Hass und Gewalt auf und bedrohe die Sicherheit des Irak, begründete US-Zivilverwalter Paul Bremer die Zwangsmaßnahme. Wenige Tage nach dem Verbot seines Sprachrohrs rief der radikale Schiitenprediger Muktada al-Sadr zum Aufstand auf: "Wir werden von den Besatzern und Imperialisten angegriffen", donnerte der Fanatiker beim Freitagsgebet: "Schlagt zurück!"

Fast zwei Monate später haben die US-Truppen al-Sadrs Revolte noch immer nicht voll unter Kontrolle, und die Folgen des "al-Haussa"-Verbots hängen wie ein Menetekel über der zarten Pflanze Pressefreiheit im Irak. Unübersehbar haben sich die Amerikaner in der Medienpolitik, dem Schlüsselstein ihrer Demokratisierungskampagne für den Irak, in ein tiefes Dilemma manövriert "Worte fördern Gewalt", analysiert Monroe E. Price, Direktor des Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research in London, das die Medienentwicklung im Irak beobachtet, "aber ihre Unterdrückung kann genau so Gewalt hervorrufen."

"Freedom of Speech", die Freiheit des Wortes, steht auf der Liste der amerikanischen Werte ganz weit oben, und so vergab Washingtons Statthalter Bremer nach Saddams Sturz gleich haufenweise Lizenzen; mittlerweile erscheinen im Irak weit über einhundert Zeitungen. Doch längst hat der Fluch der gut gemeinten Tat die Amerikaner eingeholt, denn einfach nur Meinungsfreiheit macht noch lange keine freiheitliche Presse.

Recherche am Radio

So gibt es kaum erfahrene Redakteure im Irak, nur Anfänger oder alt gediente Journalisten aus den gleichgeschalteten Medien der Saddam-Diktatur. "Die Grundidee von Berichterstattung - das unabhängige Sammeln von Informationen - ist den meisten irakischen Journalisten fremd", sagt Hiwa Osman, der früher bei der BBC war und nun für das renommierte Londoner "Institute of War and Peace Reporting" im Irak Journalisten ausbildet. "Die Hauptschwierigkeit ist, den Kursteilnehmern zu vermitteln, dass es weder auf sie noch auf ihre Meinung ankommt."

Freimütig habe ihm ein irakischer Journalist erklärt, berichtet Osman, wie er seine Artikeln recherchiere: Den ganzen Tag Radio hören und einfach aufschreiben, was ihm zu diesem oder jenem Thema so einfalle. Obrigkeitsfixierung, Nepotismus und die Omnipräsenz der Altkader tun ein Übriges. Die Radio-Journalistin Miriam al-Attija etwa wurde für immer von der Berichterstattung über Regierungsangelegenheiten ausgeschlossen, nachdem sie ein Mitglied des Regierungsrates der Lüge in einer Pressekonferenz bezichtigt hatte. Später wurde ihr von ihrem Arbeitgeber Radio Sawa gekündigt - den Job erhielt der Bruder des Pressesprechers des Regierungsrates.

Gerüchte, Erfindungen, Meinungen werden auf diese Weise im Irak zu harten Nachrichten. Ohne Beleg, gleichwohl als Tatsache vermeldete etwa eine Gazette kürzlich, der israelische Ministerpräsident Ariel Sharon habe sich heimlich eine Woche lang in Bagdad aufgehalten. Eine andere Zeitung glänzte mit der vollkommen hanebüchenen Behauptung, mehr als die Hälfte der Mitglieder des irakischen Regierungsrates seien gar keine Iraker.

Übermacht der Demagogen

Nur eine Handvoll versucht sich in seriösem Journalismus: neben den nach wie vor in London ansässigen "al-Saman" und "al-Sharq al Awsat" noch die liberale "al-Nahda" und die linke "al-Mada". Letzere war es, die im Januar einen echten Scoop landete, als sie ein Liste mit 260 Namen aus 46 Ländern veröffentlichte, die von Saddam mit Gratis-Gutscheinen für irakisches Öl beschenkt worden waren - darunter der frühere französische Innenminster Charles Pasqua.

Aber wie Hassprediger al-Sadr seine Postille benutzt, um die schiitischen Iraker mit absurden oder verzerrten Gräuelgeschichten über angebliche Untaten der Besatzer in Wallung zu bringen, so betrachten auch andere mehr oder minder extreme Gruppierungen Zeitungen vor allem als nützliche Kampfinstrumente, nicht als unabhängige Nachrichtenquellen. Dabei eint die unterschiedlichen, oft verfeindeten Strömungen inzwischen der militante Anti-Amerikanismus.

Die Amerikaner haben es indes versäumt, rechtzeitig Maßstäbe zu setzen, um wenigstens den schlimmsten Ungeist in der Flasche zu halten. Erst vor drei Wochen berief Bremer eine "Irakische Medien- und Kommunikationskommission" (ICMC) unter Sijamend Zaid Othman, einem Exiliraker und frühen Vizepräsidenten der Presseagentur UPI. Als Keimzelle einer künftigen Regulierungsbehörde soll die Kommission ein Mediengesetz erarbeiten, das professionelle und ethische Standards festschreibt. Bis es allerdings so weit ist, müssen die Amerikaner weiter damit leben, dass ihnen "Zensur" entgegen schallt, wo sie gegen einen "Missbrauch der Pressefreiheit" vorgehen. Und wie verheerend der Eindruck sein kann, mit zweierlei Maß zu messen, bekommen die USA derzeit in der Folteraffäre zu spüren.

Da hilft es wenig, wenn sich die Übergangsadministration auch noch ungeschickt anstellt. Dass Bremer "al-Haussa" per Dekret dichtmachte, betrachten viele Experten als Fehler. "Die Schließung war eine Aufgabe der Iraker", sagt etwa IWPR-Berater Osman. Das Dekret sei "ein stumpfes, grobes Instrument", glaubt auch Stanhope-Direktor Price, weil es etwa keine Möglichkeit für eine unabhängige Überprüfung von Maßnahmen vorsehe. Ironischerweise unterzeichnete Bremer wenige Tage vor dem Verbotsbeschluss die Gründungsurkunde der ICMC, die ein geordnetes Verfahren mit Widerspruchsmöglichkeit vorsieht.

"Wir werden abgewürgt"

Inzwischen machen die ersten pro-amerikanischen Blätter dicht: "Iraq Today", eine solide englischsprachige Wochenzeitung, die ganz auf Linie des Pentagon lag, musste ihr Erscheinen zumindest zeitweise einstellen, angeblich aus "finanziellen Gründen", so Herausgeber Hussein Sinjari, ein Kurde. Der in den USA ausgebildete Chefredakteur Hassan Fattah setzte sich nach Drohungen lieber in die Türkei ab. "Im Irak die Wahrheit zu sagen, ist die härteste Aufgabe überhaupt", schrieb Fattah Anfang des Jahres.

So stößt Statthalter Bremer mit seiner Medienpolitik mittlerweile selbst bei der loyalen Presse auf heftige Gegenwehr. "Wir dachten, die Amerikaner seien hier, um eine freie Presse zu schaffen", klagt etwa Ismael Zayer, Chefredakteur der auflagenstärksten, von den USA mit 1,5 Millionen Dollar im Jahr finanzierten Zeitung "al-Sabaah" ("Der Morgen"). "Stattdessen werden wir abgewürgt." Zayer, der 1980 vor Saddam nach Deutschland flüchtete und anschließend als Korrespondent für das Londoner Blatt "al-Hayat" arbeitete, hat in seiner kurzen Amtszeit bei "al-Sabaah" bereits zwei Attentatsversuche militanter US-Gegner überlebt. Vor der Redaktion wurden bisher nicht weniger als fünf Mal Bomben gefunden und entschärft.

Doch nun hat sich Zayer auch mit den Amerikanern überworfen, denn die goutierten sein Streben nach Unabhängigkeit von der Übergangsverwaltung nicht: Demonstrativ quittierten er und zahlreiche "al-Sabaah"-Redakteure Anfang Mai den Dienst und kündigten die Gründung einer eigenen Zeitung namens "al-Sabaah al-Jadid" ("Der neue Morgen") an. Die Journalisten wollen nicht, dass ihr Blatt dem "Irak Media Network" (IMN) einverleibt wird, in dem Bremers Medien-Manager David Sedgley den alten staatlichen TV-Sender "al-Iraqija", zwei Radiostationen und eben "al-Sabaah" angeblich zu einem öffentlich-rechtlichen Medienverbund nach BBC-Vorbild, zunächst aber wohl zu einem schlagkräftigen Propaganda-Apparat für die USA vereinen soll.

Ein Beauftragter der US-Zivilverwaltung würde dann laut Dekret Nummer 66 formal zum Chefredakteur bestellt - als Aufseher wurde bereits eine kuweitische Medienfirma als Subunternehmer des Telekommunikationskonzerns Harris Corporation auserkoren. Die Firma aus Florida, die rund 70 Prozent ihres Geldes mit Regierungsgeschäften machen soll, hat vom Pentagon den 165-Millionen-Dollar-Auftrag zum Aufbau des IMN ergattert. Sedgley, im Hauptberuf Harris-Manager, tut Zayers Kritik als "Beschwerden eines unzufriedenen Mitarbeiters" und die Rebellion als Sturm im Wasserglas ab. Dabei hatte er den Journalisten noch Mitte April als "sehr starke Persönlichkeit" gelobt, der eine "glaubwürdige Zeitung geschaffen" habe.

Digicam statt Sturmgewehr

Ausstrahlung eines Bin Laden-Videos auf "al-Dschasira": Unfaire Berichterstattung?
Das Hauptproblem für die Amerikaner ist ohnehin das Fernsehen, denn bei einer Analphabetenrate im Irak von über 40 Prozent zählen im Krieg um Herzen und Köpfe Bilder, nicht Worte. Zutiefst frustriert die Amerikaner, dass Aufnahmen von um sich feuernden, jetzt sogar von folternden GIs die Wahrnehmung der Iraker dominieren. "Alles, was die Leute zu sehen bekommen, ist, wie das Minarett von amerikanischem Feuer getroffen wird und einstürzt", zitierte die "New York Times" die Klage eines hohen US-Offiziers: "Die Bilder, wie Kämpfer von Moscheen und Minaretten aus auf uns schießen, sehen sie nicht." US-Kommandeure haben ihren Soldaten darum jetzt befohlen, in vorderster Front neben dem Sturmgewehr auch ihre privaten Digitalkameras einzusetzen - Pixel sind im Irak durchschlagskräftiger als Patronen.

Den enormen Einfluss der beiden großen arabischen Satellitenstationen "al-Dschasira" und "al-Arabija", die sie der unfairen Berichterstattung beschuldigen, wollen die Amerikaner mit zwei eigenen TV-Sendern brechen. Zum Sendestart von "al-Hurra" ("Der Freie"), einem flott gemachten Satellitenprogramm, gab es am 14. Februar gleich ein Interview mit Präsident George W. Bush höchstselbst; um auch terrestrisch senden zu können, hat der US-Kongress jüngst noch einmal 40 Millionen auf das Startbudget von 60 Millionen Dollar draufgepackt

Das IMN hat derweil Saddams alten Staatssender "al-Iraqija" unter seine Fittiche genommen und geht den entgegengesetzten Weg: Das bisher nur konventionell über Antenne zu empfangende Programm soll bald auch über Satellitenschüsseln zu sehen sein, die sich im Irak explosionsartig verbreiten. Das Programm wird langsam weniger langweilig, aber "al-Iraqija" hat ein doppeltes Problem: Der Sender werde "geführt von Profis, die keine Ahnung vom Irak haben", so Experte Hiwa Osman, "und gemacht von Irakern, die keine Ahnung haben vom Journalismus". Er sei letztlich "ein Schaufenster der US-Zivilverwaltung, besetzt mit Baath-Parteigängern", einstigen Anhängern Saddams.

Zweifelhafte Interpretation

Laut einer Umfrage im Auftrag des US-Außenministeriums greifen zwar mittlerweile 40 Prozent der Iraker zuerst auf den offiziösen Sender als Informationsquelle zurück, deutlich mehr als auf "al-Arabija" (29 Prozent) beziehungsweise "al-Dschasira". (11 Prozent). Dass sein Sender "relevanter, akkurater und bedeutender als unsere Wettbewerber" sei, wie Bremers Medienberater Dorrance Smith aus der Umfrage herausliest, belächeln andere Beobachter als Wunschdenken. Die Zuschauer würden "al-Iraqija" - dem Paul Bremer wöchentliche Interviews gibt, ohne harte Fragen fürchten zu müssen - nur als direkte Quelle für Wissen über Denken und Handeln der Zivilverwaltung konsumieren, glaubt Hiwa Osman, nicht weil sie das Programm toll fänden. "Es läuft absolut nicht gut", so Osmans Urteil: "Das IMN verliert bei der irakischen Öffentlichkeit an Boden."

Auch von liberalen arabischen Kommentatoren bekommt das IMN keine gute Noten. Ein "schlechtes Modell" und eine "verfaulte Struktur", nannte der Chef der Londoner Organisation Arab Press Freedom Watch das IMN in der offiziösen ägyptischen Zeitung "al-Ahram". Die Entwicklung von "al-Iraqija" wie auch "al-Sabaah" seien "Beispiele für das Versagen der Medienpolitik der Übergangsregierung".

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

More than half of the American public believes it was not worth going to war in Iraq.
All in all, do you think it was worth going to war in Iraq, or not?



May 19, 2004
Despite Decline in Overall Ratings, Bush Retains Strong Republican Support
But Bush has only a 14% approval rating among Democrats at this point

http://www.gallup.com/content/?ci=11749
George W. Bush`s Job Approval Ratings
by Partisanship
Selected Trend 2001-2004

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

Americans no longer agree on what is moral truth
Patrick J. Buchanan, Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle
URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/05/19/EDGD56NFRQ1.DTL

"SO, HOW do we advance the cause of female emancipation in the Muslim world?" asks Richard Perle in "An End to Evil." He replies, "We need to remind the women of Islam ceaselessly: Our enemies are the same as theirs; our victory will be theirs as well."

Well, the neoconservative cause "of female emancipation in the Muslim world" was probably set back a bit by the photo shoot of Pfc. Lynndie England and the "Girls Gone Wild" of Abu Ghraib prison.

Indeed, the filmed orgies among U.S. military police outside the cells of Iraqi prisoners, the S&M humiliation of Muslim men, the sexual torment of their women raise a question. Exactly what are the "values" the West has to teach the Islamic world?

"This war . . . is about -- deeply about -- sex," declaims neocon columnist Charles Krauthammer. Militant Islam is "threatened by the West because of our twin doctrines of equality and sexual liberation."

But whose "twin doctrines" is Krauthammer talking about? The sexual liberation he calls our doctrine belongs to a `60s revolution that devout Christians, Jews and Muslims have been resisting for years.

What does Krauthammer mean by sexual liberation? The right of "tweeners" and teenage girls to dress and behave like Britney Spears? Their right to condoms in junior high? Their right to abortion without parental consent?

If conservatives reject the "equality" preached by Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, NARAL and the National Organization for Women, why seek to impose it on the Islamic world? Why not stand beside Islam, and against Hollywood and Hillary?

In June 2002 at West Point, President Bush said, "Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time and in every place."

But even the Democratic Party`s presumptive presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, does not agree with President Bush on the morality of homosexual unions and stem-cell research. On such issues, conservative Americans have more in common with devout Muslims than with liberal Democrats.

The president notwithstanding, Americans no longer agree on what is moral truth. For as someone said a few years back, there is a cultural war going on in this country, a religious war. It is about who we are, what we believe and what we stand for as a people.

What some of us view as the moral descent of a great and godly republic into imperial decadence, neocons see as their big chance to rule the world.

In Georgia recently, the president declared to great applause: "I can`t tell you how proud I am of our commitment to values. . . . That commitment to values is going to be an integral part of our foreign policy as we move forward. These aren`t American values, these are universal values. Values that speak universal truths."

But what universal values is he talking about? If he intends to impose the values of MTV America on the Muslim world in the name of a "world democratic revolution," he will provoke and incite a war of civilizations America cannot win because Americans do not want to fight it. This may be the neocons` war. It is not our war.

When Bush speaks of freedom as God`s gift to humanity, does he mean the First Amendment freedom of Larry Flynt to produce pornography and of Salman Rushdie to publish "The Satanic Verses," a book considered blasphemous to the Islamic faith? If the Islamic world rejects this notion of freedom, why is it our duty to change their thinking? Why are they wrong?

When the president speaks of freedom, does he mean the First Amendment prohibition against our children reading the Bible and being taught the Ten Commandments in public school?

If the president wishes to fight a moral crusade, he should know the enemy is inside the gates. The great moral and cultural threats to our civilization come not from outside America, but from within. We have met the enemy, and he is us. The war for the soul of America is not going to be lost or won in Fallujah.

Unfortunately, Pagan America of 2004 has far less to offer the world in cultural fare than did Christian America of 1954. Many of the movies, books, magazines, TV shows, videos and much of the music we export to the world are as poisonous as the narcotics the Royal Navy forced on the Chinese people in the Opium Wars.

A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women`s "emancipation," that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high school ought to be seeking out a confessional -- better yet, an exorcist -- rather than striding into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of "American values."

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

Wednesday, May 19, 2004
War News for May 18, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
Bring ‘em on: One US Marine killed in action in al-Anbar province.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqis killed in fighting in central Karbala.

What you don’t read in the US media. “Since late April, the Iraqi press has reported at least a dozen attempts to kill Iraqis working -- or suspected of working -- with the Americans. On April 28 in Baghdad, a mob hanged three men, each accused of working "as a spy for the enemies of Islam," according to a message left at their feet. The next day, gunmen shot an employee of Baghdad`s Sadr City district town hall at his home. The assailants left a letter in his pocket warning against holding a funeral. On May 8, gunmen in Yusufiya, south of Baghdad, killed the head of the town council as he drove on a main street. Farther south in Samawah the next day, gunmen ran the car of the deputy mayor off the road and shot him and three passengers.”

Trained, highly skilled contractors. “He had no military experience in interrogation. As a junior Navy intelligence specialist, a petty officer third class, he did all of his work in an office, reading and analyzing intelligence reports, the Navy said. But just three months later, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba began his investigation of prisoner abuses and found that Mr. Stefanowicz was directing some of the military police officers linked to abuses. He was, therefore, "directly or indirectly responsible" for the abuses, the general wrote.”

More desperate measures. “Iraq`s government is scrambling to find members for an elite security team to protect top officials, but time is so short and quality candidates so scarce that former Baathist bodyguards and special forces are being recruited.”

Another soldier reports detainee abuse. “Sgt Provance claimed that dozens of soldiers were involved in mistreating Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, despite claims by top Bush administration officials that it was perpetrated by a group of rogue soldiers.”

Iranian Shi’ites protest US battles near Najaf. “Tens of thousands of Iranians took part in a state-sponsored rally on Wednesday to demand U.S.-led forces leave Iraq. Shi`ite Muslim Iran has voiced growing opposition to the occupation of its western neighbour in recent days with senior government and religious figures incensed by the presence of U.S. military forces in the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala.”

US soldier pleads guilty to abuse charges in Baghdad.

Wolfowitz of Arabia. Clueless, as usual. “In Washington, deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz was unable to say how long the United States will keep a large military force in Iraq. ‘We don`t know what it will be,’ he told the Senate foreign relations committee yesterday. ‘We`ve had changes, as you know, month by month. We`ve had several different plans.’”

Chalabi loses US taxpayer subsidies. “The Iraqi National Congress was informed last Friday that the $335,000 monthly payment it`s received from the Defense Intelligence Agency would stop in June, they said. The payments were first reported by Knight Ridder on Feb. 21. The funding cutoff represents a major setback to administration hard-liners, who had hoped to position INC leader Ahmad Chalabi to head a democratic Iraqi government that would sign a peace treaty with Israel, allow the United States to build permanent military bases in Iraq, and serve as a model for the rest of the Middle East.”

Commentary

Opinion: A few weeks ago, Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, said, ‘I think no one can properly assert that the failure to find Iraqi WMD stockpiles undermines the reasons for the war.’ Really? Well then let me assert it improperly. You told us that it was why we had to go to war, and you can`t just stand there and lie about it now. This is like trying to debate the Red Queen. Sometimes it`s more a matter of the neocons not being able to get their act together. Paul Wolfowitz, my fave, said the other day, ‘No one ever expected this would be a cakewalk.’ Actually, those were the very words rather famously used by his neocon buddy Ken Adelman, who predicted the war would be a cakewalk. But nothing tops Wolfowitz`s classic declaration, ‘There is no history of ethnic strife in Iraq.’”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Oregon Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Kentucky soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Two Pennsylvania Guardsmen killed in Iraq.

Local story: North Carolina soldier killed in Iraq.


Monkey Mail!

To [e-mail]
From [e-mail]

Subject: Wow! Your blog.

Any respect I could have had for you is washed away by your "Stink Tanks" and "Fruit Baskets" link sections.

Obviously someone can`t see that organizations like the Heritage Foundation promote free markets and limited governments. This you call a "Stink Tank". Some "intellect" you`ve got there.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:35 AM
Comments (11)

[Joerver]

Military Fatalities: US: 792 Total: 902

Mai 2005: 55

http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx


05/19/04 zanesvilletimesrecorder: Soldier with Zanesville unit killed
Sgt. James W. Harlan, 44, Owensboro, Ky., died at Camp Anaconda, Iraq, when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb next to his vehicle.
05/19/04 Centcom: TWO FIRST INFANTRY DIVISION SOLDIERS DIE IN SEPARATE INCIDENTS
One Soldier was killed by small arms fire while on patrol near Muqdadiyah around 4:30 p.m. The attacker fired on the patrol from a cemetery. The second Soldier died after an electrical accident around 6 p.m. at a Coalition base near Bayji.
05/19/04 keynoter: Bomb injures Keys man
Cpl. Darick Pennell, 25, of Key Largo was seriously injured Saturday when a bomb exploded near the Bradley fighting vehicle he was riding.
05/19/04 Sky: BRIT WORKER KILLED IN IRAQ
A British civilian worker has been killed in Iraq, the Foreign Office has said.
05/19/04 AP: Iraqi suicide bomb kills Owensboro reservist
Staff Sgt. James William Harlan, 44, a reservist with the 660th Transportation Company in Cadiz, Ohio, died yesterday, said his brother, Kenny Harlan of Owensboro. News of his death stunned his family.
05/19/04 wkyt: Kentucky Reservist Injured In Iraq Returns Home
Navy Seabee Reservist Gregory Risner was hurt in two seperate bombings between the end of April and beginning of this month.
05/19/04 Reuters: Four Iraqis Killed in Clashes with U.S. Near Shrine
U.S. troops and followers of rebel Shi`ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr clashed near one of Shi`ite Islam`s holiest sites early on Wednesday and four Iraqis were killed and nine wounded, witnesses said.
05/18/04 CJTF: Marine Dies in Al Anbar Province
Marine assigned to I Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in action May 18 in the Al Anbar Province while conducting security and stability operations
05/18/04 DOD: Casualty Identified
Sgt. James W. Harlan, 44, of Owensboro, Ky., died May 14 at Camp Anaconda, Iraq, when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb next to his vehicle
05/18/04 DOD: Casualty Identified
Pfc. Brian K. Cutter, 19, of Riverside, Calif., was found unconscious on May 13, and was later pronounced dead in Al Asad, Iraq.
05/18/04 PalmBeachPost: Injured Seabee from Loxahatchee returns from Iraq
Petty Officer 2nd Class James Nappier, 45, was wounded by mortar fire in the yard of the Marine base at Ramadi, west of Baghdad May 2. The attack killed five sailors and wounded 28.
05/18/04 AP: Suicide suspected in Iraq death of N.C. airman
An airman from Tennessee and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina who died of non-hostile injuries in Iraq is believed to have committed suicide, the Defense Department said.
05/18/04 StarsandStripes: 1st ID soldiers capture suspects in mortar attacks
The attack occurred about 5:20 p.m. and injured 10 people, including seven soldiers and three non-American civilian workers, said Maj. Richard Spiegel, spokesman for the 13th Corps Support Command, based at Anaconda.
05/18/04 AP: Relatives say 20-year-old soldier killed in Iraq
Pfc. Mark Kasecky, of Stowe Township, a National Guardsman, was apparently on patrol when a bomb blew up his Humvee, according to his mother, Emily Arnold, who said she learned of his death from a chaplain and Army sergeant.
05/18/04 PlainDealer: Soldier`s family spurs fix by Army
The U.S. Army is operating under new procedures for communicating with the families of wounded soldiers following a mishandled situation involving a Geauga County staff sergeant killed in Iraq, military officials said.
05/18/04 10nbc: Rochester Soldier injured in Iraq
Roberto Santiago was wounded by a rocket propelled grenade May 13th near Karbala. Santiago suffered wounds in the face, left arm and leg, and back.
05/18/04 MarineCorpsNews: Soldier Awarded 2nd Purple Heart
Pfc. Quinton D. Graves, a 19-year-old from Salt Lake City assigned to Company G, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, is the first Marine in the 1st Marine Division to be awarded the Purple Heart twice during this deployment to Iraq
05/18/04 AP: Mortar shells hit houses in Baghdad
... two mortar shells fell on houses in Baghdad near a compound formerly used by the Iraqi security service. Three civilians were injured in that attack.
05/18/04 whotv: U-S military reports deadly shooting attack
The U-S military says gunmen have fired on a convoy of civilian cars in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
05/18/04 Paragoulddailypress: Injured soldier needs help
The family of a local soldier who was recently injured in combat in Iraq is seeking donations to a fund the family has set up...

[Joerver]

Army, CIA want torture truths exposed

By Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Published 5/18/2004 7:16 AM

WASHINGTON, May 18 (UPI) -- Efforts at the top level of the Bush administration and the civilian echelon of the Department of Defense to contain the Iraq prison torture scandal and limit the blame to a handful of enlisted soldiers and immediate senior officers have already failed: The scandal continues to metastasize by the day.

Over the past weekend and into this week, devastating new allegations have emerged putting Stephen Cambone, the first Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, firmly in the crosshairs and bringing a new wave of allegations cascading down on the head of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when he scarcely had time to catch his breath from the previous ones.

Even worse for Rumsfeld and his coterie of neo-conservative true believers who have run the Pentagon for the past 3½ years, three major institutions in the Washington power structure have decided that after almost a full presidential term of being treated with contempt and abuse by them, it`s payback time.

Those three institutions are: The United States Army, the Central Intelligence Agency and the old, relatively moderate but highly experienced Republican leadership in the United States Senate.

None of those groups is chopped liver: Taken together they comprise a devastating Grand Slam.

The spearhead for the new wave of revelations and allegations - but by no means the only source of them - is veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. In a major article published in the New Yorker this week and posted on to its Web-site Saturday, Hersh revealed that a high-level Pentagon operation code-named Copper Green "encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation" of Iraqi prisoners. He also cited Pentagon sources and consultants as saying that photographing the victims of such abuse was an explicit part of the program meant to force the victims into becoming blackmailed reliable informants.

Hersh further claimed in his article that Rumsfeld himself approved the program and that one of his four or five top aides, Cambone, set it up in Baghdad and ran it.

These allegations of course are anathema to the White House, Rumsfeld and their media allies. In a highly unusual step for any newspaper, the editorially neo-conservative tabloid New York Post ran an editorial Monday seeking to ridicule and discredit Hersh. However, it presented absolutely no evidence to query, let alone discredit the substance of his article and allegations.

Instead, the New York Post editorial inadvertently pointed out one, but by no means all, of the major sources for Hersh`s information. The editorial alleged that Hersh had received much of his material from the CIA.

Based on the material Hersh quoted, his legendary intelligence community contacts were probably sources for some of his information. However, Hersh has also enjoyed close personal relations with many now high-ranking officers in the United States Army, going all the way back to his prize-winning coverage and scoops in Vietnam more than 30 years ago.

Indeed, intelligence and regular Army sources have told UPI that senior officers and officials in both communities are sickened and outraged by the revelations of mass torture and abuse, and also by the incompetence involved, in the Abu Ghraib prison revelations. These sources also said that officials all the way up to the highest level in both the Army and the Agency are determined not to be scapegoated, or allow very junior soldiers or officials to take the full blame for the excesses.

President George W. Bush in his weekly radio address Saturday claimed that the Abu Ghraib abuses were only "the actions of a few" and that they did not "reflect the true character of the Untied States armed forces."

But what enrages many serving senior Army generals and U.S. top-level intelligence community professionals is that the "few" in this case were not primarily the serving soldiers who were actually encouraged to carry out the abuses and even then take photos of the victims, but that they were encouraged to do so, with the Army`s well-established safeguards against such abuses deliberately removed by high-level Pentagon civilian officials.

Abuse and even torture of prisoners happens in almost every war on every side. But well-run professional armies, and the U.S. Army has always been one, take great pains to guard against it and limit it as much as possible. Even in cases where torture excesses are regarded as essential to extract tactical information and save lives, commanders in most modern armies have taken care to limit such "dirty work" to very small units, usually from special forces, and to keep it as secret as possible.

For senior Army professionals know that allowing patterns of abuse and torture to metastasize in any army is annihilating to its morale and tactical effectiveness. Torturers usually make lousy combat soldiers, which is why combat soldiers in every major army hold them in contempt.

Therefore, several U.S. military officers told UPI, the idea of using regular Army soldiers, including some even just from the Army Reserve or National Guard, and encouraging them to inflict such abuses ran contrary to received military wisdom and to the ingrained standards and traditions of the U.S. Army.

The widespread taking of photographs of the victims of such abuses, they said, clearly revealed that civilian "amateurs" and not regular Army or intelligence community professionals were the driving force in shaping and running the programs under which these abuses occurred.

Hersh has spearheaded the waves of revelations of shocking abuse. But other major U.S. media organizations are now charging in behind him to confirm and extend his reports. They are able to do so because many senior veteran professionals in both the CIA and the Army were disgusted by the revelations of the torture excesses. Now they are being listened to with suddenly receptive ears on Capitol Hill.

Republican members in the House of Representatives have kept discipline and silence on the revelations. But with the exception of the increasingly isolated and embarrassed Senate Republican Leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, other senior mainstream figures in the GOP Senate majority have refused to go along with any cover-up.

Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Richard Lugar of Indiana, Pat Roberts of Kansas and John Warner of Virginia have all been outspoken in their condemnation of the torture excesses. And they did so even before the latest, most far-reaching and worst of the allegations and reports surfaced. Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, lost no time in hauling Rumsfeld before it to testify.

The pattern of the latest wave of revelations is clear: They are coming from significant numbers of senior figures in both the U.S. military and intelligence services. They reflect the disgust and contempt widely felt in both communities at the excesses; and at long last, they are being listened to seriously by senior Republican, as well as Democratic, senators on Capitol Hill.

Rumsfeld and his team of top lieutenants have therefore now lost the confidence, trust and respect of both the Army and intelligence establishments. Key elements of the political establishment even of the ruling GOP now recognize this.

Yet Rumsfeld and his lieutenants remain determined to hang on to power, and so far President Bush has shown every sign of wanting to keep them there. The scandal, therefore, is far from over. The revelations will continue. The cost of the abuses to the American people and the U.S. national interest is already incalculable: And there is no end in sight.

Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International

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Taliban in Texas: Big Oil hankers for old pals


8.Teil

HOUSTON - The Taliban must have had a ball in this Texas city when they came to visit the control tower of Planet Oil in the late 1990s to negotiate the Trans-Afghan Pipeline (TAP). One can imagine Mullah Omar`s finest, in full black-turbaned regalia, at the Houston Galleria - amid all those blond, dermatologically sublime trophy wives credit-carding their way to the Valhalla of conspicuous consumption at Saks, Macy`s, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus. Not to mention all those steak houses! And all those sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) - not only Kandahar-friendly Toyota Land Cruisers but Durangos, Silverados, Pajeros, Discoveries and even BMWs!

Of course this was ages before the cluster-bombing of the Taliban back to Jurassic Park became the secret casus belli for the "war on terra" after September 11, 2001. And it was before those gas-guzzling SUVs had to deal seriously with soaring oil prices, or at least not to the heights we are seeing now. On Monday a barrel of US light crude hit US$41.65, the highest price since the New York Mercantile Exchange launched its crude-oil contract in 1983.

Between the Taliban taking over Kabul in September 1996 and the Group of Eight (G-8) summit in the summer of 2001, neither the administration of president Bill Clinton nor that of his successor, President George W Bush, ever designated Afghanistan as a terrorist or even a rogue state: the Taliban were wined and dined as long as they played the Pipelineistan game in Central Asia (see Pipelineistan revisited, December 24-25, 2003). Unocal - which had put the CentGas Pipeline Consortium in place - hired Henry Kissinger as a consultant. Unocal also hired two very well-connected Afghans: Zalmay Khalilzad, a Pashtun with a PhD from the University of Chicago and former Paul Wolfowitz aide, and Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun from Kandahar. In 1996, both Khalilzad and Karzai were ultra-pro-Taliban. Karzai is now Afghanistan`s US-backed ruler. Khalilzad also made splendid career moves: Bush-appointed National Security Council member (working under Condoleezza Rice), "special envoy" to Afghanistan (only nine days after the Karzai government was sworn in), and current US ambassador.

The Taliban didn`t want to play ball: every time, they wanted more money and more investments for the roads and the infrastructure of their ravaged country - until an exasperated Washington decided to finish them off. This was discussed in Geneva in May 2001, at the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001, and finally at a Berlin hotel, also that July, a meeting involving US, Russian, German and Pakistani officials. Asia Times Online later learned in Islamabad that the US plan was to strike against the Taliban from bases in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan before October 2001. Then the terrorist attacks of September 11 happened, providing Washington the perfect excuse to go it alone.

There`s still no oil flowing through Afghanistan - not yet. With the price of oil now at its highest level since 1983, the US population is getting restless. The so-called US summer driving season - from April to September - will have gasoline averaging $1.94 a US gallon (about 51 cents a liter; it is already $2.30 a gallon, or more than 60 cents a liter, and up in California). A stop at Continental Airlines headquarters in downtown Houston reveals that the airline has increased its freight rates from 15 cents to 20 cents per kilogram.

But for corporate Houston - where virtually everyone`s mood is inextricably related to the price of a barrel - expensive oil is good business. Seth Kleinman, an analyst for PFC Energy Group, goes straight to the point: "These are market fundamentals. Demand is incredibly strong and supply does not follow. Americans love their SUVs. Car makers are offering 0 percent APR [above prime rate] financing. And refining capacity also does not follow demand. No new refinery was built in the US in the last 20 years."

Whatever happens, there is a consensus all over Houston: there will be no new oil shock, at least for the foreseeable future - only what financial circles are calling "Chinese torture" - prices slowly going up.

What if they invaded Texas?
Houston is not a down-tempo chill-out groove kind of place; it`s more like ZZ Top playing on a turbo Cadillac. But Houston - as people in cooler-than-thou Austin are fond of saying - is desperately trying to be hip. The severe glass-and-steel towers of downtown are being sweetened by water gardens on Main Street. The spectacular collapse of Enron in December 2001 voided two downtown towers, and there are plenty of second-hand Porsches for sale or for rent. Enron - in essence a giant casino - was involved in everything from oil, gas and electricity to timber, water, communications and the Internet, with a turnover of more than $100 billion. But Enron executives were sort of pardoned by the city because they`re considered to be the modern version of 19th-century wildcatters.

With Halliburton the story is more complicated. Halliburton is making a killing of some $9 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq`s oil industry and to service US troops. Halliburton`s stock has already risen 11 percent this year. But it is not being forgiven. The United for Peace and Justice coalition is calling for a mass protest on Wednesday against war profiteering and crony capitalism outside Halliburton`s annual shareholder meeting.

The oil capital of the world is transfixed by Iraq. Referring to the beheading of Nick Berg, John Nugent says: "The abuse of captives at Abu Ghraib, while unjustified, is a poor excuse for murder." John Mundy says, "We should bring all our troops home and recognize that we cannot negotiate with fanatics. We cannot pacify or buy them off with good works." But Anna Miller says, "We did not find weapons of mass destruction or al-Qaeda in Iraq. However, we did find the terrorists, and they are us."

Support for Bush is far from monolithic. "Troops Yes Bush No", reads a bumper sticker on a Jaguar. KPFT 90.1 FM, an excellent community radio, insists on "giving a voice to the voiceless" - and they come from everywhere in this multicultural city of 5 million: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, black musicians, the Reverend Robert Muhamad, defenders of South Dakota Indians. The Christmas Coup Comedy group produces an outstanding mix with snippets of Bush press conferences and booming metallic beats ("Bring Them On").

At a Brazilian steak house in the steak-house Valhalla of Westheimer Avenue, among the ballet of gauchos serving prime cuts on sticks, the gloves slowly are off. "War is good for business," says a red-meat fan, especially with the barrel at $41.65. "And since it`s not going down, this is good for reviving oil production in the Gulf of Mexico." This means more wealth for Houston. Iraq reconstruction is a more problematic affair. Halliburton is making billions, but how long will it last? "What if this Muqtada [al-Sadr] guy steals the elections?"

"By God, they should be so lucky to be occupied, we`re doing them a great favor." This may seem to be a consensus, like "We can`t make those Arabs happy. And we can`t rule in the Middle East either." Everyone agrees that "similar things go on in our prisons ... Our prison population exploded because of the war on drugs, a third generation of failure ... There`s a sheriff in Arizona who ordered pink underwear for people in jail."

But some Texans are somewhat startled when they learn that the British Empire, via Lord Curzon 80 years ago, wanted to create "an Arab facade veiled by constitutional fictions" in Iraq and the Middle East.

They also start thinking when they are reminded that the last time America was occupied was in the early 19th century; as for Britain, it was during the Roman Empire. This leads to a thoughtful conclusion: "That`s right. If someone invaded Texas, we would do the same thing."

Big Oil and bigger military
The people at the Petroleum Intelligence Group in Houston confirm it, as well as the Don`t Mess With Oil elite at the Petroleum Club (housed since 1963 on the top two floors of the Exxon Tower, only 1,500 selected members, regal lunches with $50 lobsters and bottles of sublime Margaux only for members): Big Oil is not exactly fond of this war and its aftermath - especially with news like this week`s bombing of a pipeline near Basra, instantly cutting 25 percent of Iraq`s exports. What the oil majors were saying more than a year ago, before the war, has become a reality: Iraq is terribly dangerous. Ergo, bad for business. In terse Texas oilspeak, this is the message: Bush`s priorities were never the oil business`s priorities. And the elite is really worried about what the neo-cons are up to next.

What do the intellectuals of the conservative establishment have to say about this? On the sprawling, extremely wealthy campus of Rice University, the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy regally sits as a sumptuous neo-Byzantine spectacle - hall of fake Greek columns, round table fit for royalty, priceless Persians, and of course a gallery of photos of the former secretary of state smiling alongside every player and his neighbor during the Cold War.

The director of the institute is ambassador Edward Djerejian, a former official of the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush and Bill Clinton, and allegedly one of the best American specialists on the Middle East. But his secretary says his schedule is very hectic, so "he has decided to decline the interview due to time constraints". A Rice University PhD now living in Austin has a different take: "The last thing these people want now in the middle of this mess is to talk to a journalist they don`t know about American foreign policy in Iraq and the Middle East." It`s also a pity not to hear the hectic Djerejian`s take on how his boss - senior partner of the Houston and Washington law firm Baker & Botts - masterminded the scheme to get the Supreme Court to appoint George W Bush president in 2001. Baker & Botts, by the way, keeps a very substantial office in Baku, Azerbaijan, a key node of Pipelineistan. Yes, it is always about oil.

It`s raining Texas cats and dogs, so detailed research at Rice University may yield some enlightenment. In January 2001, George W Bush created the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), directed by Vice President Dick Cheney. When they published the so-called Cheney Report, one thing was clear: the priority for this administration was never the "war on terra", but America`s dependence on energy sources. The Cheney Report was not strategic analysis. But it was published during the Enron scandal - with Enron executives working as NEPDG members. Question: What were they really up to?

Last July, the Department of Commerce was forced by the Supreme Court to unveil the documents used by the Cheney Energy Task Force. There are maps of oilfields in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia as well as charts detailing which foreign companies closed deals with Saddam Hussein for oil exploitation in Iraq. Among other things, these documents prove that long before September 11, 2001, regime change in Iraq was the order of the day.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, energy secretary for the last two years of the Clinton administration and now widely tipped to be Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry`s running mate, has a starring role in all this. In February 2000, Richardson went on a tour of all member states of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) except Iraq, Iran and Libya. He discovered that none of these countries had excess production capacity. Conclusion: an energy crisis, sooner or later, would be inevitable. Matt Simmons, a consultant for the Council on Foreign Relations, learned about this by e-mail and later became a consultant to the Bush administration.

The eighth chapter of the Cheney Report, titled "Strengthening Global Alliances", says it`s imperative for the United States to get rid of strategic, political and economic obstacles in its quest to ensure the extra 7.5 million barrels of oil a day it will need by 2020. This is the equivalent of the current total consumption of India and China put together. As most of the countries that are among these "obstacles" are politically and socially unstable, this means that secure supplies to the US imply the presence of US troops. The Cheney Report stresses the growing US - as well as Asian and Western European - dependence of Middle East oil. And as the solution for the energy problem, it proposes a military solution. This is the meaning of General Tommy Franks saying on the record that "we will be in Afghanistan for years", and the meaning of the 14 US military bases to be built in Iraq.

At the time, the Cheney Energy Task Force also had to refer to the United Nations sanctions imposed on Iraq. Lifting the sanctions on Iraq would mean the go-ahead for contracts frozen by the sanctions - most with Russian and European companies and not with US companies, since Saddam was not in business with the US. So war was the only option to get the big prize - the second-largest oil reserves in the world, which come as well with very low production costs.

It`s possible to extract a major conclusion from the Cheney Report. The White House says that the terrorists want to destroy the American way of life. But what if the whole thing is upside down? To preserve an American way of life that guzzles - and wastes - tremendous amounts of energy, Washington is forced to go military all the way, under the pretext of the "war on terra". And the process, on top of it, feeds on itself. Who is the largest world consumer of energy? It`s the US Army.

Houston, one of the world capitals of oil, red meat and frenetic consumption, misses its Taliban. But no more Taliban in Texas does not mean that Texas does not need the Taliban. In line with the Cheney Report and with oil ever more expensive, now more than ever there`s need for the Trans-Afghan Pipeline (TAP), which would bring oil and gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistani ports and then to the United States. Hamid Karzai cannot maintain order even in Kabul. Fickle Washington may change its mind - again - and issue a "Houston, we got a (Taliban) problem". Then sooner or later those dashing, black-turbaned Pashtuns will be seen parking their brand-new SUVs at the Galleria.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)



May 18, 2004

[Joerver]

Life is a beach. Or is it?


9.Teil.


Also in this series:
Bush against Bush (Apr 30, `04)
Kerry, the Yankee muchacho (May 7, `04)
You have the right to be misinformed (May 8, `04) 1.-3.Teil 08.05.05
An American tragedy (May 11, 04) #16184
In the heart of Bushland (May 12, 04) #16186
The war of the snuff videos (May 13, `04) #16338
The Iraq gold rush (May 14, `04) #16340
The new beat generation (May 15, `04) #16342
Taliban in Texas: Big Oil hankers for old pals (May 18, `04) #16567

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida - Early on Sunday, a 10-story building was imploded in this aspiring, subtropical Venice. Call it Ground Zero by the beach.

It was a drill: the building had been bombed by "terrorists" and people were still trapped inside, so 200 specialists including a federal tactical response team, firefighters and paramedics from all over South Florida had to rescue 30 mannequins by all means available. Members of the tactical response team had working experience on the Oklahoma City bombing and on the attacks of September 11, 2001. This mini-September 11 did indeed look like September 11, not only because of the symphony of beeps that go off after a firefighter is motionless for more than 30 seconds, but because the controlled implosion looked eerily similar to the collapse of both Word Trade Center towers. Locals didn`t - or preferred not to - make the connection. They opted for having their photos taken beside this South Florida heap of concrete, steel and glass that soon will be replaced by a supermarket.

There will be no hanging chads in 2004. And no suspicious Supreme Court ruling. But Florida remains a key swing state. The re-election campaign of President George W Bush counts on the formidable regimenting machine of brother Jeb, the state governor. The campaign of Democratic challenger John Kerry will pull out all stops to capture the absolute majority of the key Latino, African-American and Jewish votes.

With more than 3,000 hours of sunshine a year and myriad opportunities for deep sea fishing, speed-boating, sailing, windsurfing, Jet-Skiing, water-skiing, parasailing and diving their way into instant gratification, one might assume residents of this mouth-watering paradise rescued from the swamps in the early 20th century would have no time for politics. Wrong. When asked who is their favorite Bush in office, the answer is not W or Jeb. It`s Delsa. Delsa Bush is a single mother born in Mississippi who recently became the first black woman to be appointed chief of police in neighboring West Palm Beach.

It`s true that the major local attraction is the wonderfully tacky International Swimming Hall of Fame (the pool is great, though). It`s true that some fabulous Art Deco heritage is drowned in a swamp of man-made "exotic landscapes". Its true mausoleums to the fine art of lap dancing break new barriers in the swank-meets-sleaze department. It`s true that an avalanche of Botox specialists ("10 years to get it ... 10 minutes to get rid of it"), micro-dermabrasion, breast implants, invisible hair surgery, mesotherapy, face lifts, eye lifts, tummy tucks, nasal surgery and labia minora reduction can only be summarized by this slogan of a cosmetic surgery boutique: "Transform your body or your money back."

But politics is high on the collective agenda. Here`s a sample of local public opinion.
# On Abu Ghraib: "That soldier who released the pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused should be held responsible for the death of Nick Berg. He is a traitor" (a Floridian Latino). "We should not have had female soldiers in Abu Ghraib in the first place. This offends Muslim religious beliefs as much as the humiliation did" (a Floridian WASP).
# On jobs: "The president`s re-election is not the most important issue. Education, health care, jobs and the economy all pale in importance to this crisis of the armed forces. If he were to apply all his energies to helping the military crisis, he would gain far more votes than by campaigning" (a black unemployed Floridian).
# On the state of the union: "Borders closing, steady censorship of ideas and greedy motives for siege operations lead me to believe that George Orwell`s fantastic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is soon to become a reality. Perhaps if we think about the laws we allow to pass, the US can continue to boast that it is a free nation" (a Jewish Floridian).

In the not-subdued glamour of Seven Isles Drive, or Lauderdale as Little Venice, inside a Mediterranean mansion with all the trappings and a 75-foot (23-meter) mega-yacht parked outside (there are 40,000 resident yachts, more per capita than anywhere in the United States; 100 marinas; and a labyrinth of almost 500 kilometers of inland waterways), a retired multimillionaire says the whole Iraq thing is "a non-issue. We should get our troops out and stop this mess. We`re running huge deficits. Our credibility is in tatters. This is very bad for business. Wanna go for a boat ride?"

Further north, far away from the maze of waterfront inns rented for the day or for the season at modicum prizes, on Cap`s Place, a quintessential Florida hangout in business since 1929 that drew Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in their time, it`s quite something to find a daiquiri faithful in a somber mood: "I`d say that the myth that America is exceptional in moral terms, high above the rest of the world, something backed by the economic and military might of the US, that is gone, buddy."

The beautiful and the damned
South Florida, like the rest of America, is still feeling the shock waves of what Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker - once again - has exposed (Newsweek is following the same path): how an ultra-secret unit of 200 Pentagon insiders conducted a black operation against high-value al-Qaeda targets that then ran amok when transferred against the Iraqi resistance. General Geoffrey Miller himself - the former head of Guantanamo - recently said on the record that the counter-insurgency process in Iraq was "Gitmoized". The statement by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld`s spokesman Larry Di Rita that the "assertions ... are outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture" is being described as "a classic non-denial denial".

There`s widespread speculation among the chattering classes that this may become the nail in Rumsfeld`s coffin - and as each day Iraq becomes an increasingly major factor in the presidential election, it may play all the way to November. At this past weekend`s meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion research, Douglas Strand, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, said that "Iraq is sucking the life out of other issue deliberations". Bush`s approval on Iraq is now down at 35 percent: it was 44 percent in April. His overall job approval is now down to 42 percent.

How could Bush not have suspected something was rotten at Abu Ghraib? Part of the answer may lie in an insider account published by the Washington Times on Bush`s reading habits. Bush says: "My antennae are finely attuned. I can figure out what so-called `news` pieces are going to be full of opinion, as opposed to news. So I`m keenly aware of what`s in the papers, kind of the issue du jour. But I`m also aware of the facts." The problem is that the "facts" come from the newspapers themselves, delivered every day to the president in ultra-digested - and edited - form. Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, the first person to see Bush in the morning, gives him "a quick overview and [gets] a little reaction from him. Frequently, I find that his reaction kind of reflects Laura Bush`s take."

So First Lady Laura Bush apparently reads most of each newspaper, while Bush only reads the sports pages - every day. Bush, in his own words, likes to "have a clear outlook. It can be a frustrating experience to pay attention to somebody`s false opinion or somebody`s characterization, which simply isn`t true." A conclusion is inevitable: Bush sees reading as an exercise on finding bias by the so-called "liberal media". So he reads practically nothing, as a way of preserving his "clear outlook" and not having to confront it with a critical point of view. In other words: by denying any form of criticism, his view remains the Absolute Truth.

South Florida is flocking in droves to watch Troy, in which Brad Pitt as a mask-sword-and-sandals Terminator makes a mockery of legendary Greek hero Achilles, if not Homer himself, in their tombs. Pitt strikes endless poses as if he`s playing for an audience at a South Florida Muscle Beach. There`s no pathos, except in the plight of Trojan Prince Hector (Eric Bana) and Trojan King Priam (Peter O`Toole, chewing up everybody on screen with his Shakespearean gravitas).

A comparison with Iraq is inevitable. Troy - like Baghdad - was invaded because of power, not a flimsy excuse (Prince Paris escaping with Helen of Sparta; weapons of mass destruction). The Trojans fight to their death, as the Iraqi resistance will. But unlike Homer`s account of the Trojan tragedy, there`s nothing larger than life in Iraq, only sordidness: Saddam Hussein running away, the Pentagon buying the Republican Guards, Bush declaring the war "over", Abu Ghraib, and now F-16s bombing holy Karbala, which for any Shi`ite in the world is worse than any Terminator nightmare from hell. There`s no sense of sacrifice (Hector), no sense of tragedy (Priam), no sense of hubris (Achilles). And most of all no one seems to merit the line Achilles delivers to Priam as he drags home the slain body of his son Prince Hector: "You`re a much better king than the one I`m fighting this war for."

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)



May 19, 2004

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U.S. strike kills 40 at Iraqi wedding party




The Associated Press

May 19, 2004, 1:43 PM EDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party early Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it could not confirm the report and was investigating.

Lt. Col Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of the city of Ramadi, said between 42 and 45 people died in the attack, which took place about 2:45 a.m. in a remote desert area near the border with Syria and Jordan. He said those killed included 15 children and 10 women.

Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll at 45.

Associated Press Television News obtained videotape showing a truck containing bodies of those allegedly killed.

About a dozen bodies, one without a head, could be clearly seen. but it appeared that bodies were piled on top of each other and a clear count was not possible.

The Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television reported that more than 20 people were killed and 10 injured in the attack.

Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said partygoers had fired into the air in a traditional wedding celebration. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.

"I cannot comment on this because we have not received any reports from our units that this has happened nor that any were involved in such a tragedy," Lt. Col. Dan Williams, a U.S. military spokesman, wrote in an e-mail in response to a question from The Associated Press.

"We take all these requests seriously and we have forwarded this inquiry to the Joint Operations Center for further review and any other information that may be available," Williams said.

The video footage showed mourners with shovels digging graves. A group of men crouched and wept around one coffin.

Al-Ani said people at the wedding fired weapons in the air, and that American troops came to investigate and left. However, al-Ani said, helicopters attacked the area at about 3 a.m. Two houses were destroyed, he said.

"This was a wedding and the (U.S.) planes came and attacked the people at a house. Is this the democracy and freedom that (President) Bush has brought us?" said a man on the videotape, Dahham Harraj. "There was no reason."

Another man shown on the tape, who refused to give his name, said the victims were at a wedding party "and the U.S. military planes came... and started killing everyone in the house."

In July 2002, Afghan officials said 48 civilians at a wedding party were killed and 117 wounded by a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan`s Uruzgan province. An investigative report released by the U.S. Central Command said the airstrike was justified because American planes had come under fire.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

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May 19, 2004
Fighting Continues in Holy Iraq City Despite Protest by Shiites
By EDWARD WONG

KARBALA, Iraq, May 19 — Hundreds of people marched through the streets of this holy city today to protest fighting between American forces and militiamen loyal to a rebel Shiite cleric. Battles continued near revered shrines in the downtown area.

The protesters had gathered at the behest of the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential cleric in Iraq. The ayatollah`s office here called Tuesday for a demonstration against the presence of both American and insurgent forces in the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf. The ayatollah issued a statement the same day demanding a military withdrawal from the cities.

It is the strongest criticism Ayatollah Sistani has made against the bloody fighting in recent weeks, though no commanders on either side have heeded him.

The crowd in Karbala numbered from 200 to 300 and gathered in the morning at the Hussein Hospital. It was significantly smaller than protests over other issues the ayatollah had called for before, possibly because of the firefights raging in the middle of this city. As the protesters marched toward the golden-domed Shrine of Hussein, they asked that tribal sheiks and police forces be given responsibility for security in this city.

American F-16 fighter jets swooped overhead as the marchers spilled into the streets.

For more than two weeks, the First Armored Division has been fighting insurgents led by Moktada al-Sadr, the 31-year-old rebel cleric who lives in Najaf. The battles here have crept closer and closer to two of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, the Shrine of Hussein and the Shrine of Abbas, dedicated to revered Shiite martyrs. Early Monday morning, an American AC-130 gunship fired 40-millimeter cannon shells at a group of insurgents clustered about 160 feet from the Shrine of Hussein.

Today, American tanks were parked about 600 feet from the shrine. One Iraqi witness said they appeared to be encircling it. There were firefights throughout the day in the alleyways of the downtown area, where American forces have holed up in the Mukhaiyam Mosque, which soldiers occupied on May 12 after a pitched battled with insurgents in the area. The mosque now comes under daily attack from militiamen launching mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades.

At least eight insurgents were killed in the fighting, said Capt. Noel Gorospe, a spokesman for the First Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment of the First Armored Division. There were no American casualties, he said. Polish forces also fought militiamen.

For the first time, the Americans called in F-16`s to fly over the area and provide surveillance. They did not fire on any targets, Captain Gorospe said.

By evening, insurgents had fired at least three mortar rounds and 13 rocket-propelled grenades at American soldiers, the captain said. He added that soldiers came under sniper fire five times. One especially skilled sniper has killed two American soldiers and wounded four since the American forces took over the Mukhaiyam Mosque.

In total, four American soldiers have been killed and at least 52 wounded during the two-week offensive against Mr. Sadr`s forces here. The battle for Karbala is the fiercest fighting in Iraq at the moment, and it is certainly the most intense fighting the soldiers of the First Armored Division have taken part in since they arrived last May.

The battle zone poses enormous risks for the American forces. There is the potential for damage to the shrines, which could anger Shiite Muslims around the world. Insurgents have grouped around the shrines, especially around the Shrine of Hussein, in hopes that the Americans will hold their fire or damage the shrines.

Col. Pete Mansoor, commander of the First Brigade of the First Armored Division, said rocket-propelled grenades have been fired at tanks at least once from the Shrine of Hussein. A Predator drone flying overhead at the time recorded the projectiles originating from the shrine, he said.

But today, it appeared that the Mahdi Army had been barred from entering the shrine by armed guards appointed by the offices of the marjaiah, the four grand ayatollahs living in Najaf. Mahdi fighters stood about 150 feet from the Shrine of Hussein, while about 80 men armed with automatic rifles and working for the Shrines Protection Force stood inside the two central shrines.

The wide plaza separating the two shrines was relatively empty, though it is usually thronged with Shiite pilgrims. Some residents of the area have barricaded themselves in their homes for two weeks as the fighting has raged. Men working to maintain the shrines have retreated from the plaza into the shrines to seek shelter.

Members of the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite political party, were nowhere to be seen. American commanders said the group had promised to secure the shrines. But the group apparently is not popular among residents of Karbala and would have little support if it went into battle against the Mahdi Army.

An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Electricity Production in Iraq Remains Below Pre-War Levels
by Dahr Jamail (bio)

Baghdad , May 14 - Contrary to US President George Bush`s recent statement that electricity in Iraq "is now more widely available than before the war," Iraqi officials say the power supply in their country has not yet been repaired to pre-war levels. Bush made the claim in his May 1, 2004 speech commemorating the one-year anniversary of the "mission accomplished" address he delivered from aboard the USS Lincoln.

Twelve months later, it appears as though the majority of Iraqis have seen little improvement in their power supplyp>

At the Al-Dora power station in Baghdad on May 3, the deputy manager of the plant, Bashir Khalaf Omair, said that electricity output in Iraq prior to the March, 2003 invasion was around 5,000 Megawatts (MW) a day.

Iraq`s Acting Minister of Electricity, Ra`ad Al-Haris, said in an interview Thursday that the current supply of electricity produced in Iraq measures between 3,600-4,000 MW.

Currently, even in the best neighbourhoods of Baghdad there is only twelve hours of electricity per day, and this only intermittently. Most areas of the city have between six and eight hours of power per 24 hours.

Baghdad resident Salam Obidy is frustrated by the unreliability of the electrical grid. "I have three hours on, and four hours off," he said. "Mostly it is completely unscheduled. Yesterday I spent all night not sleeping because it was so hot."

And it is only getting hotter. The temperature during the day in Baghdad is beginning to approach 100 degrees now. It consistently climbs to 110-120 degrees in July and August.

In the Al-Adhamiyah district of Baghdad, a man named Abu Talan also complained about the lack of electricity in his neighbourhood. "My family and I sometimes have thirteen hours with no electricity whatsoever," he said. "Usually we average six hours per day. If there is no fuel for our small generator, we all suffer."

According to deputy manager Omair, Iraq has suffered from a shortage of electricity since the 1991 Gulf War during which American pilots bombed power plants. He added that prior to the 1991 war, Iraq was producing 9,500 MW of electricity per day.

"The parts we need come from Italy and Germany," Omair said, "and the security situation has made it more difficult to get these imported."

In addition to sabotage of gas and transmission lines in Iraq, as well a shortage of supplies, the reconstruction problems in Iraq have been underscored by the mass exodus of foreign contractors.

"Bechtel is responsible for the rehabilitation here," Omair explained. "The companies they subcontracted to, Siemens and Babcock, have pulled out their engineers. Without their presence, the Iraqi companies Al-Marjal and United Company, have been unable to do as much work."

Companies that were working on many of the electricity projects include U.S.-based Seimens-Westinghouse, Bechtel, and General Electric, along with two Russian companies, Tekhnopromexport and Inter Energo Servis (IES), according to the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity.

Yet, according to Al-Haris, the acting electricity minister, many of these companies began departing Iraq prior to the invasion in March, 2003 -- well before the most recent round of exits caused by the deteriorating security situation under the U.S. occupation.

"The work in these stations was started during the past regime," Al-Haris said, "but it was stopped before the war when the companies left Iraq, and the work is still stopped." Al-Haris added, "There are tens of trucks stopped on the border of Turkey, Jordan, and Syria, and they cannot enter because of the bad security situation. All the equipment in the trucks is very important to continue our work."

He reported that another problem is the huge consumption of electricity in Iraq and the huge quantity of electrical consumer goods people are buying. He said, "The annual increase of the consumption of the electricity in the entire world is about 3-5 percent, but in Iraq it is 30 percent."

Both officials stated that the goal they have promised the people of Iraq is to provide 6,000 MW by July 1.

Acting Minister Al-Haris said, "We hope that the companies will come back to Iraq to continue their work soon. We received promises from them, and I hope that the program of work will remain [in place], as we are promising the people 6,000 MW [a day by] the beginning of July. Anyhow, 6,000 MW is not enough for the country because we are expecting the need will be about 7,000-7,500 MW."

"Even if the German engineers who were working in the Al-Dora power plant returned tomorrow," said assistant plant manager Omair, "they would need four to five months to get our remaining two generators online."

When asked if he thought the goal of generating 6,000 MW for Iraq by the first of July was possible, Omair said, "I hope so."

© 2004 The NewStandard.

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May 20, 2004
TRANSITION
U.S. Advisers to Stay in Iraq After June 30
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

WASHINGTON, May 19 — About 200 American and international advisers will continue to work at 26 Iraqi ministries as consultants after the June 30 transfer of authority to Iraq, Bush administration planners said Wednesday.

"We want the Iraqis to understand that we are not abandoning them," said Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone, who is managing the transition for the State Department. He spoke at a briefing sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace.

At the same time, American reconstruction teams will set up four regional headquarters around the country to continue managing the billions of dollars in American aid that has not yet been spent.

With just six weeks left before the transfer, Mr. Ricciardone and the retired general who is representing the Defense Department, Claude M. Kicklighter, are immersed in personnel and real estate issues as well as security and communications concerns. They acknowledged that many of their solutions would be improvised at the last minute.

As American control shifts from the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Pentagon to the State Department, officials are scrambling to staff a new embassy that will be among the world`s largest, with as many as 1,000 American staff members and 700 Iraqi personnel.

Establishing security for embassy personnel is a paramount concern. After the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 Americans died, "we learned that there can be no gray areas with respect to U.S. security," Mr. Ricciardone said.

After the transfer of power, the administration plans to retain control of numerous buildings within the so-called Green Zone, a compound of about four miles square that includes the former Republican Palace and was a stronghold of Baathist supporters of the Saddam Hussein government.

The area will probably remain cordoned off, with checkpoints run by members of the multinational force.

It is still unclear whether the administration will try to buy or rent the properties it now occupies or otherwise negotiate a deal with Iraq. Officials said lawyers were exploring the options.

"There will have to be an arrangement with the government of Iraq for use of that land," said Adam Ereli, the State Department spokesman, who added that the subject was not a significant obstacle. "This is an issue that we deal with in embassies around the world."

Mr. Ricciardone said the embassy would rely on outside contractors, at significant expense, to provide security in the Green Zone. "We do not have nearly enough diplomatic security" for the task, he said. Privileges and immunities for the contract workers have yet to be resolved.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 20, 2004
Disputed Strike by U.S. Military Leaves at Least 40 Iraqis Dead
By DEXTER FILKINS and EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 19 — About 40 Iraqis were killed Wednesday by American forces in an attack near the volatile border with Syria. American officials said they had fired on a suspected guerrilla safe house, but Iraqis said the Americans had strafed civilians at a wedding party.

American military officials said the attack occurred in the open desert on Wednesday evening, about 15 miles from the Syrian border and southwest of the town of Qusaiba. In a statement, American officials said they had called in air support after an American military operation in the area had come under hostile fire.

After the attack, the Americans said they had recovered "numerous weapons," cash and foreign passports.

Associated Press Television News broadcast film, said to be taken at the scene, showing a truck heaped with bloody bodies, many of them wrapped in blankets. Several of the bodies shown appeared to be those of children.

Both the American and the Iraqi accounts agreed that about 40 people had died. But some Iraqis and several reports in the Arab press said the attack had killed civilians, not insurgents.

Al Arabiya, a television network based in Dubai, quoted witnesses as saying American planes had bombed a wedding party in Makr al-Deeb, a village near the Syrian border. The film included pictures of shrouded bodies and scenes of men digging graves.

On the broadcast, an unidentified man told Al Arabiya, "The American planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us. They destroyed the whole village. We didn`t fire any bullets."

The Associated Press quoted Lt. Col. Ziyad al-Jbouri, the deputy police chief of Ramadi, as saying that between 42 and 45 people had died, including 15 children and 10 women.

The Associated Press also quoted Dr. Salah al-Ani, a hospital worker in Ramadi, as saying 45 people were dead.

Ramadi is the capital of the province of Al Anbar, which includes the area around Qusaiba.

Iraqis interviewed by Associated Press Television said revelers had fired volleys of gunfire into the air in a traditional wedding celebration just before the American attack.

American troops have mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire at least once before. In July 2002, officials in Afghanistan said that at least 48 civilians at a wedding party were killed and 117 wounded by an American airstrike in the province of Oruzgan.

A report released afterward by the United States Central Command said the airstrike was justified because American planes had come under fire.

In Iraq, it was impossible to sort out the conflicting claims late Wednesday.

The area near the strike is a vast, desolate place crisscrossed by smugglers. American officials have long suspected the area to be a transit point for foreign and Iraqi guerrillas and have condemned the Syrian government for not cracking down on the traffic.

Last June, American commandos attacked a convoy of cars and trucks in the area, engaging in firefights with Syrian border guards. American officials said the convoy appeared to contain high ranking members from Saddam Hussein`s government. But the results of the raid were inconclusive.

The conflicting reports of the attack near the Syrian border came as up to 300 people marched through the streets of Karbala to protest fighting between American forces and militiamen loyal to a rebel Shiite cleric, and battles continued near revered shrines in the downtown area.

The protesters gathered after a request on Tuesday from the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, which called for a demonstration against the presence of American and insurgent forces in the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf. The ayatollah also issued a statement demanding a military withdrawal from both cities.

It was the strongest criticism that Ayatollah Sistani, the most influential Shiite in Iraq, had made against the fighting in recent weeks, though no commander on either side has heeded him.

The protesters in Karbala gathered in the morning at the Hussein Hospital. The protest was significantly smaller than those others called for by the ayatollah, possibly because of firefights raging in the middle of the city. As the protesters marched toward the golden-domed Shrine of Hussein, they asked that tribal sheiks and police forces be given responsibility for security in the city.

American F-16 fighter jets, called in to provide surveillance of the city, swooped overhead as the marchers spilled into the streets.

For more than two weeks, the First Armored Division has been fighting insurgents here led by Moktada al-Sadr, the 31-year-old rebel cleric who lives in Najaf. The battles have crept closer and closer to two of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, the Shrine of Hussein and the Shrine of Abbas, dedicated to Shiite martyrs.

Early Monday morning, the American military called in an airstrike from an AC-130 gunship, which fired 40-millimeter cannons at a group of insurgents clustered about 160 feet from the Shrine of Hussein. The F-16`s did not take part in firing, the military said.

On Wednesday, American tanks were parked about 600 feet from the shrine. One Iraqi witness said they appeared to be encircling the building.

There were firefights throughout the day in the alleys of the downtown area. American forces have occupied the Mukhaiyam Mosque since May 12, after a pitched battled with insurgents. The mosque now comes under daily attack from militiamen firing mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades.

At least eight insurgents were killed in fighting, said Capt. Noel Gorospe, a spokesman for the First Battalion, 37th Armor, of the First Armored Division. There were no American casualties, he said. Polish forces also fought militiamen.

By evening, insurgents had fired at least 3 mortar rounds and 13 rocket-propelled grenades at American soldiers, Captain Gorospe said. He added that soldiers had come under sniper fire five times. One especially skilled sniper has killed two American soldiers and wounded four since the American forces took over the Mukhaiyam Mosque.

In total, 4 American soldiers have been killed and at least 52 wounded during the two-week offensive against Mr. Sadr`s forces here.

Col. Pete Mansoor, commander of the First Brigade of the First Armored Division, said rocket-propelled grenades had been fired at least once from the Shrine of Hussein at tanks. A Predator drone flying overhead at the time recorded the projectiles originating from the shrine, he said.

But on Wednesday, it appeared that the militia forces, called the Mahdi Army, had been barred from entering the shrine by armed guards appointed by the offices of the marjaiah, the four grand ayatollahs living in Najaf. Mahdi fighters stood about 150 feet from the Shrine of Hussein, while about 80 men armed with automatic rifles and working for the Shrines Protection Force stood inside the two central shrines.

Members of the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite political party, were nowhere to be seen. American commanders said the group had promised to secure the shrines. But the group is apparently not popular among residents of Karbala and would have little support if it went into battle against the Mahdi Army.

Dexter Filkins reported from Baghdad, Iraq, for this article, and Edward Wong from Karbala.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 20, 2004
Rates Rise, Changing Face of Home Sales
By JENNIFER BAYOT

As mortgage rates climb, fewer home owners are refinancing their old loans, and potential purchasers are reconsidering when - or whether - to buy. Their choices could reshape the housing market ahead, economists said, and even affect other spending decisions.

Refinancings, which accounted for more than half of all the home loans last year, are shrinking fast. After three years of easily switching to better terms on their mortgages and frequently taking out cash, consumers can no longer rely so heavily on refinancing to shore up their family budgets and maintain their spending.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said yesterday that refinancing activity fell 17 percent last week to its lowest level since the start of the year, as the standard 30-year mortgage rate has risen to 6.2 percent since flirting with 45-year lows in mid-March. In the intervening weeks, refinancing activity has fallen almost two-thirds.

"What consumers are seeing for the first time is a rapid rise in rates," said Anthony Meola, executive vice president for home loans production at Washington Mutual, a big servicer of home loans.

The sharp appreciation in home prices that consumers have come to rely on for household wealth will probably diminish if rates continue to rise, though the National Association of Realtors estimates that the 30-year rate would have to rise to 8 percent to seriously impede home sales. Rising rates make homes more expensive for consumers and will damp total home sales and home prices.

At the average fixed rate of 5.34 percent recorded last March by the Mortgage Bankers Association, a monthly payment of $1,000 would have covered a 30-year mortgage of about $180,000. Using last week`s rate of 6.21 percent, that $1,000 payment could handle $164,000.

But in the short term, people are buying homes at an enthusiastic pace. Many people planning to buy have already applied for a loan, and some may act quickly to avoid being priced out of the home they desire. "Whenever interest rates rise, people jump off fences, so there`s some of that going on," said David Lereah, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors.

Two weeks ago, applications for home loans, excluding refinancings, were near a record level and fell only 8 percent last week, said the Mortgage Bankers Association.

"What this tells us is that home sales will stay very strong at least until the middle of the summer," said David Berson, chief economist of Fannie Mae, the giant mortgage finance company.

After three months of shopping for a home, Haroon Rashid, a purchasing associate for a textile company in New York, applied two days ago for pre-approval on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. "I would like to buy as soon as possible before the interest rates go up even more," said Mr. Rashid, 29, who is hoping to find a two-bedroom house or condo in New Jersey for less than $200,000. He was quoted a rate of 6.27 percent. "My friend got a house just two months ago - he got 5.3 percent."

According to bankers, many home buyers are asking for adjustable rates, in search of the lowest monthly payment. And they are reacting more quickly than they have in the past, propelling adjustable-rate mortgages, or A.R.M.`s, to 35.2 percent of all mortgage applications last week.

The only other times that adjustable-rate mortgages accounted for such a large share of the applications were in January 2000 and November 1994, said Douglas Duncan, chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association. In those cases, the average 30-year rate had risen at least 2 percentage points from its lows before adjustable loans gained such popularity. This time the rate has climbed only 1.30 percentage points since touching its low last June.

"For a much smaller increase in long-term interest rates, we`ve got a much larger increase in A.R.M. share," Mr. Duncan said.

Some anecdotal evidence suggests that nervous sellers are cutting their asking prices in certain markets. Barbara Simmons, the owner of Realty World Equity Center in Thousand Oaks, Calif., said that Ventura County, particularly Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Camarillo, "has seen more price reductions in the last two weeks than I have seen in the last two years."

Some homeowners are eager to sell because they believe home prices have risen as much as they can, especially now that mortgage rates are increasing. "Our response to the interest rates going up was to sell our house instead of refinance," said Lori Mackey, a children`s author and the founder of a financial literacy group for children. She and her husband, Dana, closed the sale of their home in Agoura Hills, Calif., on Monday for $860,000, a gain of $320,000 in the two years they have owned it.

"I can`t believe it," Ms. Mackey, 42, said. "We are now debt free, have savings, and still plenty of money left over to buy another house." She said they would wait to buy a new home because they expect that the higher interest rates would drive prices down.

Still, mortgage rates are exceedingly low by historical standards. For instance, the average 30-year rate over the last 10 years is 7.3 percent, and the lowest rate in the 1990`s was 6.83 percents, according to HSH Associates, a mortgage research firm based in Pompton Plains, N.J.

"That doesn`t make it any less painful perhaps, but some perspective is necessary," said Keith Gumbinger, a vice president of HSH Associates. "Interest rates cannot be considered to be high, by any means."

Walt Molony, a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors, agreed: "Interest rates are still at their lowest levels since the 1960`s, and for the lion`s share of buyers, it has no impact. But the low-to-moderate income homebuyers - they are being priced out."

Still, consumers seem spooked. "We see some overreacting," said Robert Walters, chief economist of Quicken Loans in Livonia, Mich. "They say, `Rates are rising, I need to lock in a 30-year rate.` But the rate environment is less important than matching a mortgage to your situation.

Unlike other rate increases in the last year, this time many consumers feel more confident about their jobs and about earning enough money to pay more, housing economists said.

"It`s important to note that the reason interest rates are rising is because of a healthier economy," Mr. Lereah said. "And that provides consumers with the wherewithal to buy homes."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 19, 2004
Q&A: `Bullish` on Iraq

From the Council on Foreign Relations, May 19, 2004

David S. Patel, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University who spent seven months in Iraq, mostly in Shiite areas in the south, says the country will overcome its difficulties and emerge from the current upheaval a unified state. "I`m bullish on Iraq," he says. "I think the country can definitely stick together, and I think it will. I was surprised at the degree of Iraqi nationalism." He cautions that "there are going to be some very large speed bumps between June 30," when sovereignty is returned to the Iraqis, and the national elections scheduled for January 2005. Still, he expects that the uprising led by Muqtada al-Sadr will be put down and that the rebellious cleric will be sent into exile. And, although Iraqis are not yet up to providing their own security, he says they are in charge of most government ministries.

Patel, who recently wrote an article about Iraqi politics in Arab Reform Bulletin, was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on May 18, 2004.

How long were you in Iraq?

I arrived last September, and I was there until early March.

Were you mostly in the south?

Mostly in the south, in Basra, but I traveled extensively throughout the country. I went up to Baghdad perhaps once a month. I visited Najaf and Karbala. I`ve been through parts of the so-called Sunni triangle, and then on my way out, I spent two weeks up in the Kurdish area, in Sulaimaniya and Hawler/Irbil, leaving via Turkey.

Were you focusing on the Shiites? Your article was about Islam in general, Sunnis and Shiites.

I was mostly interested in the Shiites and their mosques and religious leaders.

Do you speak Arabic?

I speak Arabic fairly well, well enough to get around.

There`s a lot of concern in the United States about Sadr in Najaf and Karbala. How do you think this is going to play out?

The confrontation with Muqtada Sadr was inevitable. It`s been building for a long time. And it is good that it`s happening now, not after June 30 [the handover date of Iraqi sovereignty]. The United States can confront him now. If they didn`t confront him now, there was going to have to be some sort of confrontation between Sadr and Iraqi authorities. I think the situation with him is going to calm down fairly quickly, but I`ve been saying that for four weeks now. There have been a lot of behind-the-scenes negotiations between CPA [the Coalition Provisional Authority] and the Sadr followers both through the religious authorities and through other political parties. I think some agreement will be reached, probably an agreement that sends him into exile, maybe to Iran or, as some people think, to Azerbaijan, until there`s a transition to Iraqi sovereignty after June 30.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who seemed to have so much influence over the CPA, has been rather muted in his criticism of Sadr. Is this because Sistani does not have armed troops?

Sistani does not have armed troops himself, but Sistani does have a number of tribes that, though not loyal to him, follow his lead and have a lot of armed militias. There`s a group up in Karbala called Ansar al-Sistani, and there`s also a number of religious groups and political parties that have very, very large militias, much larger than Muqtada Sadr`s and much better trained than the Jaish-i-Mahdi [the Sadr militia], that are closely associated with Sistani.

Sistani has benefited from this standoff. A lot of the Western newspapers are saying that his quietism [the tradition in Islam in which clerics shun politics] has weakened him; I think quite the opposite. Muqtada Sadr hasn`t been able to galvanize a lot of support. And, although a lot of people say that the Sadr followers are a movement, a movement that has been in Iraq for more than a decade, I think that it`s important to recognize that Muqtada Sadr and his Jaish-i-Mahdi are only one branch of the movement formed by the followers of his father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, and his marja`iyat [religious authority].

What do you think of the U.S. policy of moving gradually against Sadr and being careful not to harm the holy sites in Najaf and Karbala?

The move against him was smart. Now, the way [U.S. forces] did that move probably wasn`t the best. The early rhetoric we heard from [U.S. military officials] about [plans to] "capture or kill" [Sadr] was not particularly useful and probably made it more difficult for some of the [Iraqi] intermediaries to reach some sort of compromise with him. But [officials] did back off that fairly quickly. And we constantly hear from Baghdad that a uniquely Iraqi solution will be found for the problem, and [coalition officials] have given some space for groups to negotiate with [Sadr]. [Coalition forces] haven`t moved in, like you said, to the degree that they could have. There does seem to be restraint on the part of the United States.

Is the situation in Falluja now under control, as far as you can tell?

I don`t know. There are still some lingering issues that need to be resolved in Falluja. It`s not quite clear to me who the fighters there are. Maybe 10 to 15 percent of the [fighters] there are foreign insurgents. I think they need to be dealt with in a certain way. A lot of the people who are there are former soldiers in the Iraqi Army who feel like they have been marginalized, who feel like they have not been given a voice in the political process. They need to be dealt with in a different way, and I think they are. Reversing some of the de-Baathification policies, bringing some of these officers and NCOs [noncommissioned officers] back into the armed forces and security services, and giving some Sunni Arab tribal leaders and some of the leaders who were affiliated with the Baath at low levels a voice in the post-June 30 government, is going to help calm the situation both in Falluja and in some of the other areas.

Can the Iraqis take over and run a government that will not lead to immediate civil war?

I`m bullish on Iraq. I don`t think the Iraqis are close yet to taking control of security. That seems very clear. The police have performed very poorly in much of Iraq, and the Iraqi Army units have not done much better. But from what I understand, on most other issues Iraqis already are running day-to-day operations.

Iraqis are running the ministries--they have been in Basra for quite a while and they have been in Baghdad to an increasing degree. Just a few months ago, you used to see large crowds of people gather outside CPA headquarters asking for simple things like pensions, jobs, or positions in the police. Those people don`t stand outside CPA anymore; now they stand outside the Basra government buildings--when the Basra government buildings aren`t being occupied by Muqtada Sadr`s Jaish-i-Mahdi.

What are the chances for a united Iraq? Several observers have said Iraq should be a loose federation, with significant autonomy for the Kurds. Do you think the country can stick together?

I think the country can definitely stick together, and I think it will. I was surprised at the degree of Iraqi nationalism. There is an Iraqi identity. It`s going to be a challenge to convince the average Kurds up in the northern areas that they have some stake in this larger country. A lot of them recognize it, but they haven`t fully absorbed it yet. I do think the country will stick together, and I think that plans for a U.S. pullout or plans to divide the country up are very short-sighted.

The biggest mistake that people in the West make about Iraq is [they fail to grasp] that most Iraqis do not primarily define themselves in ethnic or religious terms. They don`t define themselves as Sunni Arab or Shiite Arab or even Kurd. The more we constantly reinforce this and say that [Iraq] is three nations, you are going to start seeing people in Iraq following that. But I don`t think that`s a natural tendency. I don`t think that the cleavages are primordial or ingrained. We need to be very careful about this. The coalition made a few wrong steps early on by assuming that you need to have representation of Sunni Arabs and Kurds in proportion to their demographic constituency. We need to encourage the development of constituencies that are not just along ethnic or religious lines.

Who is likely to take over the leadership after June 30? The U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, has talked about an interim government led by technocrats. Do you think this will fly with Iraqis?

I think if you talk to the average Iraqi, "technocrats," whatever that term means, is the right move. The average Iraqi seems to think if you put economists in charge of the economy and the educators in charge of education, all politics will be removed. I`m not sure that`s accurate, but it is a common view of people coming out of authoritarian governments. None of the political parties poll very well. None of the individual leaders garner more than six to seven percent in hypothetical elections. There`s not [much] support for any of the parties, and I think Iraqis want to see technocrats running the country, at least in the short term. It allows some of the parties to form constituencies from which they can compete.

When it comes to national leaders, I think [former Iraqi foreign minister Adnan] Pachachi is the one person who right now seems unthreatening to religious parties, political parties, and average Iraqis. His is a well-known name. He is respected, he has experience in government, and most importantly, he doesn`t have a large party backing him. He`s in his early eighties. People could see him as being a transition person for a two-to-four-year period, until each party felt it would have a chance of doing well in elections. [Few Iraqis think] he`s going to be a [Russian President Vladimir] Putin [who was put in office with no political base, solidified his power, and seems politically unassailable now].

So you endorse the idea of a technocrat-run temporary government?

The goal is to find out what the Iraqi people want. I think the idea is good. I don`t know how it will work in practice. It`s not clear to me exactly what the political parties are supposed to do in this interim period: if they are supposed to go home or if they are still, somehow, to be involved in legislating. As I understand it, legislative authority during this interim period hasn`t been fully resolved. There are going to be some very large speed bumps between June 30 and elections in January. I think the Islamists are going to make another attempt to change personal status laws, such as [those affecting] women`s rights; if they [can`t change] the law I think they will try to [undercut it] administratively. The nature of federalism--how many provinces, the relationship between autonomous regions, if there are autonomous regions, and the center, power-sharing--these issues still need to be worked out.

Are Iraqis happy with the idea of the United States remaining as a security force, or do they want the United States to leave?

Most Iraqis, even though they have been frustrated at the slow pace of progress and the slow process of reconstruction, realize that a continued American presence is necessary for the short to medium term to maintain stability. That`s what all Iraqis want. Most Iraqis aren`t that interested in the political process. They want some sort of stability. Most Iraqis haven`t been able to consume any foreign goods since 1991. On the street now, the economy is booming. People with disposable income are buying cell phones, satellite dishes, microwaves, air conditioners, food processors, used cars. This is what Iraqis want: they want some sort of government to provide them stability where they are able to reintegrate themselves into the world, be able to travel, enjoy what they haven`t had since 1991 [when economic sanctions were imposed], if not earlier.

Has life improved in the past year?

Look at what Iraqis say. [According to an ABC-ARD-BBC-NHK poll ], 56 percent say their life has improved. More important, even more Iraqis think their life is going to improve further in the next year. I think that`s the best indication.

Did you have trouble moving around the country? Did you try to keep your American identity unknown?

No, I told people I`m American. As long as I didn`t speak, they assumed I was an Arab. In the south, I was arrested five times because they thought I was a foreign Arab. They thought I might be Syrian or something like that. I`ve been picked up five times: three times by the Iraqi police and twice by religious militias. Once they found out I`m American, they let me go.

Copyright 2004

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May 19, 2004
Iraq`s rebel cleric gains surge in popularity
By Roula Khalaf in Baghdad

An Iraqi poll to be released next week shows a surge in the popularity of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical young Shia cleric fighting coalition forces, and suggests nearly nine out of 10 Iraqis see US troops as occupiers and not liberators or peacekeepers.

The poll was conducted by the one-year-old Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, which is considered reliable enough for the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority to have submitted questions to be included in the study.
The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.

Although the results of any poll in Iraq`s traumatised society should be taken with caution, the survey highlights the difficulties facing the US authorities in Baghdad as they confront Mr Sadr, who launched an insurgency against the US-led occupation last month.

Conducted before the Abu Ghraib prisoners` scandal, it also suggests a severe erosion of American credibility even before Iraqis were confronted with images of torture at the hands of US soldiers.

Saadoun Duleimi, head of the centre, said more than half of a representative sample - comprising 1,600 Shia, Sunni Arabs and Kurds polled in all Iraq`s main regions - wanted coalition troops to leave Iraq. This compares with about 20 per cent in an October survey. Some 88 per cent of respondents said they now regarded coalition forces in Iraq as occupiers.

"Iraqis always contrast American actions with American promises and there`s now a wide gap in credibility," said Mr Duleimi, who belongs to one of the country`s big Sunni tribes. "In this climate, fighting has given Moqtada credibility because he`s the only Iraqi man who stood up against the occupation forces."

The US authorities in Baghdad face an uphill battle to persuade Iraqis that the transfer of sovereignty on June 30 will mark the end of the US occupation. The removal of US troops was cited in the poll as a more urgent issue than the country`s formal status.

Respondents saw Mr Sadr as Iraq`s second most influential figure after Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country`s most senior Shia cleric. Some 32 per cent of respondents said they strongly supported Mr Sadr and another 36 per cent somewhat supported him.

Ibrahim Jaafari, head of the Shia Islamist Daawa party and a member of the governing council, came next on the list of influential Iraqis. Among council members, Adnan Pachachi, the Sunni former foreign minister, came some distance behind Mr Jaafari. Mr Pachachi is regarded as the apparent favourite for the ceremonial post of president when a caretaker government takes over.

© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2004.

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May 20, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
What Prison Scandal?
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Maybe anyone who was once married to Liz Taylor — at a time when she favored tiger-striped pantsuits and Clyde`s chicken wings — would not flinch at wrangling with another aging sex symbol and demanding diva: Rummy.

Or maybe, at 77, Senator John Warner is at a stage in life where he can`t be intimidated into putting a higher value on Republican re-election prospects than on what he sees as the common good.

In a bracing display of old-fashioned public spiritedness, the courtly Virginian joined up with the crusty Arizonan, John McCain, to brush back Rummy and the partisan whippersnappers in Congress who are yelping that the Senate Armed Services Committee`s public hearings into prison abuse by American soldiers are distracting our warriors from taking care of business in Iraq.

"I think the Senate has become mesmerized by cameras, and I think that`s sad," said a California Republican, Representative Duncan Hunter.

Then Senator John Cornyn of Texas weighed in, suggesting that Mr. Warner, a Navy officer in World War II, a Marine lieutenant in the Korean War and a Navy secretary under Nixon, and Mr. McCain, who lived in a dirt suite at the Hanoi Hilton for five years, were not patriotic. Their "collective hand-wringing," Mr. Cornyn sniffed, could be "a distraction from fighting and winning the war."

Rummy had a dozen Republican senators over to the Pentagon for breakfast on Tuesday, and Mr. Cornyn said the secretary was exasperated by the "all-consuming nature" of the Congressional hearings.

The man who David Plotz of Slate says is widely "considered one of the dumbest members of Congress" chimed in, dumbly. Following up on his inane rant defending the soldiers accused of abuse at Abu Ghraib and whingeing about "humanitarian do-gooders," Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma wondered whether Mr. Warner was trying to help the Democrats with public hearings.

The most absurd cut was delivered by Speaker Dennis Hastert, who responded to Mr. McCain`s contention that Congress should not enact tax cuts during wartime because it prevented a sense of shared sacrifice by barking: "John McCain ought to visit our young men and women at Walter Reed and Bethesda. There is sacrifice in this country."

It just shows how completely flipped out the Republicans are about how the Iraq occupation is going that they are turning on a war hero and P.O.W., and on a man who enlisted in not one war, but two.

It`s hard to believe that even if the generals weren`t testifying here, they could do much to stop the spiral into anarchy there, with each day bringing some new horror.

Gen. John Abizaid told the panel that the hearing helped establish an image in the Arab world that Americans face up to their problems and handle them in the open. Certainly, he wasn`t echoing the often Panglossian view of Donald Rumsfeld yesterday. He predicted that "the situation will become more violent" after the June 30 transfer of power and that he might then require more than the 135,000 troops now in Iraq.

Senator McCain, who has long advocated more troops, said that the Pentagon and its cheerleaders were silly to think they could throw a blanket over incendiary developments. "It`s only a matter of time before the Pentagon`s new disc of abuse pictures starts bouncing around the Internet," he said.

When I asked about Mr. Hastert`s crack about visiting Walter Reed, the man whose temper used to be so close to the surface just laughed. "My," Mr. McCain murmured, "they certainly are angry. There has been some obvious resentment because of my `independence` for a long time."

He reiterated that he would never run with John Kerry. "I`m a loyal Republican," he said. "A lot of their resentment goes back to campaign finance reform."

I asked whether Mr. Warner, who helped Mr. McCain, as a shattered P.O.W., reorient to America after Vietnam, was a good example of the exemplars he writes about in his new meditation, "Why Courage Matters."

Agreeing that his colleague had shown strength, Mr. McCain concluded: "I believe from my experience that the only way you get one of these things behind you is to get everything out as quickly as possible."

Open and sharing Bushies. Now there`s a novel concept.

E-mail: [e-mail]

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com

Kerry, Nader Meet and Go Separate Ways
Democrats Want To Diminish Man They Call Spoiler

By Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 20, 2004; Page A04

Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) met privately yesterday with independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who many Democrats believe cost Vice President Al Gore the White House in 2000, but the private session left the two in disagreement over the best way to defeat President Bush in November and with Nader saying he has no intention of quitting the race.

The 70-minute session at Kerry`s headquarters in downtown Washington came amid signs of an emerging two-pronged Democratic strategy to counter Nader`s candidacy that tries to avoid mistakes Democrats believe were made four years ago.

The strategy includes keeping lines of communication open between Nader and the Kerry campaign and Democratic Party officials while the party and its constituency groups work aggressively to diminish Nader`s candidacy and dissuade voters in the battleground states from supporting Nader in November. Kerry`s campaign hopes that former Vermont governor Howard Dean can appeal to potential Nader voters as well.

That marks a shift from four years ago, when the Gore campaign feared that engaging with Nader would only raise his political profile and Democrats launched anti-Nader operations in only a handful of states. In two states that Bush won with razor-thin margins, Florida and New Hampshire, Nader`s vote far eclipsed Bush`s victory margin, Democrats made little effort to diminish Nader`s support.

"We paid a price for the big strategic decision we took, which was total non-engagement," said one Democratic strategist who declined to be identified to speak more openly about the Gore campaign`s mistakes. "We wish we had done more of a direct appeal in more states than we did."

In their meeting, Kerry did not ask Nader to give up his candidacy. "It wouldn`t be successful and I don`t think it`s our place to tell Ralph Nader what to do," said a Kerry adviser who spoke to reporters after the meeting. The adviser also said Kerry told Nader that the best way "to make progress on the issues we care about is to beat George Bush -- and I intend to do it."

Nader, in an interview, said he argued that in the end he will take more votes from Bush than from Kerry, but Kerry disagreed with that analysis. Shortly before the meeting, Kerry told the Associated Press, "I hope I can make people aware that a vote for Ralph Nader is a vote for George Bush."

Kerry and Nader talked about corporate welfare, consumer issues and other fights they have waged together over the past two decades. When Nader complained that the Democratic Party has given in to corporate interests, Kerry said, "Don`t judge me by the people who preceded me."

Asked his reaction to that comment, Nader said: "I believe he believes it. The proof is in the pudding. We`re way beyond confusing words with deeds."

The two did not talk about Iraq, which some Democrats fear could be the issue that Nader uses to attract support on the left among voters who want U.S. troops removed immediately. Democratic strategist James Carville told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast yesterday that Nader brings clarity to an issue that troubles many Democrats. "Nader has a simple thing he`s saying: bring the troops home," he said. "It`s easy to understand."

Both sides described the tone of the meeting as courteous and not contentious, and a Kerry campaign official said the candidate was prepared to continue the dialogue as the campaign year goes along. Similarly, Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe has kept an open line to Nader, mindful of Nader`s complaints that he was shunned by Gore and the party four years ago, although McAuliffe never fails to urge Nader to give up his candidacy.

But as some Democrats hold Nader close, others are calling for a far more aggressive effort to challenge him. "I think he is a contemptible liar," said Lanny Davis, a former Clinton administration official who is raising money for the Kerry campaign. "He`s knowingly making false statements. . . . when he says he`s not hurting John Kerry`s chances of becoming president. I believe we need to start to describe him exactly that way and don`t mince words. We made that mistake four years ago."

A group of Democratic strategists yesterday unveiled a new Web site -- www.thenaderfactor.com -- dedicated to winning over "Nader Democrats" though a variety of positive appeals, including TV ads.

Tricia Enright, former communications director to Dean, is president of National Progress Fund, which launched the site. David Jones, a former top adviser to Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), helped create the organization. Enright said they planned to start airing targeted television ads next week in as many as six states, including Florida.

Similarly, Elizabeth Cavendish, interim president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said her organization will match or exceed the activity of 2000, when the group spent about $1.5 million on TV ads for Gore in states where Nader had substantial support.

On another matter, Kerry yesterday was forced to clarify his position on an abortion litmus test for Supreme Court appointees. Kerry, who has previously backed a litmus test, appeared to soften that position during an interview with Associated Press.

"I will not appoint somebody with a 5-4 court who`s about to undo Roe v. Wade. I`ve said that before," Kerry said. "But that doesn`t mean that if that`s not the balance of the court, I wouldn`t be prepared ultimately to appoint somebody to some court who has a different point of view. I`ve already voted for people like that. I voted for Judge [Antonin] Scalia."

A Kerry aide privately admitted the candidate`s statement was confusing, while other Democrats said it appeared like a flip-flop. Soon after, the campaign issued a statement clarifying Kerry`s opposition to antiabortion rights judges.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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More Photos Surface:

Soldiers Shown Giving Thumbs Up Sign By Body of Dead Iraqi Prisoner

May 19, 2004 — ABCNEWS has obtained two new photos taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq showing Spc. Charles Graner and Spc. Sabrina Harman posing over the body of a detainee who was allegedly beaten to death by CIA or civilian interrogators in the prison`s showers. The detainee`s name was Manadel al-Jamadi.

According to testimony from Spc. Jason Kenner, obtained by ABCNEWS, the man was brought to the prison by U.S. Navy Seals in good health. Kenner said he saw extensive bruising on the detainee`s body when he was brought out of the showers, dead.

Kenner says the body was packed in ice during a "battle" between CIA and military interrogators over who should dispose of the body.

The Justice Department opened an investigation into this death and four others today following a referral from the CIA.

The photos were taken by Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick , who in e-mails to his family has asked why the people responsible for the prisoner`s death were not being prosecuted in the same manner that he is.

Frederick, Graner, and Harman are among six reservists from the 372nd Military Police Company who are facing charges in the abuse scandal.

A lawyer for Graner, Guy Womack, told ABCNEWS the photo of his client represents inappropriate "gallows humor." Womack questioned why U.S. officials have not opened a criminal investigation into alleged murders at Abu Ghraib, while the investigation of his client has proceeded at a rapid pace.

A seventh member of the unit, Spc. Jeremy Sivits, pleaded guilty today to four counts for taking pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated.

Sivits received the maximum penalty of a year in prison and a bad conduct discharge

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washingtonpost.com

The Hard Times Never Left
40 Years After the War on Poverty, Western Maryland Still Hurts

By Mary Otto
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 20, 2004; Page B01

For generations, Brenda Teets`s family has wrestled a living out of the changing economy of Western Maryland.

No strangers to hard times, family members have worked low-paying jobs, hunted in the woods for meat to put on their tables and raised children alone when spouses died or left.

Teets`s grandfather, Edgar Skidmore, worked in the Midlothian Coal Co. mine until it shut down. Her father, Irvin Morgan, worked at the Celanese Corp. synthetic-fiber plant near Cumberland until he was laid off. Teets and her grown sons work in what`s known as the service sector, preparing taxes, pumping gas, answering telephones at a call center, but never getting ahead.

Forty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson went to the remote panhandle of Maryland, some 100 miles from the White House, on a tour to launch his War on Poverty.

"I know what poverty means to people," he told the crowd, as he stood on the steps of Cumberland City Hall in May 1964. "It means waiting in a surplus food line rather than in a supermarket checkout."

Yet this spring, a few miles away in Lonaconing, beyond the strip mine and the landfill, along Georges Creek, amid the hills, the food line stretches from the social hall of the Assembly of God church to the railroad tracks. There are lean, weathered men, little girls in pink jackets, and young mothers and grandmothers with empty laundry baskets, waiting to get in and collect their cereal and canned peas and apple sauce.

The hard times endure, especially in Allegany County and other rural and Rust Belt places where people find themselves swimming against economic tides -- from disappearing jobs to diminishing returns for work -- that the planners of the War on Poverty did not predict in those optimistic days between the boom years of the 1950s and Johnson`s escalation of the Vietnam War.

Inside the food bank, volunteers Teets, 41, and her mother Wanda Binnix, 61, work steadily, hefting boxes, stocking the tables for the rush. These women, too, are struggling. They, too, qualify for the monthly, $5 hampers of food.

When Teets finishes, she will hurry back home to Cumberland, change from her jeans to a skirt and hose and head to her job preparing taxes.

"Two weeks pays the rent. Two weeks pays the gas bill," she says. "Then you`ve got to figure out where the rest comes from."

Teets may need surgery, her doctor has told her. But she can`t stop now, not until work at the office slows down. "If you don`t work," she says, "you don`t get paid."

She has worked through injury and illness many times. Like nearly one-quarter of the working-age adults in Allegany County, she has no health insurance.

"Two, four, six, eight," Teets says, counting out cans of tuna.

Today, 20 million working Americans and family members are living below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. An additional 40 million are managing to stay above the poverty line but have serious trouble paying their rent, buying health insurance or providing food for their families.

Since Johnson launched the War on Poverty, poor families have benefited from programs started during his presidency, such as Head Start for preschool children and grants for college students, and from later programs that grew out of the initiative, such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children and the earned-income tax credit.

Johnson`s initiatives have helped bring about a dramatic reduction of the poverty rate among the elderly. The childhood poverty rate also has declined but has proved more intractable. Since the 1970s, the number of poor families with at least one person working full time has doubled.

For Johnson to win the war, real earnings needed to double from generation to generation, and the economy needed to remain healthy, his planners said. Instead, the nation entered a period of high inflation, followed by industrial restructuring and soaring unemployment, says Sheldon Danziger, a poverty researcher at the University of Michigan.

Today, average wages for production workers are lower in real dollars than they were 40 years ago, Danziger`s research shows.

"The War on Poverty hasn`t let people down so much as the economy," Danziger says.

Brenda Teets was a year old when Johnson visited Cumberland. Her mother didn`t bring her to City Hall to hear the president speak of improving poor schools and retraining workers whose skills were obsolete. Wanda Binnix already knew the kind of wearying poverty he described, the kind Johnson`s planners had just begun tomeasure.

Binnix was raised in the western part of Allegany County, one of a coal miner`s 14 children. When she was growing up, the mines that had driven the railroads, which in turn had transformed Cumberland into a commercial hub, were closing.

When she was 6, her mother died. Then the Midlothian mine where her father, Edgar Skidmore, worked shut down. Her father had to adapt. "He drove a school bus," she says. "He raised us.

"If you have had a hard raising-up, it sticks in your craw, in your mind," Binnix says. Her grandchildren, she says, have had it easy.

They will never know the feeling of crawling two miles into the ground to work the mine. They haven`t had to sleep six to a bed like she and her siblings did. They don`t know the taste of groundhog or squirrel.

Binnix found a measure of prosperity during her marriage to Brenda`s father, Irvin Morgan. In the 1960s, he worked full time at Celanese, the big synthetic-fiber mill south of the city. He came home with holes burned in his clothes from the vats of chemicals he tended. He also came home with benefits and enough money to support her and their three children.

In Cumberland, many people look back at the `60s, at Johnson`s visit, as a time of prosperity.

"This was a wealthy town back then," says the Rev. Daniel G. Taylor Jr., who was among the thousand who greeted Johnson. The factories were running, and unions were strong. Cumberland`s Kelly-Springfield Tire Co. plant made tires, and the local Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. plant manufactured windshield glass. More than one-third of the working-age men in the county had manufacturing jobs, and many brought in more than $4,000 a year. Some blue-collar workers -- railroad and paper mill employees, for instance -- were making the county`s median income: $5,100.

Then there were the poor: One-fourth of the county`s families were living on less than $3,000 a year, which in 1964, became the definition of poverty for a family of four. Nationwide, one-fifth of Americans were living below that line -- the "forgotten fifth," Johnson called them.

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Johnson`s War on Poverty, together with a growing economy, had a noticeable effect. By the 1970 Census, the national poverty rate had been cut by about one-third, with 12.6 percent of people deemed low-income. In Allegany County, it fell to 14 percent and declined even further by the next census.

For Brenda Teets`s family, though, trouble lay ahead. Her mother left the family when Brenda was 3. Her father was laid off from the factory, and he would resort to hunting to put food on the table.

Yet her father told Brenda that she was smart and that she could reach beyond a life on the edge of poverty. She dreamed of going to college. Then in 1979, at age 16, Brenda had her first child.

For Allegany County it was the end of an era.

In the 1980s, the factories began shutting down. Celanese closed in 1983, a casualty of changing markets and a foreign buyout. The Kelly-Springfield and Pittsburgh Plate Glass plants followed when technology made their products obsolete.

By the end of the decade, poverty in the county would be back up to 16.5 percent

County leaders fought back hard. They attracted a vast state prison complex. There`s a federal prison, too. Manufacturing still plays a role, though smaller. Then there are restaurant, hotel, health care and retail jobs, and jobs at call centers for $7 and $8 an hour.

At the time of the 2000 Census, the county`s poverty rate was about 15 percent, far lower than when Johnson came. Yet in the food pantry, a sense of pessimism remains. More people with jobs, some with incomes nearly twice the poverty level, show up once a month to stretch their food budget.

National experts say the poverty rate no longer shows how many families are living below the subsistence level. As in 1964, the poverty line is still defined as three times the cost of a year`s worth of food. But while the inflation-adjusted cost of food has fallen, the costs of other needs, such as housing, transportation and child care, have grown.

Now, at twice the poverty level, nearly three-quarters of American families have at least one serious financial hardship, such as worries about food, rent or mortgage payments or about inadequate medical or child care, according to the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute.

"The category you could call struggling has broadened to include families at twice the poverty rate," says Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

On Easter Sunday, Brenda Teets gathers her children and guests for a dinner of ham and macaroni salad, deviled eggs and green bean casserole.

Her first husband is dead of cancer, and two other marriages are over. Teets remains the gravitational center of the family, with four children still at home, including one who pays rent to live in the basement.

Teets supervises a tax service office in a strip shopping center in Cumberland. With her salary, supplemented by Social Security death benefits and child support, she manages to stay above the $18,400 annual poverty level for a family of four.

She and her three younger children live on about $1,600 in a good month. With rent, utilities, car payments and insurance and after-school child care, her monthly bills regularly top $2,000.

Each year, at tax time, she, like many of her clients, receives an earned-income tax credit. That brings her annual income to about $22,000 a year, but it`s not enough to close her budget gap.

Because her work is seasonal, she receives no benefits, though her younger children are eligible for a state insurance program for children. When she is laid off during slow months, she collects unemployment. The arrangement works up to a point, allowing her to be home when school is out. But she is well aware that she walks a thin line.

On Easter, her three young daughters are helping in the kitchen of her rented bungalow, with the 5-year-old standing on a chair to reach the sink. Her three grown children are on hand.

There is Tom Spiker, 22, trained as a cable technician. Unable to find work in that field, he pumps gas for minimum wage. There is Matt Kirkpatrick, 20, the father of a 2-year-old girl. He is taking college classes and working at a call center, taking customer-service calls for $7 an hour. Both sons are frustrated about their prospects.

"Living around here," says Matt, "you don`t have an example of what you want to be."

An example, though, sits across the living room.

Brenda`s oldest child, Krista Spiker, 24, buoyed by scholarships, work-study jobs and her mother`s dreams, is earning her second master`s degree at Frostburg State University. Later in the summer, after her wedding, she will head to Marquette University in Milwaukee to work on a doctorate in educational policy and leadership.

She believes that her brothers could try harder to find their places in the world. But she acknowledges that they are at a disadvantage compared with people for whom college educations and job opportunities come easier. "We work for everything we have," she says, "but you can only make so much happen on your own."

Krista Spiker will leave Allegany County, where the population is falling and aging.

"It`s a giant retirement home," says her brother Tom, angrily. "If you want to retire, come to Cumberland. If you want a good job, go somewhere else."

But Cumberland is where he stays, frustrated and stuck, sitting in his mother`s living room.

His mother is working in the kitchen, tired and worried. She has been told that she has a large tumor on her left ovary. As she awaits test results, the tumor haunts her.

She thinks about her first husband`s agonizing death to cancer, about her mother`s decision to leave, about how those losses shook the family as deeply as the county`s economic hardships did.

And she thinks of her children. She has worked hard to make them a place in the world better than hers. But all of it -- the rented bungalow, the full refrigerator, the windows curtained against the rain, her purchase on stability -- is, after generations of hard work, bad luck and resilience, still so very fragile.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com

A Corrupted Culture



Thursday, May 20, 2004; Page A28

SENIOR U.S. COMMANDERS in Iraq insist that they never approved harsh interrogation techniques for Iraqi prisoners. Yet those same commanders now acknowledge that abusive practices were employed against detainees all over Iraq -- not just at Abu Ghraib prison -- and in Afghanistan. The International Red Cross has reported scores of incidents, and Gen. John P. Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command, said in a Senate hearing yesterday that 75 abuse cases have been investigated, as well as a number of deaths. Some of the methods that the commanders say were never sanctioned in Iraq -- and that, most experts believe, violate the Geneva Conventions -- were nevertheless listed on a sign posted at Abu Ghraib under the heading "Interrogation Rules of Engagement."

How could this massive breakdown of order and discipline have occurred? The Bush administration still tries to blame a few low-ranking reservists who served at Abu Ghraib. But a more convincing answer can be found in a memo submitted to President Bush by White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales in January 2002. In the memo, which was first disclosed by Newsweek magazine, Mr. Gonzales explained why he believed Mr. Bush should ignore State Department objections to his decision to exclude Afghanistan detainees from the Geneva Conventions. The presidential counsel derided the conventions as "quaint" and "obsolete" and claimed that setting them aside would, among other things, make it harder for prosecutors to charge Americans under U.S. law for alleged crimes against prisoners -- something he presented as a "positive." Such contempt for the rule of law pervaded his argument -- and was endorsed by Mr. Bush.

Mr. Gonzales did, however, point out several risks. Among them, he said, was the danger that "a determination that [Geneva] does not apply to al Qaeda and the Taliban could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries."

As Senate Armed Services Committee hearings have made clear, that is exactly what happened. Harsh techniques for interrogating prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were developed justified on the grounds that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. These techniques then were used by CIA and Army intelligence teams in Afghanistan and, later, Iraq -- even though Mr. Bush declared that the Geneva Conventions would apply to the Iraq war.

An Army legal adviser working in the Iraqi theater, Col. Marc Warren, described it this way before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday: "We, as a task force, did not have" an interrogation policy. "We had other units . . . which had served in Afghanistan, bring in their own policies that had been used in other theaters. Additionally, we had what we call the common law of interrogation approaches . . . which were variations on the authorized approaches." Mr. Warren said that in an attempt to draft a formal policy, Central Command circulated drafts with lists of these procedures, including some from Guantanamo Bay and many of the abusive ones later posted at Abu Ghraib. They were not included in the eventual policy -- but it was too late.

Until the Bush administration took office, the U.S. Army operated according to the Geneva Conventions as spelled out in its manuals. But in the chaos of Iraq, there was no firm policy; for U.S. soldiers on the ground, there was "an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries," as Mr. Gonzales foresaw. And so interrogation methods that the administration had approved for the Taliban and al Qaeda filtered into the theater, in part through intelligence units and interrogators, some of them CIA personnel and civilians who had worked elsewhere. Soldiers and interrogators took those methods to a criminal extreme. That they were able to do so shows that the harm Mr. Gonzales warned of but ultimately dismissed -- the undermining of U.S. military culture -- came to pass. Repairing it will require Mr. Bush -- or Congress -- to reverse his harmful decision to distort the rule of law.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Better Fed Than Dead
Alan Greenspan wears out his welcome.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, May 19, 2004, at 2:14 PM PT

President Bush yesterday renominated Alan Greenspan for a fifth term as head of the Federal Reserve`s Board of Governors. The news that the 78-year-old patron saint of the 1990s bull market, whose current term expires in June, will have another 18 months at the helm didn`t cause much of a ripple on Wall Street.

In fact, the pre-appointment hoopla was much more of a Washington than a Wall Street story. Would Bush fils exact revenge by not appointing the man who was allegedly not sufficiently accommodating during Bush père`s 1992 re-election campaign? By waiting until the last minute, Bush seemed to be playing a game of chicken with the central banker. Were Bush operatives subtly leaning on the insecure central banker to keep interest rates low by withholding renomination? The theory of such political gamesmanship is weak. It would require an economic team that has difficulty with simple arithmetic outmaneuvering the infinitely wily Greenspan.

What`s more, Greenspan has never required much pressure to do the administration`s bidding. First, he abandoned his long-term stance as a deficit hawk to endorse tax cuts based on surpluses that he had to know were nonexistent. He has made only the most perfunctory complaints when the administration and its congressional allies systematically destroyed the nation`s balance sheet. And he proved enormously accommodating by slashing the Federal Funds Rate to historically low levels—it`s been at 1 percent since June 2003.

Indeed, Greenspan`s stubborn insistence on keeping the interest rates he controls ultra-low explains why the market largely shrugged at his reappointment. In recent months, the Maestro has lost a lot of his juice with investors. A central banker who can no longer cut interest rates—the gift for which investors and financial service companies are always hoping—carries less weight and inspires less affection on Wall Street.

Many of those worried about the long-term direction of the economy have also turned on Greenspan—not because he`s going to raise rates, but because he has failed to do so. CNBC talk-show host and National Review columnist Larry Kudlow wrote last week that supply-siders "have every reason to be concerned that the Fed has waited too long to rein in unusually easy money." Brian Wesbury, chief economist at Griffin, Kubik, Stephens & Thompson Inc., took to the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to complain that Greenspan`s Fed is behind the curve because it uses the wrong data to assess inflation risks.

The market seems to agree. The Federal Reserve controls interest rates by manipulating the Federal Funds Rate, the rate at which banks can borrow money from each other overnight. These short-term rates influence long-term rates, which dictate what people pay for mortgages, car loans, and longer-maturity bonds. But the daily activity of investors placing bets, and of consumers, companies, and governments borrowing money, also heavily influence long-term rates. Greenspan, fearing deflation despite signs of inflation, has kept the short-term rate he controls static for nearly a year. Meanwhile, the market, fearing inflation amid signs of inflation, has pushed long-term rates sharply higher. The rate on the 10-year Treasury bond has risen from 3.65 percent in mid-March to 4.78 percent today—an increase of more than 30 percent. Greenspan will almost certainly raise rates in June by 25 or 50 basis points. But because the markets have already raised longer-term rates substantially, his move will be anticlimactic. And Greenspan`s move will likely be the first of several—the market is predicting a Federal Funds Rate of about 2 percent by the end of 2004.

For much of his tenure, Greenspan has been credited with an Olympian mastery over the markets, a preternaturally superior understanding of the economy, and an ability to engineer soft landings. (See under: Woodward, Bob, The Maestro.) But in the past few years, Greenspan has received a lot of ex post facto criticism for not doing more to choke off the speculative frenzy in stocks earlier than 2000. And in what may be a manifestation of the Feiler Faster Thesis, some observers are already indicting Greenspan as the villain of the housing bubble, even though that hasn`t popped yet.

Greenspan`s commitment to low interest rates ushered in an era of cheap money, in which Americans took on massive amounts of new debt to buy houses, cars, and vacations. And many believe the reckoning—a credit bust—is just around the corner. James Grant, the acerbic editor of Grant`s Interest Rate Observer, wrote in the New York Times on Sunday that the Fed has a "guilty conscience" because "It knows that its 1 percent rate drove many risk-averse people into stocks and bonds because they could no longer afford to live on the meager returns of their savings." Peter Eavis, a sharp columnist at TheStreet.com, agrees. He relishes the prospect of extending Greenspan`s reign only because "there is a very high chance that the 78-year-old Greenspan will be around to deal with his own mess."

sidebar

The term of the Fed chairman runs four years. Board members are allowed to serve a single, full 14-year term and can serve partial terms if they are appointed to fill an unexpired term. Greenspan joined the Fed in 1987 to fill an unexpired term and was reappointed to a full 14-year term that began in February 1992. It ends in January 2006, 18 months into his next term as chairman. He cannot be reappointed to another term on the board.
Daniel Gross (www.danielgross.net) writes Slate`s "Moneybox" column. You can e-mail him at [e-mail].

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2100811/

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Chalabi`s Baghdad Residence Raided
From Associated Press

8:18 AM PDT, May 20, 2004

BAGHDAD — U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police raided the residence of longtime American ally Ahmad Chalabi today, and aides accused the Americans of trying to pressure him to stop complaining about U.S. plans for Iraq after sovereignty is transferred in about six weeks.

American officials here have complained privately that Chalabi is interfering with a U.S. investigation into allegations that Saddam Hussein`s regime skimmed millions of dollars in oil revenues during the U.N.-run oil-for-food program.

But coalition spokesman Dan Senor said that investigation has "nothing to do with what transpired today" and that Chalabi and his organization, the Iraqi National Congress, were not the targets.

A senior coalition official said on condition of anonymity that an Iraqi judge had issued several warrants and the details would be released later.

At a press conference after the raid, Chalabi lashed out at the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority, complaining it was coddling former members of Saddam`s Baath Party and treating Iraqis badly.

"I am America`s best friend in Iraq," Chalabi said. "If the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home, you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people."

He said he was asleep when police stormed into his room carrying pistols.

"I was asleep. I opened the door. The police went into my room carrying pistols," Chalabi said. "I told them to get out."

Police seized documents related to the oil-for-food program, a report by the Oil Ministry to the Governing Council and letters from the council, he said.

Chalabi claimed U.S. authorities here were angry with him because "I am now calling for policies to liberate the Iraqi people, to get full sovereignty now and I am pushing the gate in a way they don`t like.

"I have opened up the investigation of the oil-for-food program which has cast doubt about the integrity of the U.N. here, which they don`t like."

In a statement, Chalabi`s INC party accused authorities of behaving in "a manner unbecoming in the climate of the new Iraq" and reminiscent of "the former fascist regime."

It called on the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, of which Chalabi is a prominent member, to take "a national and responsible stand toward these provocations."

Chalabi aide Haidar Musawi said the U.S.-Iraqi force surrounded Chalabi`s compound in Baghdad`s Mansour district at about 10:30 a.m., while Chalabi was inside. Force members told Chalabi`s aides they wanted to search the house for wanted INC officials.

The aides agreed to let one unarmed Iraqi policeman inside to look around.

American soldiers and armed U.S. civilians wearing flak jackets milled about the compound and people were seen loading boxes into vehicles. Aides said documents and computers were seized without warrants.

Salem Chalabi, nephew of Ahmad Chalabi and head of the Iraqi war crimes tribunal, said his uncle told him that Iraqi and American authorities "entered his home and put the guns to his head in a very humiliating way that reminds everyone of the conduct of the former regime."

The younger Chalabi said the reason for the raid was unclear but the coalition "must be afraid of his political movement."

Ahmad Chalabi has complained recently about U.S. plans to retain control of Iraqi security forces and maintain widespread influence over political institutions after power is transferred from the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to an Iraqi interim administration on June 30.

Musawi accused the Americans of trying to pressure Chalabi, a longtime Pentagon favorite.

"Why is this happening at a time when the government is being formed?" Musawi told The Associated Press.

The Americans also raided other INC offices, he said.

"The INC is ready to have any impartial and judicial body investigate any accusation against it," Musawi said. "There are American parties who have a list of Iraqi personalities that they want arrested to put pressure on the Iraqi political force."

Another party official, Qaisar Wotwot, said the raid was linked to Chalabi`s recent comments demanding full Iraqi control of oil revenues and security after the June 30 transfer of power.

"It`s a provocative operation, designed to force Dr. Chalabi to change his political stance," he said.

For years, Chalabi`s INC received hundreds of thousands of dollars every month from the Pentagon, in part for intelligence passed along by exiles about Saddam`s purported weapons of mass destruction.

Chalabi has been criticized since large stockpiles of such weapons were never found. The former banker and longtime Iraqi exile was convicted of fraud in absentia in Jordan in 1992 in a banking scandal and sentenced to 22 years in jail. He has repeatedly denied the charges.

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz confirmed earlier this week, during testimony before Congress, that Washington has ended payments of $340,000 a month to Chalabi`s organization for intelligence gathering have been ended.

U.S. and coalition officials recently accused Chalabi of undermining the investigation into the oil-for-food program. The U.S.-backed probe has collected more than 20,000 files from Saddam`s old regime and hired the American accounting firm Ernst & Young to review them.

Chalabi launched his own investigation, saying an independent probe will have more credibility. He exposed alleged abuses of the oil-for-food program early on and has been trying to force the coalition to give him the $5 million in Iraqi funds set aside for the probe to pay for his effort.

Iraq`s U.S. civilian administrator, L. Paul Bremer, has resisted that request.

The money comes from a fund of mostly seized Saddam assets and Iraqi oil sales.

The United Nations is conducting a third investigation led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Geht es `Achmet dem Dieb` nun endlich an den Kragen.

May 20, 2004
G.I.`s and Iraqis Raid Offices and Home of Former Exile Leader
By DEXTER FILKINS
and KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 20 — American soldiers and Iraqi police today raided the offices and home of Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi politician once favored by the Pentagon, and removed computers and documents.

About 100 American and Iraqi law enforcement officers, including officials from the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., were involved in the raids, witnesses said.

Reporters who entered the office compound after the departure of the Americans and Iraqi officers found a scene of destruction. Computers had been ripped out of the walls, furniture had been overturned, doors broken down and framed photographs of Mr. Chalabi smashed. Aides to Mr. Chalabi said members of the raiding party had helped themselves to food and beverages from the refrigerator.

According to Mr. Chalabi`s aides, the Americans are looking for two men close to the Iraqi politician, one of whom is Mr. Chalabi`s security chief and presides over a vast intelligence network.

American occupation authorities declined to comment this morning on the raids.

"This is politically motivated intimidation," said an aide to Mr. Chalabi as he wandered through the debris-strewn offices of the Iraqi National Congress, Mr. Chalabi`s political organization. He blamed L. Paul Bremer III, the top American adminstrator here, for the raids.

"Bremer," he said, "has lost his mind."

The raids illuminated a huge rupture in what had been the Bush adminstration`s most important personal and political relationship in Iraq. Mr. Chalabi, a longtime exile leader and now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, played a crucial role in persuading the administration that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power. But he has since become a lightning rod for critics of the Bush administration, who say the United States relied on him too heavily for prewar intelligence that has since proved faulty.

In recent weeks, the relationship has further soured as Mr. Chalabi has openly criticized Mr. Bremer and has advocated a more expansive definition of the sovereignty which Iraq will assume on June 30, including full Iraqi control of its armed forces and oil revenues.

In recent months, Mr. Chalabi has also criticized Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations official who is organizing an Iraqi government to take control of the country on July 1 and whose efforts have been embraced by the White House. And he has objected to Mr. Bremer`s efforts to leave the governing council out of an investigation of alleged corruption in the United Nations oil-for-food program for Iraq.

Aides close to Mr. Chalabi say the animosity between him and Mr. Bremer has grown so severe that the Iraqi has taken to skipping Iraqi Governing Council meetings that Mr. Bremer attends.

The Iraqi National Congress revealed earlier this week that the American government had decided to halt monthly $335,000 payments to the group.

Mr. Chalabi`s group has received at least $27 million in United States financing in the past four years, an Iraqi National Congress official said earlier this week. This includes $335,000 a month as part of a classified program through the Defense Intelligence Agency, since the summer of 2002, to help gather intelligence in Iraq.

Internal reviews by the United States government have found that much of the information provided as part of the classified program before American forces invaded Iraq last year was useless, misleading or even fabricated.

The official from Mr. Chalabi`s group said the classified program had originally been scheduled to end Sept. 30, 2003, but was extended twice — to Dec. 31, 2003, and then again, to June 30, 2004. The official said he did not know why the government decided not to extend the program again.

Salem Chalabi, nephew of Mr. Chalabi and head of the Iraqi war crimes tribunal, told The A.P. that his uncle told him by telephone that Iraqi and American authorities "entered his home and put the guns to his head in a very humiliating way that reminds everyone of the conduct of the former regime."

Ali Sarraf, the finance director of the Iraqi National Congress, describe a tableau of brutality. "We offered them the keys and they showed us guns," he said. "They kicked the door down."

Standing amid the debris in the organization`s offices, he said: "Bremer is panicking. This is about settling things with Dr. Chalabi."

Dexter Filkins reported from Baghdad for this article and Kirk Semple reported from New York.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Die Topmeldung der letzten Stunde.

washingtonpost.com

Chalabi`s House Raided by U.S. Troops

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 20, 2004; 10:55 AM

BAGHDAD, May 20--U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police on Thursday raided the home of Ahmad Chalabi, a Governing Council member who was once the Pentagon`s pick to run post-war Iraq, and two office buildings used by his Iraqi National Congress.

U.S. troops detained three guards and seized computers, dozens of rifles, and files from the offices of the INC, a coalition of parties that opposed Saddam Hussein from exile.

U.S. spokesmen in Iraq said the operation was strictly an Iraqi matter, authorized by an Iraqi investigative judge and Iraqi police. They said they would not comment on it.

INC officials said about 100 U.S. soldiers arrived in the neighborhood before the raids began, and that Iraqi police carried out much of the search at the direction of an American in civilian clothes whom they identified as an official with Central Intelligence Agency.

Boot prints marked several doors kicked down in the raids, which included a top-to-bottom search of the INC`s intelligence offices that Washington once turned to for help in searching for former top Hussein officials and weapons of mass destruction.

The Defense Intelligence Agency decided earlier this month to end a $340,000 monthly payment to the INC`s intelligence arm, the source for much of the pre-war information on Iraq`s alleged weapons of mass destruction that were President Bush`s rationale for toppling Hussein.

The raids appeared to complete Chalabi`s remarkable fall from grace in Washington over the last difficult year of U.S. occupation in Iraq.

There was no immediate explanation from U.S. officials here for the reason behind the morning searches. But INC officials said the raids were U.S. retribution against Chalabi for his increasingly strident criticism of the American management of post-war Iraq.

"This is a political conspiracy and political pressure," said Haider Musawi, an INC official who spoke with reporters at the party`s headquarters in a lavish home once occupied by Hussein`s half-brother. "We have been talking about full sovereignty for the Iraqi people. We have been talking about a corruption investigation into the U.N. programs. We knew that they were preparing something against us for some time."

Chalabi, a wealthy businessman who returned to Iraq after decades of exile in London, won favor among Pentagon officials before the war for his ardent opposition to Hussein and as a generous source of information on Iraq`s weapons programs. He is also a moderate Shiite Muslim, making him a potentially important bridge to Iraq`s majority religious community.

But it became clear soon after the fall of Baghdad that Chalabi enjoyed little support inside Iraq, and much of his pre-war intelligence has turned out to be wrong or "intentionally misleading," according to a recent U.S. assessment.. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction has become a political liability for Bush during an election year, and Chalabi`s relationship with his former patrons at the Pentagon has soured accordingly.

In turn, Chalabi, who is one of 25 members of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, has emerged as among the most outspoken mainstream critics of U.S. policy in Iraq.

Over the past few months, he has criticized the Bush administration for not moving quickly enough toward ending the occupation and granting full political powers to an Iraqi government. U.S. officials intend to hand over limited authority to an interim Iraqi government next month.

More recently, Chalabi has blamed U.S. military officials for allowing members of Hussein`s Baath Party to remerge as a local security force in the restive city of Fallujah west of Baghdad. Chalabi condemned U.S. security policy as a failure after the assassination earlier this week of Izzedin Salim, the governing council president this month who was killed in a suicide car-bomb while waiting to enter the U.S. compound.

He has also been feuding with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, over who should manage an investigation into corruption inside the Hussein-era U.N. oil-for-food program.

Chalabi and the rest of the Governing Council want to oversee the inquiry, and had asked the U.S. firm KPMG to conduct the audit. Bremer refused to release the money, however, and has approved the hiring of Ernst & Young to conduct the $20 million investigation.

INC officials said U.S. troops and Iraqi police arrived in the elite Mansour neighborhood, the location of Chalabi`s house and the INC offices, around 6 a.m. A few hours later, the officials said, soldiers and police arrived at Chalabi`s home and demanded to be let inside.

The officers said they were pursing several "suspects," INC officials recounted, but would not disclose the reason or produce an arrest warrant when asked.

Musawi said Chalabi "conducted negotiations" from inside his home, an INC official said, and eventually allowed one Iraqi police officer to enter and search the premises for the suspects. No one was found.

The police and soldiers moved next to the INC offices, housed in an ornate Chinese-style mansion once the perk of whoever headed Hussein`s intelligence agency. Several guards on duty said as many as 100 U.S. soldiers arrived, and stood guard as six Iraqi police officers entered with an American dressed in civilian clothes and body armor.

One of the guards said the American directed the Iraqi police, who they said kicked down doors and smashed a picture of Chalabi. A damaged frame could be seen in one of the ransacked offices.

Haider Ridha Mohammed, a guard on duty at the time, said he asked t he police officer why he had tossed the framed photograph on the ground. Mohammed said the officer responded, "He`s gone now, Ahmad Chalabi is finished."

A senior Iraqi police official familiar with the raid denied that the officers damaged the photographs.

Musawi said eight or nine computers had been taken, along with files from several individual offices. He said the three guards detained by U.S. troops were the latest INC officials picked up by U.S. forces.

Two others have been arrested in the past month, he said, although he did not name them. One of them may be, Sabah Nouri, whom Chalabi picked to become the top anti-corruption official in the new Iraqi Ministry of Finance.

Chalabi heads the Governing Council`s finance committee, and has enormous clout over its staffing and operation. Nouri, a German national, is now being held in a maximum-security prison. He faces 17 charges related to corruption, according to a U.S. official familiar with the case.

U.S. soldiers also seized at least 36 rifles from the headquarters, at least some of them licensed, according to INC officials. "They took the weapons three days after the president`s assassination - what kind of a message does that send?" Musawi said. "They have been waging a smear campaign against Chalabi and the INC for some time. It is clear this is a political game."

Chalabi, at a news conference later, was furious. "They invaded the home of a Governing Council member a few days after the president of the Governing Council was blown up by terrorist actions at an American checkpoint," he said, according to the Associated Press.

Brandishing a framed picture on which the glass was shattered, he accused troops and police of rousing him from his bed, ransacking his office, removing documents and a valuable copy of the Koran and "vandalizing" his belongings.

He said U.S. officials disliked his opposition to Baathists, his efforts to investigate kickbacks paid by foreigners to Saddam under the U.N. oil-for-food program and his demands for full Iraqi control over the armed forces after a U.S. handover of limited sovereignty, planned for June 30.

"Let my people go. Let my people be free. It is time for the Iraqi people to run their affairs," Chalabi said.

"If the (U.S. occupation authority) finds it necessary to direct an armed attack on my home you can see the state of relations between the (authority) and the Iraqi people," he said.

Staff writer Ariana Cha contributed to this article from Washington.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Eine solche Aussage über den Präsidenten ist ungewöhnlich. Auch Senatoren der anderen Partei halten sich zurück und geben sich staatstragend.

U.S. kills 40 civilians in village attack
BLUNT ASSESSMENT: S.F.`s Pelosi calls Bush `incompetent` and lacking in judgment
Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief
Thursday, May 20, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/05/20/MNGK36OR7L1.DTL

Washington -- House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco offered her strongest condemnation yet of President Bush on Wednesday, assailing him as incompetent and declaring that the only way for the United States to triumph in Iraq is to replace him as commander in chief.

"Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he`s not a leader,`` Pelosi said. "He`s a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon.``

Pelosi has long been an outspoken critic of Bush and the war in Iraq. Yet the tone and extent of her comments during an interview with The Chronicle go well beyond criticisms leveled by her and other Democratic leaders in the past.

Speaking from her Capitol office for 45 minutes, Pelosi portrayed the president as dangerously in over his head and stubbornly unwilling to consider information that clashes with his own preconceptions.

"He has on his shoulders the deaths of many more troops, because he would not heed the advice of his own State Department of what to expect after May 1 when he ... declared that major combat is over,`` Pelosi charged. "The shallowness that he has brought to the office has not changed since he got there.``

The sharp words reflect a growing despair among lawmakers of both parties over Iraq as well as a growing sense of opportunity among Democrats that they will be able to capitalize on the deteriorating situation to oust Bush. A poll released Wednesday by the Democratic firm Democracy Corps found that 55 percent of voters say the United States is losing control in Iraq, while 41 percent believe the United States is making progress.

The White House dismissed Pelosi`s comments as election-year posturing.

"It`s clear that the election season is drawing near, and there are those who will pursue politics over policy,`` said White House spokesman Ken Lisaius. "That doesn`t change the fact that the president is focused on winning the war on terror, protecting our homeland security and strengthening our improving economy.``

Bush, speaking to reporters after a meeting with his cabinet, said steady progress is being made toward the June 30 transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis and toward free elections.

"We`ve got hard work to do,`` Bush said. "After all, we saw the vivid savagery of the enemy; the decapitation of a U.S. citizen reminds us all about the barbaric nature of those who are trying to stop progress toward freedom. We understand the nature of that enemy. We also understand the nature of our brave troops. They`re motivated, they`re skilled, they`re well trained. They will accomplish the mission.``

While some members of Congress have been highly critical of Bush`s Iraq policy, most Democratic leaders -- including Sen. John Kerry, the party`s presumptive presidential nominee -- have shied away from the blunt language used by Pelosi. Their caution stems from the fluidity of the situation as well as a political concern that comments too strongly condemning the commander in chief at a time of war may be viewed by some voters as unpatriotic.

"It`s a dangerous situation,`` Kerry said on his campaign plane earlier in the week. "You have to give the president some room to get things done, but if he doesn`t do what he has to do ..."

Kerry did not finish the sentence.

Pelosi, who never fails to mention her support for the troops in Iraq, led the effort against the war in 2003 and has been a consistent critic of the Bush policy. Yet in her role presiding over all 206 House Democrats, she had - - until Wednesday -- been more restrained in her criticism of Bush`s leadership abilities.

"Not to get personal about it, but the president`s capacity to lead has never been there. In order to lead, you have to have judgment. In order to have judgment, you have to have knowledge and experience. He has none,`` Pelosi said.

She called on the United States to bring more allies into the war effort, to send more troops to Iraq if military commanders ask for them and to level with the American people about how much the conflict is going to cost, an amount she estimated will soon reach $250 billion. Though she voted against going to war in 2003, she rejected the idea of withdrawing from Iraq now as irresponsible.

But success in building the coalition and rebuilding Iraq can happen only with a new president, Pelosi said.

"This president has demonstrated very clearly that he does not have the capacity to present a plan to transition,`` she said.

"The only way we can get more troops from other countries is to have a president who respects the other countries. It`s hopeless for George Bush. He has made it hopeless.``

Pelosi said Kerry`s more gentle criticism of Bush`s Iraq policy was appropriate.

"The risk in many of us speaking out in the way that I`m speaking out to you right now is that people will say, `Oh, it`s just political,` `` Pelosi said.

Yet in the end, Pelosi said, she is confident that the failures in Iraq, as well as discontent over domestic issues, will defeat Bush in November.

"He`s gone,`` Pelosi said of Bush. "He`s so gone.``

E-mail Marc Sandalow at [e-mail].

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle |

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THE `ANTI-GIBSON` OF ITS TIME RETURNS
Aidin Vaziri
Sunday, May 16, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/16/PKGPR6JKJS1.DTL

Now that Mel Gibson is done boring everyone to tears with his account of major religious historical events in "The Passion of the Christ" there couldn`t be a better time for the Monty Python gang to revive their definitive 1979 biblical tale, "Life of Brian." The once-controversial movie, which turns 25 this year, chronicles the cross-dressing, extremely naked adventures of Brian, the man born in the manger next door to Jesus. There is even a dramatic crucifixion scene, albeit with a lot more singing. We spoke with Eric Idle, 61, one of the key Python players and the man who played nine roles in the movie..

Q: You filmed "Life of Brian" in the same Tunisian desert where George Lucas shot "Star Wars." Were there any random Wookie attacks?

A: Yes, it was very weird. We were above the troglodyte villages. But I think they were just crucifying Trekkies.

Q: I didn`t know Trekkies were into "Star Wars."

A: I think they are. They`re the older brothers of "Star Wars" people, aren`t they?

Q: No, they`re not. They bitterly hate each other.

A: Like the Protestants and Catholics? Nobody else can tell the difference but they hate each other. It`s like the Judea Peoples` Front and the Peoples` F -- Front of Judea.

Q: What other kinds of problems did you have with the locals you used as extras?

A: They were fine. They were actually very nice people except they were so poor sometimes they would steal the rags that were meant to be costumes at the end of the day.

Q: How did they deal with all the rampant male nudity?

A: Well, when Graham Chapman came to the window naked they all ran away because there were women in the audience and they`re not allowed to see naked British boys standing in a window.

Q: Did they also wonder why all these Englishmen were running around their village in drag?

A: I would think so but, to them, Westerners are beyond the pale. I don`t think they bother to ask themselves what motivates Western people. They just think we`re insane, and for good reason.

Q: How many times did they try to cook you?

A: They didn`t. Tunisians are very good people. They were part of the French empire for the longest possible time so they like lunch and good food and swimming and fishing and things like that. Unfortunately, America`s ignorance of the Arab world is so profound they can`t tell the difference between any Arabs, whereas the Egyptians are quite different from the Tunisians, who are different from the Libyans, who are different from the Moroccans. They`re vastly different countries.

Q: The people in Tunisia actually dealt with the movie better than the Westerners, didn`t they?

A: Well, of course. You`re threatening people`s power bases. The great thing about religions is they scare people into doing what they`re told. If you question that then they`re quite right to protest.

Q: Some rabbi claimed "Life of Brian" was produced in hell. The Catholics condemned it. The Protestants said it was profane. People actually prayed the film would fail. You were totally like the Mel Gibson of 1979.

A: No, we were not. We were the anti-Gibson. Anybody who gets in the way is going to be blown away by these religious people. You`ve seen their hairstyles, now look at their television programs. How can you take them seriously? Any God that spoke to this lot is not to be trusted.

Q: You were the one that originally wanted to call the movie "Jesus Christ, Lust for Glory.``

A: Well, that was an ad-lib when somebody asked me what our next movie was going to be. We discovered very quickly you can`t attack Jesus because what he says is rather good. If only more Christians would practice it, then it would be fabulous.

Q: You can`t even attack the guy born next door to Jesus.

A: Absolutely. Religion is funny. Everyone says they believe in God, but they all totally disagree with each other. What`s the thing you agree on, then? They all agree to kill each other. You never see war started by atheists.

Q: How rich did all those religious protests make you anyway?

A: They didn`t. Besides, unlike most things in America, it isn`t all about the money. Some things need saying. We didn`t know we were going to make money with "Life of Brian." In fact, we knew we were going to make trouble.

Aidin Vaziri is a freelance writer.

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Life of Brian`
We-Welease Bwian!
Upon its initial release in 1979, Monty Python`s "Life of Brian" was denounced by the Catholic Church with a "C" rating (for "condemned"), and the head of the Rabbinical Alliance of America said it "was produced in hell." You can`t buy that kind of publicity. But lo! the film riseth again ... on its 25th anniversary in a new print. And, thanks to Mel Gibson and his passionate flock, what better time to revisit Python`s profane parody of the story of Jesus? Produced by Beatle George Harrison, the film`s targets are many: the wandering and misguided who are looking for a cause and for a reason to belong; the Left, whose tendency to fracture and in-fight reduces their impact; myopic and dense rulers who talk funny -- the list goes on. So, gather your congregation, your tribe or your nontraditional extended family to witness the Second Coming. And remember: Always look on the bright side of life (whistle). -- John Angelico, SF Gate

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Americans entitled to cheap gas -- right?
Joan Ryan
Thursday, May 20, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle
URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/05/20/BAGEJ6O54F1.DTL

Over the years, Americans have taken a lot of vicious abuse for being selfish and irresponsible. We are often portrayed as a nation that wants to have its cake and eat it too, which, as any American knows, is patently untrue. We also want our ice cream and maybe some Cool Whip.

I bring this up because, once again, we are the targets of international ridicule, this time for our anger over rising gas prices. Gas is up now to about $2 a gallon around the nation. It is averaging $2.31 in California. These prices are outrageous, as indicated by the newspaper and TV-news stories quoting motorists as saying, "These prices are outrageous.``

The rest of the world, however, is not sympathetic. They think that because gas is $5.22 a gallon in England, $4.24 a gallon in Tokyo and $4.92 a gallon in France, we are being piggy for complaining about per-gallon gas prices that, even with the recent spike, are still cheaper than a Starbucks Frappuccino.

Apparently the rest of the world doesn`t understand the underlying sociological reasons we react as we do to increases in gas prices. Unlike them, we drive cars the size of Paris apartments. They obviously don`t realize how much gas cars like these consume! It apparently has come as something of a surprise to many of us, too.

When asked to rank the importance of 56 characteristics they considered when buying a new car, Americans ranked fuel economy 44th. This explains why sport utility vehicles, minivans and light trucks accounted for 54 percent of all new cars bought last year.

"It`s still more important to have the right number of cup holders than high fuel economy," said Art Spinella, director of CNW Marketing Research, which conducted the survey.

Peter Rennert sells cars at John Irish Jeep in San Rafael. He showed a gray Grand Cherokee to a woman one morning earlier this week. She took the slow stroll around the vehicle, opened the doors, checked out the cargo space, took it for a test drive.

"What kind of gas mileage does it get?`` she asked Rennert. He showed her the manufacturer`s sticker on the window: 17 to 21 miles per gallon highway.

"That was the last I ever heard about it,`` Rennert said. "People bring it up mostly because they believe they`re supposed to.`` (The woman loved the car and said she`d be back soon with her husband to hammer out a deal.)

To understand Americans, it is essential for the rest of the world to remember that, underneath it all, we are socially responsible beings just like they are, except we like big things and lots of them. In the U.S., there are now 204 million cars and 191 million drivers, more cars than we have people to operate them. Blueberry muffins here are the size of our heads. Soda cups are big enough to harbor small children. We build houses designed on the well- known scientific practice of multiplying the number of family members by pi to reach the appropriate number of bathrooms.

If the rest of the world wants to understand us better, I recommend they see the new movie, "Supersize Me!`` It`s a documentary about a guy who eats nothing but McDonald`s food for a month. The movie reinforces what we Americans already know and have known for years: Fast food makes us fat and unhealthy. The movies shows, too, that this knowledge makes no difference whatsoever in our behavior. We still pull up to the golden arches, breathe in that great deep-fry aroma and order a sack of cholesterol to go.

Why? For the same reasons we buy big cars despite our heartfelt concerns about saving the environment and weaning ourselves from Middle East oil: because it makes us feel good, and because everybody else is doing it.

Across the bay in Richmond, at the Arco station on Cutting Boulevard and Harbor Way, Sandra Currier filled up her 1998 Chevy Blazer for $42 the other day. "This is the most I`ve ever paid,`` she said of the $2.29 regular unleaded. "It`s got to come down.``

She is a mobile notary public from Castro Valley who sometimes has to travel as much as 200 miles in a day. She is considering charging more for her services to cover the rising price of gas, but gas is not yet expensive enough to consider trading in her Blazer for something smaller and more fuel- efficient. Maybe when it hits $2.75 a gallon, she said.

"I feel my daughter is safer in the SUV,`` Currier said. "I don`t want to be lower (than everybody else on the road), looking up and getting crunched.``

In other words, if everybody else downsized, she would, too. Until then, she`s not going to put herself in harm`s way by being the poodle on a freeway of water buffalo.

How can the rest of the world blame her? They would do the same under the same circumstances, according to another CNW survey. In Western Europe, respondents said if gas prices were low enough, they would buy SUVs and big sedans, just like the Americans.

"It`s kind of amusing,`` Spinella said. "When we do an international wish list, it`s remarkable how similar people are in the kinds of things they would like to get their hands on.``

See? There it is. We would be as responsible as the rest of the world if we had the benefit they do of high gas prices. The low price of gas in the United States enables our SUV indulgences. To put this complex social dynamic in the parlance of the latest psychological research: It is not our fault.

Therefore, since this situation is not of our own making, we should not have to pay higher gas prices and give up the big-car life to which we have become accustomed. That would not be right.

And if there is one thing Americans believe in, it is doing what`s right.

E-mail Joan Ryan at [e-mail].

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle |

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The religious warrior of Abu Ghraib

An evangelical US general played a pivotal role in Iraqi prison reform
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday May 20, 2004

The Guardian
Saving General Boykin seemed like a strange sideshow last October. After it was revealed that the deputy undersecretary of defence for intelligence had been regularly appearing at evangelical revivals preaching that the US was in a holy war as a "Christian nation" battling "Satan", the furore was quickly calmed.

Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, explained that Boykin was exercising his rights as a citizen: "We`re a free people." President Bush declared that Boykin "doesn`t reflect my point of view or the point of view of this administration". Bush`s commission on public diplomacy had reported that in nine Muslim countries, just 12% believed that "Americans respect Arab/Islamic values". The Pentagon announced that its inspector general would investigate Boykin, though he has yet to report.

Boykin was not removed or transferred. At that moment, he was at the heart of a secret operation to "Gitmoize" (Guantánamo is known in the US as Gitmo) the Abu Ghraib prison. He had flown to Guantánamo, where he met Major General Geoffrey Miller, in charge of Camp X-Ray. Boykin ordered Miller to fly to Iraq and extend X-Ray methods to the prison system there, on Rumsfeld`s orders.

Boykin was recommended to his position by his record in the elite Delta forces: he was a commander in the failed effort to rescue US hostages in Iran, had tracked drug lord Pablo Escobar in Colombia, had advised the gas attack on barricaded cultists at Waco, Texas, and had lost 18 men in Somalia trying to capture a warlord in the notorious Black Hawk Down fiasco of 1993.

Boykin told an evangelical gathering last year how this fostered his spiritual crisis. "There is no God," he said. "If there was a God, he would have been here to protect my soldiers." But he was thunderstruck by the insight that his battle with the warlord was between good and evil, between the true God and the false one. "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

Boykin was the action hero side of his boss, Stephen Cambone, a conservative defence intellectual appointed to the new post of undersecretary of intelligence. Cambone is universally despised by the officer corps for his arrogant, abrasive and dictatorial style and regarded as the personal symbol of Rumsfeldism. A former senior Pentagon official told me of a conversation with a three-star general, who remarked: "If we were being overrun by the enemy and I had only one bullet left, I`d use it on Cambone."

Cambone set about cutting the CIA and the state department out of the war on terror, but he had no knowledge of special ops. For this the rarefied civilian relied on the gruff soldier - a melding of "ignorance and recklessness", as a military intelligence source told me.

Just before Boykin was put in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and then inserted into Iraqi prison reform, he was a circuit rider for the religious right. He allied himself with a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier that advocates applying military principles to evangelism. Its manifesto - Warrior Message - summons "warriors in this spiritual war for souls of this nation and the world ... "

Boykin staged a travelling slide show around the country where he displayed pictures of Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. "Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army," he preached. They "will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus". It was the reporting of his remarks at a revival meeting in Oregon that made them a subject of brief controversy.

There can be little doubt that he envisages the global war on terror as a crusade. With the Geneva conventions apparently suspended, international law is supplanted by biblical law. Boykin is in God`s chain of command. President Bush, he told an Oregon congregation last June, is "a man who prays in the Oval Office". And the president, too, is on a divine mission. "George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the US. He was appointed by God."

Boykin is not unique in his belief that Bush is God`s anointed against evildoers. Before his 2000 campaign, Bush confided to a leader of the religious right: "I feel like God wants me to run for president ... I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen."

Michael Gerson, Bush`s chief speechwriter, tells colleagues that on September 20 2001, after Bush delivered his speech to the Congress declaring a war on terror, he called Gerson to thank him for writing it. "God wants you here," Gerson says he told the president. And he says that Bush replied: "God wants us here."

But it`s Bush who wants Rumsfeld, Cambone and Boykin here.

· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior advisor to President Clinton, is Washington bureau chief of Salon.com

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Pentagon`s Feith in the eye of another storm
By Jim Lobe
May 21, 2004
WASHINGTON - Although it will take weeks, if not months, to sort out precisely who was responsible for what increasingly appears to have been the systemic abuse by US soldiers of Iraqi detainees, it should be no surprise if Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith is found to have played an important role.

Feith, who according to Bob Woodward`s new book Plan of Attack was described by the military commander who led last year`s invasion, General Tommie Franks, as "the f****ng stupidest guy on the face of the Earth", has been at the center of virtually everything else that has gone wrong in Iraq, so there is no reason to think he was very far from this one.

It was his office, for example, that created shortly after September 11, 2001, the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans (OSP), which reassessed 12 years of raw intelligence and the Arab press to find evidence of ties between the regime of former Iraq president Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist group. The OSP then "stovepiped" that information, unvetted by professional intelligence analysts, straight to Vice President Dick Cheney`s office for use by the White House.

Similarly, it was Feith`s office, along with the Defense Policy Group, whose members Feith appointed, that served as the point of entry and influence for Iraqi National Congress (INC) chief Ahmed Chalabi and his "defectors", who provided phony intelligence about Saddam`s vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

It was Feith`s office that was charged with planning the postwar occupation and reconstruction process, and, in so doing, in effect excluded input from Iraq experts from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and even from the Iraqi-American community, who had participated in a mammoth project that anticipated most of the problems occupation authorities have since encountered.

And it was Feith`s office that also housed the future under secretary for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, who facilitated the transfer of Major-General Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp that houses suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, to Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad in the interests of extracting more intelligence from detainees there about the fast-growing insurgency in Iraq.

Both Cambone and Miller, who brought high-pressure interrogation tactics barred by the Geneva Conventions with him from Guantanamo, are considered prime targets of ongoing congressional investigations into the prisoner-abuse scandal.

But the announcement on Tuesday by Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner that he is seeking testimony in the coming weeks from Feith may have unwittingly cast new light on the reasons why Secretary of State Colin Powell is alleged by Woodward to have referred to Feith`s operation as the "Gestapo office".

Evidence of Feith`s involvement in the prisoner-abuse scandal rests primarily on reports that have appeared in Newsweek, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. They have reported that even before the Iraq war, top officials in the Pentagon, acting on the advice of civilian lawyers, authorized a reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions to permit tougher methods of interrogation of prisoners of war.

This effort was strongly resisted by Powell, a retired army general, when it came to his attention, and by the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps, the formal name given to the military`s lawyers. They argued, among other things, that the introduction of "stress and duress" techniques, sleep deprivation and other methods that violate the conventions would not only result in dubious intelligence, but could also be cited as a precedent for use against US soldiers who fell into enemy hands.

Dissenters, however, were in essence excluded from the discussion and, according to Newsweek, new techniques were formally approved during the Iraq invasion in April 2003, although Feith`s immediate superior, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, testified last week that he was unaware of such a decision.

At the same time, senior Pentagon officials also authorized the exclusion of JAG officers from observing interrogations to ensure they complied with the conventions. That was a major departure from the practice in the 1991 Gulf War, when JAG officers were present in all interrogation facilities and could intercede if they witnessed violations of the conventions.

Even after the new orders came down, senior JAG officers did not give up. According to a number of accounts, a delegation of officers contacted Scott Horton, a former high-ranking JAG officer and chairman of the Committee on International Human Rights of the New York City Bar Association, to see if he and like-minded lawyers would intervene.

"They were extremely upset," Horton told the Los Angeles Times. "They said they were being shut out of the process, and that the civilian political lawyers, not the military lawyers, were writing these new rules of engagement."

Horton said the JAG officers identified the main forces behind loosening the rules as Feith and the Pentagon`s general counsel, William Haynes, another political appointee.

"If we - `we` being the uniformed lawyers - had been listened to, and what we said put into practice, then these abuses would not have occurred," Rear Admiral Don Guter, the navy JAG from 2000-02, told ABC News.

Feith, who was also interviewed by ABC, denied there was any disagreement from JAG officers concerning rules and practices authorized by his office, but the issue is unlikely to rest with his word alone.

Indeed, the accounts given by JAG officers are fully consistent with what is already known about Feith`s policymaking practices. As with the prewar intelligence and prewar planning for the occupation, the experts and professionals were either circumvented or systematically excluded from participating in the policy process, so that civilian ideologues with ideas about how to extract information from uncooperative Arabs, for example, would not have to address informed criticism before plunging ahead.

Like his mentor, former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, Feith has long been a hardliner on foreign policy, arms-control issues and Israel.

As a youth, his father, Dalck Feith, was active in pre-World War II Poland in Betar, a militantly Zionist movement and forerunner of Israel`s Likud Party. His parents perished in the Nazi Holocaust, according to the neo-conservative Wall Street Journal, which last week demanded a public apology from Powell for his reference to Feith`s operation as the "Gestapo office".

Feith worked for Perle in the Pentagon under president Ronald Reagan, and the two teamed up in the late 1980s to lobby on behalf of the Turkish government and build military ties between Turkey and Israel. In 1996 he participated in a private study by a right-wing Israeli think-tank that called for ousting Saddam Hussein as a way to transform the balance of power in the Middle East in such a way that Israel could ignore pressure to trade "land for peace" with the Palestinians or Syria.

In 1997, Feith argued in Commentary magazine for Israel to reoccupy the Occupied Territories and repudiate the Oslo accords, and the following year he signed an open letter to then-president Bill Clinton calling for Washington to work with Chalabi`s INC to oust Saddam.

(Inter Press Service)

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May 20, 2004
*** CounterPunch Exclusive ***
The Truth About Ahmed Chalabi
Why the US Turned Against Their Former Golden Boy -- He was Preparing a Coup! What He Did as a Catspaw for Tehran: How He Nearly Bankrupted Jordan; the Billions He Stands to Make Out of the New Iraq

By ANDREW COCKBURN

In dawn raids today, American troops surrounded Ahmed Chalabi`s headquarters and home in Baghdad, put a gun to his head, arrested two of his aides, and seized documents. Only five months ago, Chalabi was a guest of honor sitting right behind Laura Bush at the State of the Union. What brought about this astonishing fall from grace of the man who helped provide the faked intelligence that justified last year`s war?

The answer lies in Chalabi`s reaction to his gradual loss of US support in recent months and the realisation that he will be excluded from the post June 30 Iraqi "government" being crafted by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

Lashing out against his exclusion from power, he has in effect been laying the groundwork for a coup, assembling a Shia political coalition with the express aim of destabilising the "Brahimi" government even before it takes office. "He has been mobilising forces to make sure the UN initiative fails," one well connected Iraqi political observer, who knows Chalabi well, told me today. "He has been tellling these people that Brahimi is part of a Sunni conspiracy against the Shia."

This scheme is by no means wholly outlandish. Chalabi has recruited significant Shia support, including Ayatollah Mohammed Bahr al Uloom, a leading member of the Governing Council and two other lesser known Council members. Significantly, his support also includes a faction of the Dawa Party that has been excluded from the political process by the occupation authority and which also supports rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Other recently recruited allies include Iraqi Hezbollah. All are joined in a Chalabi dominated Supreme Shia Council, similar to a sectarian Lebanese model. "Sooner rather than later," the Iraqi observer, a close student of Shia politics, points out, "Moqtada al Sadr is going to be killed. That willl leave tens, hundreds of thousands of his supporters looking for a new leader. If Ahmed plays the role of victim, he can take on that role. His dream has always been to be a sectarian Shia leader."

Given the imminence of the announcement of the post June 30 arrrangement, the stakes are very high for the US. The occupation command in Baghdad well understands that Chalabi has the resources and skills to wreck the all-important arrangements for the official handover of power. "People realise that Ahmed is a gambler, prepared to bring it all down," I was told today, "and this raid may not be at all to his detriment."

US disenchantment with the man who has received $27 million of taxpeyers` money in recent years has been gathering pace in recent months. "You can piss on Chalabi" President Bush remarked to Jordan`s King Abdullah some months ago. "Ahmed is on good terms with many people," a senior Iraqi politician told me waspishly, "and on bad terms with a great many more."

Meanwhile the star of the octogenarian politician Adnan Pachachi, foreign minister forty years ago in the revolutionary government of General Abdul Karim Qassim, and now a hot tip for post June 30 president, is rising fast. Chalabi despises Pachachi as a tiresome old codger with no place in today`s Iraq. "He should go home and play bridge," he snaps at mention of the rival`s name. Pachachi indulgently dismisses Chalabi as "articulate, but not wise -- I`ve told him to his face, `Ahmed, you`re too clever by half.`"

Distrust him as they may however, Iraqis suspect that Chalabi will be a looming presence in Iraq for years to come. Since he returned to Baghdad just over a year ago he has succeeded in building a financial powerbase both in business and key sectors of the fledgling Iraqi administration. His prescient seizure of Saddam`s intelligence files a year ago has equipped him with a useful tool to intimidate opponents. In politics, despite his apparent lack of general appeal, he has been carving out a role as the Ian Paisley of the Iraqi Shia, fomenting sectarian assertiveness and brokering deals. At the same time, he has maintained his foreign alliances, not merely with the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon and right wing Washington think tanks, who are still insisting that he should have been installed in power in Baghdad by the US a year ago, but also in Tehran. Chalabi`s connections to the most hardline elements in Iran, particularly the intelligence officers of the Revolutionary Guards, are longstanding and still flourish today.

Chalabi`s fusion of business and politics is very much in the family tradition. Until the 1958 military coup swept away the monarchy that had ruled Iraq under British direction since the 1920s, the Chalabis were probably the richest family in the country. The founder of the family fortunes, Ahmed`s great grandfather, had been the tax "farmer" (ie he collected taxes at a profit) of Kadimiah, a town near Baghdad. The Iraqi historian Hanna Batatu describes him as "a very harsh man, (who) kept a bodyguard of armed slaves and had a special prison at his disposal. When he died the people of Kadimiah heaved a sigh of relief." His son flourished in the good graces of the British, while the next in line, Ahmed`s father, prospered by bailing out the racing debts of a powerful member of the royal family, earning high political office thereby, and leveraging that position into lucrative business arrangements. Ahmed`s uncle meanwhile rose to be the most powerful banker in the country. As Batatu notes: "..by translating economic power into political influence, and political influence into economic power, the Chalabis climbed from one level of wealth to another."

However, when the 1958 revolution swept their Iraqi wealth away, the Chalabis quickly put down roots in Lebanon. Ahmed and his brothers married into powerful families in the Lebanese shia community. "They become so Lebanese that they started pronouncing their name Shalabi instead of Chalabi," remarks another former Iraqi exile. "Lebanese don`t pronounce a hard Ch sound." Initially, Chalabi himself seemed destined for an academic career. No one has ever denied he is extremely smart, as well as intellectually competitive. "When he was at primary school," recalls one of his innumerable cousins, "if he got nine marks in a test and someone else got ten, he would tear up the papers and run around in a tantrum."

By 1970 he had graduated from MIT, collected a PhD in mathematics from the University of Chicago and returned to teach at the renowned American University of Beirut, where he attracted attention as "a walking encyclopedia." In 1977 he moved to Jordan and founded the Petra Bank. A decade later, Petra had grown to be the second largest bank in the country, with links to other Chalabi family banks and investment companies in Beirut, Geneva and Washington. The bank introduced Visa cards to Jordan, along with ATMs and other innovative technology. Ahmed himself was one of the most influential businessmen in the country, esteemed by local entrepreneurs for his readiness to issue credit, and enjoying close links to powerful members of the royal family. As long as no outsider got to look at the books, everything was fine.

On August 2, 1989, however the Jordanian banking authorities took over Petra on the grounds that when all Jordanian banks were told to deposit 30% of their foreign exchange with the central bank, Petra had failed to come up with the money. Ahmed left the country two weeks later, announcing that he was going "on holiday", although rumors persist in the middle east that he had crossed the Syrian border in the trunk of his friend Tamara Daghistani`s car. Meanwhile his brothers` banks in Geneva and Beirut had already gone under.

In April, 1992, Chalabi was tried in his absence (along with 47 associates), found guilty, and sentenced to 22 years jail on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor funds and currency speculation. However, because the trial had been in front of a military court under Jordan`s martial law, international law prevented his extradition.

For anyone who asks, Chalabi has always had a ready explanation for Petra`s collapse, one that his daughter Tamara was still loyally repeating in the Wall Street Journal as recently as last August: "Petra Bank was seized and destroyed by those in the Jordanian establishment who`d become willing to do Saddam Hussein`s bidding. That Jordan has branded my father as an `asset diverter` would be comic, were it not for what it says about that kingdom`s servile complicity with Saddam." Saddam, according to this version, got his Jordanian lackeys to move against Petra because Ahmed Chalabi posed a threat to the Iraqi leader. The bank was basically in fine shape and would have survived if the government hadn`t intervened and panicked bank customers. The prosecution, conviction and sentencing of Ahmed Chalabi was an act of political spite.

Chalabi`s claim that he was framed reduces Jordanian officials to choleric fury. "The collapse was due to Chalabi`s mismanagement of the bank and the misuse of its assets," responded one senior banking official, when I relayed Chalabi`s excuse of injured innocence. "He ran it as his private piggy bank."

There may be a particle of truth in this -- the prime minister at the time of the takeover was known for his deep and profitable relationship with Saddam, and Chalabi was indeed a critic of the Iraqi dictator -- but it is also beside the point. Behind all the bluster--"Petra was solvent and growing," he insisted in an e-mail to me--the numbers laid out in the (pre-Enron) Arthur Andersen "Petra Bank balance sheet--August 2 1989" speak for themselves, as do other reports, mostly in Arabic and rarely examined by outsiders, from liquidators and other investigators.

The Arthur Andersen audit was commissioned after the Jordanian central bank, ignorant of the real and disastrous situation inside Petra, accepted full responsibility for the bank`s debts and deposits. The accountants` confidential report, delivered in January 1990 and as thick as a phone directory, showed that Petra was rotten to the core in large part because of "transactions with parties related to the former management of the Bank (ie the Lebanese and Swiss banks managed by Chalabi`s brothers, which had already gone broke.) Overall, instead of the $40 million or so net balance depicted in Chalabi`s version of the books, Petra had a deficit of over $215 million, which the accountants indicated had "the potential" to grow to $350 million.

This was a total catastrophe for the cash-strapped desert kingdom, especially as the government had committed itself to paying off the depositors. "For two years, all the aid we got from Saudi Arabia and other arab countries," recalls a former Jordanian diplomat, "went into settling the Petra mess." Despite this, Chalabi actually boasted to me in a recent email that "after the takeover, all depositors were paid in full," a statement of amazing chutzpah, given that he skipped town and left others to clean up the mess and pay the bills. A seventeen page summary of the investigation by the military prosecutor`s office, dated April 30 1990, lists various "fictitious accounts", ie money that Petra claimed to have in accounts with other banks that did not in fact exist. These included the $7 million allegedly held on December 31, 1988, in Bankers Trust, New York, or the $21 million that was supposed to be in Wardley Ltd, but wasn`t, or the 19,196,404 Deutschmarks that was supposed to be deposited with Socofi, the Chalabi bank in Geneva. Overall, at that date, the "fictitious" figure came to $72 million and counting. Elsewhere, money had been diverted to private Chalabi accounts, or had evaporated in bad loans to other Chalabi- owned companies, such as the $15 million that disappeared with the Rimal company, or the roughly $14 million that had been spent on "personal expenses" for Dr. Chalabi and various members of his family.

Among the non-performing loans of the Petra subsidiary in Washington was $12 million owed by Abdul Huda Farouki. He had pledged his $1,7 million house in Maclean, Virginia as security, but as liquidators moved to seize it, he produced a letter from his friend Ahmed claiming that Petra had released him from that obligation before the crash.

In September 2000, just over eight years after Ahmed Chalabi`s conviction in Jordan, his brothers Jawad and Hazem were convicted and sentenced (in absentia) by a Geneva court for creating fake documents. The statute of limitations had run out on other charges.

"Ahmed thought he would never be tried and convicted," one former associate recalls. "I remember him saying `they don`t dare sentence me, I`ve got members of the royal family on the payroll.`"

"The simple fact is that the bank was insolvent when we took it over" insists former Central Bank governor Dr. Said Nabulsi. "I can`t see why so many people can`t understand that." They look at the figures and then go away and write things like this." Gloomily, he dipped into a pile of clippings on his desk and held up a recent full page article in the Financial Times headlined "Man with a Mission" extolling Chalabi`s current activities in Baghdad. Tossing it aside, he rifled through further tributes to Chalabi, who still has a jail cell awaiting him in Jordan.

Jordanian investigators, aided by sleuths from the Kroll detective agency, looked long and hard for where all the money had gone -- one estimate puts the total losses of the Chalabi family empire at nearly $1.5 billion. "We followed some of the cash as far as the British Virgin Islands" says one, lamenting that the ironclad bank secrecy laws prevented them following the trail any further.

Chalabi took partial revenge on his Jordanian tormentors by fomenting a December 1991 "60 Minutes" story accusing King Hussein of colluding with Saddam, but by now he was immersed in politics carving out a leading role in the anti-Saddam Iraqi opposition. "Ahmed once said to me `I built up an empire of 44 companies around the world with my brain,`" recalls an associate from that period. "He said `that was very difficult. Politics is very easy.` He believes that politics is about money, that politics is a business."

Shaking the dust of Amman from his heels, Chalabi soon scented new opportunities in Washington. "The United States is prepared to allocate substantial sums for the Iraqi opposition," he confided to an opposition activist soon after the 1991 war. "We should go for that money." Before long, he had secured CIA funding for a new opposition group: the Iraqi National Congress (INC) The INC was in theory an umbrella organisation with a collective leadership, but Chalabi, those who have worked with him agree, is not a team player. "He always has to be in charge," one powerful Iraqi politician told me in Baghdad. " I remember a meeting in London where Hani Fekaki (one of the founders of the Baath party who later fled into exile and opposition) told Chalabi: "Ahmed, in your heart, there is a little Saddam."

The spooks found much to like in the dynamic ex-banker. They liked his talents as an organiser, and they especially liked the fact that he had no power base inside or outside Iraq. Hence, as Frank Anderson, then head of the CIA`s operations directorate`s near east division, once told me , Chalabi "was not a threat to anybody. He was acceptable as an office manager. So his weakness was a benefit."

Another benefit was his money. One former covert operator happily recalled the inaugural meeting of the Iraqi National Congress in Vienna, Austria in June 1992, which was wholly, if secretly, funded by the CIA: "There wasn`t a single person there who didn`t believe he was paying for it all out of money he had embezzled from the Petra Bank!" (I asked one investigator who had spent years probing the Petra wreckage if anyone from the US government had ever queried him on the true facts of the fraud. "No", not once," he answered, adding that journalists had also steered clear of the ugly truths about Chalabi`s banking career.)

"He doesn`t want colleagues, only employees," says one former INC associate sadly. "And he prefers to bring in outsiders who can`t work independently of him." As example, this Iraqi opposition veteran cites INC official Zaab Sethna, an American of Pakistani origin, and Francis Brooke, Chalabi`s Washington lobbyist. During last year`s war, Brooke, a fundamentalist Christian, told Harper`s Magazine that he would support the elimination of Saddam, "the human Satan," even if every single Iraqi were killed in the process.

Other key aides who have stuck by him over the years include Nabil Mousawi, a former Leeds pizzeria manager who first attracted Chalabi`s notice when he volunteered to work the copy machine at the INC`s inaugural meeting. Entifadh Qamber, now the INC spokesman in Baghdad, has been similarly loyal. Known for his verbal and physical aggressiveness, Qamber once punched out an elderly Iraqi critic live on television.

Aras Karem, a Shi`ite Kurd who has supervised Chalabi`s security and military operations since 1992, is probably the most formidable member of this inner circle,. Once pegged by the CIA as an Iranian agent (the agency consequently had several of his relatives jailed without charge for years in the US) Aras played a major role in managing the production of useful defectors in pre-war days, and still today supervises the INC`s "Intelligence Collection Program." His direct contacts with U.S. defense intelligence make him perhaps the only member of Chalabi`s coterie to have any kind of an independent base.

It took a few years for the CIA high command at Langley to grasp the fact that their "office manager" was not so easy to control. Funded by the agency, Chalabi ensconced himself in the segment of northern Iraq that was controlled by the Kurds, together with a small staff and recruited an armed militia. In March 1995 he concocted an elaborate scheme to bribe tribal leaders in and around the northern city of Mosul into rebelling against Saddam. "That`s the way Lebanese politics works--through bribery and corruption," says Bob Baer, who, as CIA station chief in northern Iraq at the time, supported the plan. "People forget that Ahmed`s really a Levantine, he learned business and politics in Beirut."

In the event, the plan fizzled. The tribal leaders pocketed Chalabi`s money and stayed home. His friends in Iranian intelligence, whom he was hosting in Kurdistan, had promised a simultaneous offensive in southern Iraq, but they stayed home too. A military offensive by Chalabi`s small militia and some Kurdish allies petered out after a couple of days.

Back in Washington, the CIA was furious that Chalabi had acted without orders, and spitefully leaked the news that he was on their payroll, causing a furor in northern Iraq. The following year, a quarrel between the two main Kurdish parties led to an appeal by one side to Saddam for help. As Iraqi forces entered the Kurdish city of Irbil, they hunted down and massacred INC supporters who had been left in the city. Those who managed to escape were eventually brought to the US.

Discarded by his old patrons at the agency, Chalabi found new allies among the right wing neo-conservatives, for whom the destruction of Saddam and the co-option of Iraq in a reordered Middle East emerged as a major objective in the mid-1990s. "Of course they liked him," says yet another of long list of veterans of the Iraqi opposition who now, in Baghdad, nervously entreat interviewers not to quote them by name. "He is the quintessential anti-Arab, anti-anything that the Arab world believes in." Chalabi`s willingness, unique among Arab politicians, to seek Israeli support -- further bolstered his position on Capitol Hill.

Lately, Chalabi watchers have been interested to note familiar faces from the Petra era popping up in Baghdad in the wake of Ahmed`s return in the wake of the American tanks a year ago. Ali Saraf, for example, formerly head of the foreign exchange department is working with Chalabi, and there are rumors that Taj Hajjar, former proprietor of a Malaysian shrimp farm (Jordanian banking investigators sigh nostalgically at mention of the shrimp farm, into which so much Petra money vanished) has been in town.

One frequent visitor from Washington has been Chalabi`s old friend Abdul Huda Farouki, who owed Petra $12 million at the time of the collapse.

Last year Farouki`s newly founded security firm Erinys won a plum $80 million contract to guard Iraqi oil installations, employing members of Chalabi`s private militia for the purpose, as well as the son of a close Chalabi confidante as chief executive and his nephew Salem Chalabi as firm`s counsel. Erinys` sister concern Nour USA meanwhile garnered $327 million deal to equip the new Iraqi army, (at least one Kuwaiti businessman anxious to get an army contract was told by an American official at the CPA that he would have to go through Ahmed Chalabi) but outraged protests from the losing bidders, coupled with the odor of the Chalabi connection, eventually forced cancellation of the deal.

Loss of the Nour contract may be an embarrassment, but the sums at stake in that enterprise are dwarfed by the rewards to be reaped by anyone with the right connections from Iraq`s $16 billlion annual oil exports. It is an area in which Chalabi has not been idle. Last November, for example, he demonstrated his influence and connections by orchestrating the removal of Mohammed Jibouri, executive director of the state oil marketing agency (SOMO), a key position that controls Iraq`s oil sales. Jibouri`s offense had been to inform the giant oil trading firm Glencore that it could not trade Iraqi oil due to its behavior while trading oil with the former regime. Within days, the official had been placed on an enforced year`s leave of absence and ordered to vacate both his office and his apartment in the oil ministry complex.

"Chalabi was absolutely responsible for getting rid of Jibouri," says a well connected oil trader. "Now Nabil (Mousawi, Chalabi`s proxy on the Governing Council) travels with the minister to Opec conferences and is trying to make oil deals."

"I asked Ibrahim Bahr Uloom (the oil minister) why he was taking Mousawi to Opec," says an old friend of Uloom. "He said, `Ahmed forced me.`" Several well placed oil industry sources have confirmed to me that Mousawi has approached at least two international oil companies with offers to represent them in Iraq (the offers were rebuffed) and has himself been trading Iraqi oil.

"Believe me, no," said Mousawi when I asked him about these offers.

"Not that I would not do it if I was not connected to the Governing Council (but) it`s quite difficult to carry on both sides...There`ll be a lot of money to be made (in Iraq) for many years to come." He also denied that he has been trading oil, and insisted that Jibouri was dismissed after an investigation by the finance committee of the Iraqi Governing Council (Chairman: A. Chalabi) for giving contracts to firms who had flouted sanctions, rather than the other way round. Chalabi on the other hand denied to me that the Governing Council, let alone he himself, had anything to do with the matter.

Chalabi also told me flatly that he is not presently engaged in any private business dealings in Iraq. Many in the region have a different impression, including oil traders using unofficial ports that have sprung up down the Shatt al-Arab from Basra.

Oil minister Ibrahim Bahr Uloom is considered a close ally of Chalabi`s, but he is only one of a number of key officials widely regarded by Iraqis to be in the INC chief`s pocket. Finance minister Kamil Gailani, formerly a waiter in the Sinjan restaurant in downtown Amman, is viewed as another Chalabi acolyte, as is the head of the central bank and the bosses of the two leading commercial banks. Nephew Salem Chalabi, who has nworked closely with free market fundamentalist fanatics from the CPA on framing crucial occupation edicts, is now overseeing preparations for the trial of Saddam Hussein.

These connections, together with Chalabi`s own chairmanship of the Governing Council`s finance committee, facilitate such maneuvers as Gailani`s current efforts to recruit a western law firm to advise on renegotiating Iraq`s overseas debt. British and American lawyers mulling a bid for the contract are in no doubt that it is Chalabi who will be supervising the renegotiation, nor are they unaware of the moneymaking potential of the process. Some officials in Washington are no less perturbed by his efforts to get what one calls "his grubby little hands" on pools of cash secretly stashed abroad by Saddam Hussein. "That money belongs to the Iraqi people," says the official, "not Ahmed Chalabi. (Chalabi is also recruiting law firms to investigate the UN oil-for -food scandal, which, like Saddam`s intelligence files, should provide him with a trove of useful information.)

This is not the first time that Chalabi`s sources of finance have attracted attention in Washington. In 2002, US State Department auditors probing what had happened to a US subsidy of Chalabi`s INC queried the lack of accounting for the large sums spent on an "Intelligence Collection Program." Chalabi refused a more precise accounting on the grounds that his agents` lives were at stake. But according to one former Chalabi associate, at least some of the intelligence money had actually been spent in Iran, which would have been a good reason for keeping the accounts a little fuzzy. This former associate recalls, that, in the late `90s, "Ahmed opened an INC office in Tehran, spending the Americans` money, and he joked to me that `the Americans are breaching their embargo on Iran.`"

At the time, Chalabi let it be known just who his friends were in Tehran. "When I met him in December 1997 he said he had tremendous connections with Iranian intelligence," recalls Scott Ritter, the former high profile UN weapons inspector. "He said that some of his best intelligence came from the Iranians and offered to set up a meeting for me with the head of Iranian intelligence."

Had Ritter made the trip (the CIA refused him permission), he would have been dealing with Chalabi`s chums in Iranian Revolutionary Guard intelligence, a faction which regarded Saddam Hussein with a venomous hatred spawned both by the bloody war of the 1980s and the Iraqi dictator`s continuing support of the terrorist Mojaheddin Khalq group. They had a clear interest in fomenting American paranoia about Saddam, which makes them the most likely authors of at least one carefully crafted piece of forged intelligence regarding Saddam`s nuclear program -- an operation in which a Chalabi-sponsored defector played a central role.

Early in 1995, an "Action Team" of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency descended on the offices of the Iraqi nuclear program in Baghdad. They had with them a 20 page document that apparently originated from inside "Group 4," the department that had been responsible for designing the Iraqi bomb. The stationary, page numbering, and stamps all appeared authentic, according to one senior member of the Iraqi bomb team. "It was a `progress report,`" he recalls, "about 20 pages, on the work in Group 4 departments on the results of their continued work after 1991. It referred to results of experiments on the casting of the hemispheres (ie the bomb core of enriched uranium) with some crude diagrams." As evidence that Iraq was successfully pursuing a nuclear bomb in defiance of sanctions and the inspectors, it was damning.

The document was almost faultless, but not quite. The scientists noticed that some of the technical descriptions used terms that would only be used by an Iranian. "Most notable," says one scientist, "was the use of the term `dome`--`Qubba` in Iranian, instead of `hemisphere`--`Nisuf Kura` in Arabic." In other words, the document had to have been originally written in Farsi by an Iranian scientist and then translated into Arabic.

Tom Killeen, of the Iraq Nuclear Verification Office at IAEA headquarters in Vienna, confirms this account of the incident. "After a thorough investigation the documents were determined not to be authentic and the matter was closed."

Asked how the IAEA obtained the document in the first place, Killeen replied "Khidir Hamza." Hamza was the former member of the Iraqi weapons team who briefly headed the bomb design group before being relegated to a sinecure posting (his effectiveness as a nuclear engineer was limited by his pathological fear of radioactivity and consequent refusal to enter any building where experiments were underway.) In 1994 he made his way to Ahmed Chalabi`s headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan, and eventually arrived in Washington. where he carved out a career based on an imaginative claim to have been "Saddam`s Bombmaker."

As late as the summer of 2002 Hamza was being escorted by Chalabi`s Washington representative Francis Brooke to the Pentagon to brief Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on details of Saddam`s allegedly burgeoning nuclear weapons program. There is no indication that he himself ever visited Iran. Asked by e-mail whether he had been receiving intelligence from the Iranians, Chalabi, despite his 1997 assertion to Scott Ritter, rejects the charge as "an absolute falsehood." Judging by his frequent visits to Iran, and the warm manner in which his underlings discuss the ayatollahs` regime, Chalabi links with Tehran are still strong. No less important are his ties with the neocon gang in Washington, who still maintain that the big mistake of the occupation was not putting Ahmed in charge right away, Simultaneously, his championship of Shi`ite groups in Iraq becomes ever more assertive -- his newspaper has recently been campaigning against Adnan Pachachi for allegedly excluding Moqtada al-Sadr from the Governing Council!

One well connected Iraqi told me recently, "he will play the Shia extremist card for all it is worth. He`s quite prepared to break Iraq apart if it serves his purpose. He`s really dangerous now."

Andrew Cockburn is the co-author of Out of the Ashes: the Resurrection of Saddam Hussein and a contributor to CounterPunch`s hot new history of the last three US military operations, Imperial Crusades. He wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Graydon Carter Foundation in the preparation of this article.

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

Published on Thursday, May 20, 2004 by The Age / Australia
The Diseases of a Troubled Nation
by Julian Ninio


The American people didn`t know its troops abused prisoners in Iraqi jails. Ignorance. Officials who knew pretend they didn`t know. Hypocrisy. To excuse the perpetrators, parents of soldiers say their kids were forced to follow orders. Obedience.

Torture is the problem-du-jour. Two weeks ago, the problem-du-jour was the deceptive case for war. The American people believed the administration’s lies. Ignorance. The President says he relied on the flawed intelligence he was fed. Hypocrisy. Instead of rebelling, Colin Powell stuck with his team. Obedience.

America`s problems are structural. Even if Kerry replaces Bush in January 2005, America will still have one child in six living in poverty; America will still have two million people in jail; America will still have military installations in 50 countries. It`s time we looked at the structure behind America`s problems.

By studying America’s self-image, we can collect symptoms of the ‘disease’ that ails American society. Is America truly the beacon of justice? Not when it tortures prisoners. Is America truly the cradle of democracy? Not when its president is elected by a minority, not when government for corporations displaces ‘by the people for the people’.

Is America the land of the free? Not when powerful corporations can silence dissidents like Michael Moore. Is America the land of plenty? Not when one household in thirteen lives in a trailer.

Does the US have the best way of life? In a BBC poll, 96 per cent of Americans say that foreigners want to live in America. In the same poll, one Australian in 100 says she would prefer to live in America. It’s not hard to guess why: Australians like paid vacations, Medicare, the fair go, even if it doesn’t always work perfectly.

By studying America`s self-image, we can collect symptoms of the `disease` that ails American society. By America’s own standard, the standard of its self-image, the US is a sick society. Behind torture and all the other symptoms, you can find the same driving principles. ‘America is the best.’ ‘Might means right.’ ‘Corporations have a right to maximize profit.’ ‘Government should serve the economy.’ ‘People must look after themselves.’ ‘Status comes from wealth.’ ‘Winning justifies anything.’

Behind it all, you can find a powerful blend of ignorance, hypocrisy, and obedience. It’s a kind of disease, something I call the ‘IHO Syndrome’: I for ignorance, H for hypocrisy, O for Obedience. Under its influence, lies become truth, wrong becomes right. Peace becomes war, justice becomes torture.

Of course, every American is not always ignorant, hypocritical and obedient. Of course, the US does not have a monopoly on ignorance, hypocrisy and obedience. But when we interpret American society through these lenses, current events make a lot more sense. And that suggests ways to fix that society.

We must produce awareness to replace ignorance. Dissenters must spear hypocrisy with truth. Instead of obeying, American people must resist.

On paper, that sounds simple. But in America as around the world, many people feel powerless to change things.

In Australia, suppose you try to solve just one problem: the logging of old-growth forests. You will butt against government. You will butt against corporations. The press will help your fight, but only up to a point. And you will feel that modern society’s values work against you.

Take two friends and try to discuss how people can solve a problem you care about -- Australia’s presence in Iraq, refugee detention centers, anything. You will soon find yourself entangled in the same web: government priorities, corporate power, media focus, modern values. Some call that the ‘system’. We feel discouraged because we see that to fix one problem, we would have to fix the entire system.

Most people would love to fix the system. This means that citizens must have the power to decide policies. Two-thirds of Americans think Congress should pass stricter gun control laws, such as keeping track of who buys guns. Survey after survey confirms this, but the surveys also show that Americans expect Congress not to pass these laws. Government does not obey people.

People cannot shape policies, much less institutions, unless they reach a critical mass. To reach a critical mass, we need to take a stand, and we need to awaken our neighbors, our parents, our friends.

It works. That’s the way change happens every time, from Alabama blacks’ right to ride in the front of the bus to Torres Strait islanders’ right to own their land. And it’s enjoyable. Most people I know prefer to work with others for a distant goal than to sit isolated in their living rooms. Apathy is an illusion. We are isolated, so we assume that no one else has any interest in changing the world, and we join the official game -- work harder, buy more. When we break the isolation, when we talk to strangers, we realize that most people share the same interests.

Many people are waking up. Michael Moore’s popularity is a sign of dissent. Many will try to change society if they see a way.

There`s no secret. To change the `system`, we need to take a stand and wake up people around us: parents, friends, workmates. At some point it becomes acceptable to disagree -- it becomes the norm to disagree. It doesn’t work overnight, but it’s the only sure way to produce change.

Julian Ninio speaks about the United States as an informed insider. A US citizen and a Harvard MBA, he has tasted various versions of the American dream—as a California flower child, as a derivatives trader, as a high-tech executive, and as a start-up CEO. Ninio also speaks about the United States with the perspective of an outsider. Partly educated in France, where he was born, he has traveled around the world several times, and has spent half his adult life in Japan and Australia. He now lives in Sydney. He is the author of` The Empire of Ignorance, Hypocrisy and Obedience`

Copyright © 2004. The Age Company Ltd

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

May 20, 2004
U.S. Troops Pull Back From Heart of Embattled Iraqi Town
By EDWARD WONG

KARBALA, Iraq, May 20 — After more than a week of costly combat in downtown Karbala, the American military said today that it was withdrawing its troops from the besieged center of this holy city.

The First Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment of the First Armored Division was moving soldiers from a mosque it had occupied back to Camp Lima, a military base five miles east of the city center. The withdrawal was expected to be completed by early Friday, when a tank company posted for 24 hours at the mosque is to leave, the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Garry P. Bishop, said.

American soldiers occupied the Mukhaiyam Mosque on May 12 after an overnight battle in which they chased out insurgents loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric. Since then, though, the guerrilla fighters have not relented in their attacks on troops stationed there. Mortar teams consistently shell the mosque and snipers fire on soldiers on patrol in the surrounding alleyways.

Four soldiers have been killed and at least 52 have been wounded in the more than two weeks since the First Armored Division launched a major offensive here against Mr. Sadr`s militia, the Mahdi Army. That is the highest casualty rate the division has suffered since it arrived in Iraq last May. For most of the past year, its soldiers were stationed in Baghdad.

The battles in downtown Karbala are now the fiercest in Iraq. Entire city blocks around the Mukhaiyam Mosque have been devastated by automatic weapons and cannon fire, and cars riddled with bullet holes sit along the sides of the roads. On Wednesday afternoon, a dog dragged a severed arm from an alleyway and began chewing on it in the street.

The firefights have been inching closer and closer to two of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, the golden-domed Shrine of Hussein and Shrine of Abbas, dedicated to martyrs related to the Prophet Muhammad. On Wednesday, hundreds of people marched in the streets to protest the fighting between American forces and the insurgents. They were demonstrating at the request of the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential cleric in Iraq.

The decision to withdraw from downtown Karbala might have been influenced by the intense scrutiny given to the American military in recent days. On Wednesday, in a closely watched trial in Baghdad, a soldier pleaded guilty to charges related to the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib. The same day, some Iraqis accused the American military of killing more than 40 people in an airstrike on a wedding party near the Syrian border, though military officials have said the aircraft were attacking suspected insurgent safehouses.

Colonel Bishop said the departure from the Mukhaiyam Mosque was intended to "allow time for the political process to go forward."

He declined to give details on that process. It was not immediately clear what negotiations were taking place. American officials have been pressuring the Shiite religious establishment to wrest a surrender from Mr. Sadr, but the senior clerics have so far failed to do so.

On Wednesday, tribal sheiks in Karbala met with the commander of the First Brigade of the First Armored Division, Col. Pete Mansoor, to try to persuade the Americans to declare a cease-fire and withdraw their forces, the colonel said.

But such a cease-fire would have been unilateral, he said later that day, and Mr. Sadr`s militia, the Mahdi Army, would have stayed in the center of Karbala. In the end, the colonel said, he rejected the request of the sheiks.

"The local residents want peace," he said. "But they have very little power to force Moktada al-Sadr`s forces out of the city."

At the same time, the colonel said: "Our presence in the middle of the city is a cause for concern among a lot of the local citizens. The only reason we stayed was because we have a threat in front of us."

Colonel Bishop said the withdrawal of forces from the Mukhaiyam Mosque, which had been converted into a forward operating base for the Americans, did not amount to a cease-fire. The battalion will continue running regular patrols into the city, he said, and "will continue to respond to any attacks against Iraqi security forces."

Attacks continued against the Americans today, though the violence had lessened from earlier in the week. Soldiers came under sniper fire at least four times and mortar attack two or three times, said Capt. Noel Gorospe, a battalion spokesman. No American casualties were reported.

Early Thursday, a patrol of tanks was attacked at least 20 times by teams with rocket-propelled grenades. Some military officials here say residents of Karbala tell them dozens or perhaps scores of outside fighters have entered the city to bolster the inexperienced Mahdi Army. The officials say they do not know the exact origins of the fighters.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Joerver]

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[bares@nobles]

Seit einer guten Woche beschleicht mich ein eigenartiges Gefühl, das in den letzten Tagen noch verstärkt wurde.

Die amerikanischen Medien lassen Bush langsam, aber sicher fallen.

Die Tendenz ist noch unterschwellig, aber eindeutig. Die Medien wollen diesem Mann keine zweite Amtszeit mehr geben. Viele top Fernsehjournalisten, die die letzten Jahre immer für Bush die Trommel gerührt haben, gehen langsam und scheibchenweise auf Distanz zu diesem Mann. Ich nenne hier beispielsweise Chris Matthews, Tim Russert oder Lou Dobbs um nur einige zu nennen.

Mittlerweile spricht man nicht nur auf Capitol Hill offen aus, dass Bush inkompetent sei, sondern er wird offen im Fersehen als Idiot bezeichnet, der keine Ahnung hat von den Dingen, die er da tut.
Früher hat man das zwar auch manchmal ansatzweise gehört und dann im zweiten Atemzug mitgeteilt bekommen, dass er aber ein ausgezeichnetes Team hinter sich stehen habe. Mittlerweile aber wird auch das Bush Team als inkompetent angegriffen. Rumsfeld und Wolfowitz sind nur Beispiele dafür.

In den Printmedien hat nur die angeblich liberale New York Times die Zeichen der Zeit nicht erkannt. Die rechten Blätter wie Washington Times und New York Post stützen selbstverständlich ihren Kandidaten Bush und trashen Kerry. Aber die Washington Post, einst starker Bush Supporter, scheint sich immer mehr von ihm abzuwenden. Und auch der Boston Globe, der zwar als liberal verschrien ist, aber einst Gore zerrissen hat, zeigt Absetzbewegungen von Bush, obwohl man selbstverständlich auch noch Kerry trashed.

Diese Einschätzung ist zwar jetzt mehr Gefühl als fundierte, technische Analyse, aber zweifellos hat der Wind irgendwie gedreht und er bläst viel stärker Richtung Bush als in früheren Zeiten und das nicht nur wegen Irak. Ich habe den Eindruck man hat von diesem Typen irgendwie die Schnauze voll.
Selbstverständlich tun sich die Medien jetzt auch schwer eine 180 Grad Wendung hinzukriegen, nachdem sie doch jahreland wie eine Eins hinter dem Texaner standen. Aber es scheint, dass die Tage von W. gezählt sind.

In diesem Sinne alles Gute zum Vatertag, den es in den USA leider nicht gibt.

[Joerver]

@B&N
ich glaube Dein Gefühl täuscht Dich nicht. Mir ist dieser Wandel auch aufgefallen und das bei einem Hardliner in der Times, bei Friedman.
Hier der Hinweis auf den Artikel:

#16257 von Joerver 13.05.04 10:56:17 Beitrag Nr.: 13.108.629 13108629
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Friedman war einer der größten Unterstützer von Bush und seiner Irak Politik.

May 13, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Dancing Alone
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

It is time to ask this question: Do we have any chance of succeeding at regime change in Iraq without regime change here at home?

Es ist meiner Meinung nach sinnlos über liberal in den USA zu reden. Liberal ist ein Schimpfwort.
Viele Begriffe sind in den USA anders besetzt als in Europa.
Die NYTimes kann man vielleicht als weltoffen bezeichnen, die auch andere Meinungen abdruckt. Die Post ist doch oft sehr `provinziell`, womit ich meine auf die USA bezogen.
Von einem Pressespektrum wie in D von Welt, FAZ, SZ und Taz kann man in den USA nicht sprechen. Ich glaube außer einigen alternativen Wochenblättern den Alternative Weeklies:

Alt.Weekly Index, Det/Metro Times, LA Weekly, New Times` Index, New York Press People`s Weekly News, Seattle Weekly, SF Bay Guardian, Village Voice und Internetzeitungen
gibt es nur, wie auch in der Politik, eine Richtung mit unterschiedlichen Ausprägungen.
Deshalb bringt auch ein Kerry keine neue Politik in die USA, sondern diese wird nur anders verkauft.
Vor vielen Jahren haben die Republikaner ihre Think Tanks gegründet, diese haben über die Jahre die Geisteshaltung der USA so verändert, dass außerhalb dieser Denkrichtung in den USA kein Leben existieren kann.
Man hat vor kurzem erst ein Jubiläum der Gründung gefeiert. Ich habe in diesem Thread auch einen Kommentar dazu eingestellt.
Erst in den letzten Jahren haben Leute wie Soros und andere Gegeninstitute gegründet, um eine Gegenmeinung in den USA zu installieren.

[bares@nobles]

Hallo joerver
wie du schon sagst gibt es in der US-Medienlandschaft nicht dieses breite Spektrum wie z.B. in Deutschland.
Vor allem im Fernsehen ist alles Einheitsbrei, copy und paste was die Regierung so verlauten lässt. Investigativer Journalismus ist Fehlanzeige. Heutzutage gibt es ja schliesslich den embedded journalism. Das gilt für Fox News am rechten Ende bis zu CNN, einem Sender den man in den USA gemeinhin als liberal bezeichnet. Ist mir leider noch nie aufgefallen, wann CNN liberal oder regierungskritisch gewesen sein sollte. Muss noch zu Ted Turners Zeiten gewesen sein

Einzig CBS hebt sich manchmal positive und kritisch von dem Einheitsquatsch ab. Die haben übrigens momentan wieder eine gute Dokumentation laufen über Bush und den Jesus Faktor.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/presiden….
Hervorragende Dokumentation mit interressanten Hintergrundberichten zu diesem ganzen christlichen Gehabe von Bush und wie der Einfluss der christlichen Rechten mittlerweile die ganze Politik der USA bestimmt.

Leider spielt nämlich in den USA die Religion mittlerweile eine herausragende Rolle im gesellschaftlichen und politischen Leben und es waren die Protestanten, die die letzte Wahl für Bush entschieden haben. Und diese vergeistigten Typen ziehen auch jetzt wieder alle Register um Bush ins Weisse Haus zu bringen.

Und jetzt besucht Bush demnächst noch den Papst in Rom und hofft, dass ihm das auch noch ein paar katholische Stimmen einbringt, zumal ja Kerry bei den katholischen Bischöfen wegen seiner pro-choice Haltung in der Abtreibungsfrage in Ungnade gefallen ist.

In Europa wird man es kaum glauben, aber Religion sprich Protestantismus in allen mögliche Varianten ist wohl der Faktor, der auch die nächste US-Wahl entscheiden wird.
Calvin würde sich freuen.

[Joerver]

May 21, 2004
Chalabi`s Seat of Honor Lost to Open Political Warfare With U.S.
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, May 20 — By all appearances, Ahmad Chalabi reached the pinnacle of influence in Washington four months ago, when he took a seat of honor right behind Laura Bush at the president`s State of the Union address. To all the world, he looked like the Iraqi exile who had returned home victorious, a favorite of the Pentagon who might run the country once the American occupation ended.

In fact, as Mr. Chalabi applauded President Bush, his influence in Washington had already eroded.

The intelligence about unconventional weapons that his Iraqi National Congress helped feed to senior Bush administration officials and data-starved intelligence analysts — evidence that created the urgency behind the march toward war — was already crumbling. Intelligence officials now argue some of it was fabricated. The much-discussed, much-denied effort by Pentagon officials to install him as Iraq`s leader had already faded.

By Thursday morning, when his home and office were raided by the Iraqi police and American troops seeking evidence of fraud, embezzlement and kidnapping by members of his Iraqi National Congress — and perhaps an explanation of his dealings with Iranian intelligence — Mr. Chalabi was already engaged in open political warfare with the Bush administration.

Now he says that with the liberation of Iraq, the United States should get out of the way. "My message is let my people go, let my people be free," he said, clearly angry that his bedroom had been invaded and that his computers and papers had been confiscated. "We are grateful to President Bush for liberating Iraq, but it is time for the Iraqi people to run their affairs."

It was an outburst that followed a long winter and spring of growing tensions. Mr. Chalabi has denounced the American plan to let the United Nations choose an interim government for Iraq. Just three days ago, the Pentagon announced that it would terminate his organization`s $335,000-a-month contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Over the years, the Iraqi National Congress has received about $33 million from the State Department, according to a new General Accounting Office report. In addition it got $6 million from the Defense Intelligence Agency. In return, Mr. Chalabi provided intelligence on weapons that one senior American intelligence official described earlier this week as "useless at best, and misleading at worst." Other officials say Mr. Chalabi`s group was more accurate in identifying the whereabouts of former Saddam Hussein loyalists.

The raid was a remarkable reversal for a man who, in lunches with politicians, secret sessions with intelligence chiefs and frequent conversations with reporters from Foggy Bottom to London`s Mayfair, worked furiously to plot Mr. Hussein`s fall.

His biggest success came in 1998. That year a group of influential conservatives wrote an "Open Letter" to President Bill Clinton calling for "regime change" in Iraq to become the official policy of the United States. Those signing the document included many of the men who came to dominate the top ranks of the Bush administration three years later: Donald H. Rumsfeld, Paul D. Wolfowitz, Douglas J. Feith, Richard L. Armitage, Elliott Abrams and Zalmay M. Khalilzad, among others.

Their entreaty helped propel an act of Congress that Mr. Clinton endorsed. And the letter stated clearly that the United States should "recognize a provisional government of Iraq based on the principles and leaders of the Iraqi National Congress (I.N.C.) that is representative of all the peoples of Iraq."

That never became official policy, but it clearly cemented Mr. Chalabi`s position as a favorite. The act allowed millions of dollars to flow to the Iraqi National Congress, although many in the Clinton administration doubted Mr. Chalabi`s ability to lead an overthrow of Iraq. Many of Mr. Clinton`s top advisers dismissed him. "Saddam isn`t going to be overthrown by a bunch of guys with briefcases in London," Samuel R. Berger, then the national security adviser, once said. Others noted his conviction for defrauding his bank in Jordan 12 years ago; Mr. Chalabi and his supporters say he was framed.

But those doubts were largely forgotten when the signatories of the 1998 letter came to power in 2001. Mr. Chalabi became a frequent visitor to the Pentagon and the White House, even though he was snubbed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department. He became a master of the art of the leak, giving new currency to the suspicions about Mr. Hussein`s weapons.

But he also made many enemies. Richard N. Perle, one of his strongest supporters here, another signatory of the letter, and a highly influential figure in defense circles, alluded to that Thursday after calling the raid on the Iraqi National Congress operations "bizarre."

"It is far from obvious how we advance American interests by acting against someone who shares our values and is highly effective," Mr. Perle said in an interview. "They have gone in recent days, at the C.I.A. and the State Department, from saying he has no influence in Iraq to a panic that he is really quite effective and could emerge with great influence" when the occupation ends. He predicted that "the crude nature of this action will actually have the reverse effect, and bolster Ahmad."

Among Mr. Chalabi`s other vociferous defenders over the last three years have been Vice President Dick Cheney and Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, who could often be overheard describing Mr. Chalabi`s love of both the Iraqi people and the land he left at age 13. But both men were careful never to state outright what role they thought Mr. Chalabi should play, beyond a confidence he would rise to the top.

Mr. Chalabi in recent months has veered between tepid defenses of the case he made against Mr. Hussein and increasingly vitriolic descriptions of the American occupation.

"We are heroes in error," he told the London Daily Telegraph in February, when asked whether he had fed faulty intelligence to the United States and Britain to stoke the case for war. "As far as we`re concerned we`ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat." Mr. Chalabi said later that he had been misquoted.

Quoted accurately or not, he became more concerned that he was becoming that scapegoat and broke with the administration when it seemed clear that he and other leading members of the Governing Council might be frozen out of the interim government that the United Nations is expected to create with American guidance to take over on July 1.

Mr. Wolfowitz told Congress on Tuesday that it was the imminent transfer of sovereignty that led to the Pentagon`s decision to end the contract with Mr. Chalabi`s group.

Mr. Chalabi had no doubt what his role was: the man who led the liberation of Iraq. In an interview last winter, when he was leading an effort to keep the Iraqi Governing Council in power even after a new Iraqi government took office, Mr. Chalabi argued that he and others on the council "are the ones that opposed Saddam Hussein for all those years and, allied with the United States, overthrew him."

"Now the United States wants to overthrow us?" he asked.

Reacting to that, Sheik Ghazi Marshal Ajil al-Yawar, another council member who is its president today, shook his head and said: "They think they are entitled to a role because they believe they overthrew Saddam Hussein. It was the United States that overthrew Saddam while we were eating TV dinners."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 21, 2004
Afghan Policies on Questioning Prisoners Taken to Iraq
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, May 20 — The interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison was run by a military intelligence unit that had served in Afghanistan and that had taken to Iraq the aggressive rules and procedures it had developed for the Afghan conflict, according to documents and testimony.

Some members of the unit, part of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C., have already been quietly punished in connection with the abuse of an Iraqi woman at the prison, according to documents recently released by the Army.

In August 2003, the officer in charge of the unit, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, an experienced Army interrogator, posted her own list of "interrogation rules of engagement," which were inconsistent with those later issued for Iraq by the top American commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, according to Congressional officials.

The Abu Ghraib prison`s questioning area, the existence of which was classified information, was formally called the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center.

It was not in the cellblock where the severe abuses that have come to light in recent weeks occurred.

Interrogations took place in buildings outside the cellblock, and military police were not present.

To date, the only people charged with crimes in the abuse have been members of the 372nd Military Police Company, who served as guards in the cellblock.

But lawyers representing some of the accused say some photographs of the abuses also show unidentified military intelligence officers and contractors assigned to the interrogation center.

Some of the accused have said they were told or encouraged to harshly treat prisoners by military intelligence officers, as part of a broader effort to soften the detainees up for interrogation.

"Only one with Pollyannaish myopia could conclude that the M.I. community is not deeply involved in the abuse," said Gary Myers, a lawyer whose client, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II, is facing a court-martial in the case.

The Washington Post published in its Friday edition sworn accounts of prisoners who said they were abused at the prisons, as well as previously undisclosed pictures and images from a video of guards beating and humiliating naked detainees and forcing a number of them to form a human pyramid.

The article quoted the detainees as saying that soldiers abused them as punishment for breaking the rules of the prison.

In addition to the threats and humiliations that have previously been reported, the newspaper said the detainees were forced to retrieve food from toilets, were ridden like animals and were force-fed pork and liquor. One prisoner declared he had seen an Army translator having sex with a teenage boy detainee. Some of the detainees identified soldiers already charged in the case.

Neither the statements, nor the picture shed any new light on who might have ordered the abuse.

General Sanchez issued no rules to govern procedures for interrogations until after a visit last fall by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller. The rules he later issue emerged in stages, and some were contradictory. In a closed briefing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, a senior Army lawyer acknowledged that the process might have left unclear to some officers the degree to which harsh measures, including sensory and sleep deprivation, were permissible.

The interrogation center is the focus of a continuing inquiry into the role of military intelligence officers and civilian contractors who oversaw it.

Until now, very little information about the interrogators or the evolution of interrogation rules has emerged publicly.

But the role played by the center, formally established in September by Brig. Gen. Barbara G. Fast, the top intelligence officer in Iraq, has emerged in documents, testimony and interviews.

Beginning in September, the center was headed by Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan. Captain Wood acted as officer in charge.

Elements of the 519th Battalion, including Captain Wood, had served as interrogators in Afghanistan, where the American military runs detention centers at Bagram Air Base and at a site in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan.

They were among several units that brought to Iraq "their own policies that had been used in other theaters," Col. Marc Warren, the top lawyer at the Army`s headquarters in Iraq, said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.

In Afghanistan, military officials said, American forces use harsher tactics for interrogations than in Iraq, where it has insisted that the Geneva Conventions apply to all prisoners in American custody.

Colonel Warren and other Army officials have not said whether they believe the military intelligence unit put into practice at Abu Ghraib the harsher procedures used in Afghanistan.

A report by The Denver Post in April — based on Army records and published in April, before the broader Abu Ghraib scandal became known — disclosed that three soldiers from the 519th Battalion had been fined and demoted in a closed proceeding stemming from the abuse of an Iraqi woman at Abu Ghraib. It is not clear whether those soldiers reported to Captain Wood.

The records obtained by The Post were heavily edited by the military to delete the names of the soldiers involved and other details of the incident. Spokesmen for the XVIII Airborne Corps did not respond to repeated inquiries for more information about the incidents.

Captain Wood had served 10 years in enlisted ranks as an interrogator, and her unit specializes in "tactical exploitation" of intelligence, including interrogation of prisoners, Army officials said. It remained unclear on Thursday exactly when and where Captain Wood and her unit served in Afghanistan; a spokesman for the XVIII Corps in Fort Bragg said he was not able to provide that information on short notice.

Maj. Rich Patterson, the spokesman, also said that Captain Wood was no longer assigned to the 519th Battalion. An official at the Command and General Staff College, at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., said she had graduated from an advanced officer`s course there earlier this week.

Major Patterson confirmed that Captain Wood and her unit had been assigned to the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib last year.

No one has made public accusations of wrongdoing against Captain Wood or any members of her unit. But she and several other of its officers are named in military court documents as being among witnesses being sought by a lawyer defending a military police officer charged in connection with the abuse.

Among the questions that investigators are examining is how the rules that Captain Wood posted at Abu Ghraib differed from the directives issued by General Sanchez, including unsigned memorandums on Sept. 10 and Sept. 28, and signed directives on Sept. 14 and Oct. 12, each of which spelled out different rules.

Those directives are still classified, but their contents were described by Colonel Warren on Wednesday and Thursday by several Senate aides who were briefed by senior Army officials.

The unsigned Sept. 10 draft authorized approaches spelled out in Army Field Manual 34-52 and other widely used interrogation techniques, as well as sensory deprivation, which could mean the hooding of prisoners.

On Sept. 14, General Sanchez approved the first formal policy for Iraq that allowed the use of "sleep management" techniques, like limiting prisoners to four hours` rest each 24 hours, and stress positions, including standing or crouching for up to an hour at a time, Senate aides said.

That policy was sent to the Central Command and to other military, legal and intelligence experts for review. On Oct. 12, in response to objections from military lawyers, General Sanchez issued a second, much narrower policy that Colonel Warren said Wednesday complied with the Geneva Conventions.

Most of the harsher methods that had been automatically authorized in the Sept. 14 directive, like long-term isolation of a prisoner, were dropped in the October version, except in cases in which General Sanchez sanctioned them.

The Oct. 12 directive also ordered that interrogators take control of the "lighting, heating, and configuration of the interrogation room, as well as food, clothing and shelter" given to those questioned at Abu Ghraib, a Senate aide said. The memo directed interrogators to work closely with military police guarding the prisoners to "manipulate internees` emotions and weaknesses" to gain their cooperation.

As the officer in charge of the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib, Captain Wood reported to Colonel Jordan, an Army reservist who arrived at the prison in September to take charge of the unit, which was established Sept. 20, according to a chronology provided by Senate officials.

In a report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, Colonel Jordan, Col. Thomas M. Pappas and two civilian contractors were identified as having been "directly or indirectly responsible" for the abuses.

Captain Wood`s unit and Colonel Jordan both reported to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade under Colonel Pappas, who moved his headquarters to Abu Ghraib in September and was the top Army officer at the prison.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 21, 2004
DETAINEES
Pentagon Approved Intense Interrogation Techniques for Sept. 11 Suspect at Guantánamo
By DAVID JOHNSTON and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, May 20 — Interrogators at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp received Pentagon approval to use special, harsher interrogation procedures on a Saudi Arabian detainee who was believed to be the planned 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 terror plot, government officials said Thursday.

The decision followed a debate among Pentagon and military legal authorities that centered on how to question Mohamed al-Kahtani, who tried unsuccessfully to enter the United States in August 2001.

After he was turned away by a Customs inspector, Mr. Kahtani returned to the Middle East. He was later captured in Afghanistan and sent to Guantánamo, where he was one of the highest ranking Al Qaeda figures at the base.

Mr. Kahtani was believed to have information about the Sept. 11 plot, about possible future attacks and about funding for the Al Qaeda terrorist network, and the internal legal debate showed how the issue of coercive treatment had swirled through the Pentagon before American forces entered Iraq.

At a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, the officials said that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had approved a range of more aggressive interrogation techniques in response to a desire in late 2002 to pry more information from a specific detainee at Guantánamo. But they did not disclose the detainee`s identity.

A senior Pentagon civilian lawyer said there was "some urgency" to increasing the pressure on this detainee because he likely "had information that the people at Guantánamo believed was important, not just about perhaps 9/11, but about future events."

Mr. Kahtani was specifically identified in separate interviews with several United States government officials as the detainee at the center of the debate.

A range of techniques harsher than those described in standard military doctrine were sought, based on the administration`s legal determination that the Guantánamo detainees were not conventional prisoners of war, covered by the Geneva Conventions, but terrorists and illegal enemy combatants.

Pentagon officials have declined to list the approved techniques, saying that they remain classified.

Officials confirmed that some military lawyers argued against using the techniques, and an interagency working group was appointed to review the issue.

What techniques ultimately were used on Mr. Kahtani remain unclear. But one senior United States government official confirmed Thursday that Mr. Kahtani had provided information about a planned attack and about financial networks to fund terrorist operations.

A senior Bush administration official said Thursday that the techniques used against Mr. Kahtani remained well within the bounds of "humane" interrogation techniques pledged by the Bush administration and included "auditory stimulation" such as loud music, deprivation of light, segregation from other detainees and extended periods of interrogation.

Mr. Kahtani`s denial of entry into the United States had been described in detail to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 hijackings. The Saudi national had arrived in Orlando on Aug. 4, 2001, on a one-way flight from London and Dubai carrying $2,800 in cash. The Customs inspector who met Mr. Kahtani, José Melendez Perez, said in testimony to the commission that Mr. Kahtani had become agitated when questioned about his travel plans.

Mr. Melendez Perez said that when told he was being deported, Mr. Kahtani turned and said in English something "to the effect of, `I`ll be back.` "

Later, authorities determined that Mohamed Atta, the operational leader of the Sept. 11 plot, was at the Orlando airport on the day that Mr. Kahtani arrived.

Investigators deduced from records of phone calls made by Mr. Atta at the airport to Saudi Arabia that he was probably phoning confederates to determine why Mr. Kahtani had failed to show up.

The more aggressive techniques used on Mr. Kahtani were halted between January 2003 and April 2003, when the working group came up with a set of interrogation techniques that were approved "by consensus," according to one Pentagon official.

A military lawyer who briefed reporters said that the final set of guidelines for interrogation had met with approval from the uniformed legal community.

Congressional officials said those techniques were described Thursday to senior Pentagon and military officials in a classified Capitol Hill hearing to describe the process of interrogations at Guantánamo.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 20, 2004
Q&A: Peter Galbraith on Iraq

From the Council on Foreign Relations, May 20, 2004

Peter W. Galbraith, an Iraq expert who was instrumental in the establishment of the autonomous Kurdish zone in 1991, puts little faith in the idea that Iraq can evolve into a truly united country. The Coalition Provisional Authority, he says, has been proceeding on a false premise, "namely, the idea of Iraq as a unified country populated by people who think of themselves primarily as Iraqis." The more practical option, he says, is a "loose federation" that allows each of Iraq`s main groups--the Shiites, Kurds, and Sunnis--to build "the system it wants."

Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to Croatia from 1993-98, says the break-up of the former Yugoslavia affected his views of Iraq`s political future. "It`s almost impossible to have a unified and democratic state," he says, "when people in a geographically defined part of it almost unanimously don`t want to be a part of it." Galbraith is currently senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C. He was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on May 18, 2004.

What`s the best approach for the United States and the Iraqis in the coming months?

Well, 45 days before the [June 30] handover we still don`t know to whom power will be handed over. In fact, it`s yet to be shown whether this is going to be a political administration or a technocratic administration or some combination thereof. But there is, in my view, a larger problem, which is that the Coalition [Provisional Authority] has been operating on an idea of Iraq that does not exist: namely, the idea of Iraq as a unified country populated by people who think of themselves primarily as Iraqis.

Other students of Iraq say there`s a very strong Iraqi nationalism, even in the Kurdish areas in the north. You dispute that, obviously.

One has to make a distinction between Kurdish Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq. I`ve traveled to every corner of Kurdistan over the last 20 years and know most of its leaders well. I`ve never met an Iraqi Kurd who would prefer to be part of Iraq if he thought independence was a realistic option. It`s my judgment, partly based on my experience in the Balkans in the 1990s, that it`s almost impossible to have a unified and democratic state when people in a geographically defined part of it almost unanimously don`t want to be a part of it.

The Kurds don`t want to be part of Iraq for very good reasons. Any of us in their shoes would feel exactly the same way. In Iraq, there have been 80 years of oppression culminating in genocide. But in the past 13 years, Kurdistan has been a de facto independent state and it has been very successful. Now, in the Arab parts of Iraq you do find some Iraqi nationalism, principally among the Sunni Arabs but also among some Shiites, but nationalism and identity are not necessarily the same thing.

Among the Shiites, I think there`s an overwhelming sense of their Shiite identity as opposed to their Iraqi or Arab identity. If you talk to them, what comes across is that their Shiite identity is most important to them, along with their sense that they have been a repressed group in the past but now, by applying principles of majority rule, ought to be ruling all of Iraq.

With regard to the Sunni Arabs, what the coalition did was destroy a system in which Iraq was ruled by a Sunni Arab strongman, and that can`t be put back together, nor should it. The Sunni Arabs have been more than compensated for their minority status by looking to connections with the [predominantly Sunni] larger Arab world. This is the basic premise of Baathism. I think what you see now is that they also look for connections with the world of Sunni Islam, which includes Islamic radical groups in the Sunni heartland.

As you wrote recently, the reality is that there isn`t going to be an independent Kurdistan, given the strong opposition of Iranians, Turks, and Syrians. So there has to be some kind of federalism?

Precisely. Independence is not a realistic option largely because of the opposition of Turkey, but to a lesser extent that of Syria, Iran, and the Arab world. Also, if you wanted to break Iraq up into three separate, independent countries, the territorial issues would become mutually divisive and, quite possibly, a source of conflict. I think the better alternative is a loose federation.

This means, in essence, to allow each of the groups the system it wants. In the case of Kurdistan, which has had 13 years of quasi-democracy and which aspires to be something akin to a Western-style secular democracy, allow it to have that system. In the south, I think the religious groups predominate. If in fact they prevail in the elections and want to create an Islamic state, then let them do so, but only in the south. And in the center, hope that, by having some kind of Sunni Arab state, this will provide sufficient security to the Sunni Arabs that a responsible leadership will develop. But I have to admit that, at least in the case of the Sunni Arab heartland, that`s a hope and there`s no reason to think that it will necessarily happen.

When you talk to Iraqis, does this idea resonate with anyone except the Kurds?

I think this is an approach that would be almost unanimously endorsed in Kurdistan. Among the Shiites, there`s some division of opinion. The Shiites asked for the possibility of creating a southern region that would have the same powers as the Kurdistan region, and that was incorporated in Iraq`s interim constitution, which allows any three governates to form a region. In the opposition period, that is, before the U.S. invasion, the Shiites also spoke of creating a separate Shiite entity. So there is some appeal to that. On the other hand, you have people like [Grand Ayatollah Ali al-] Sistani who insist on majority rule and who oppose provisions in the interim constitution that would give the Kurds or the Sunni Arabs a veto over the permanent constitution.

Please clarify. As I recall, the constitution says that any three governorates, or provinces, could veto some provision of the constitution?

Basically, if the constitution is rejected by any three governorates, it doesn`t come into effect. But this is a very standard, super-majority provision for constitutions. It existed for the U.S. Constitution, which came into effect only when ratified by nine of the thirteen states and only among the nine so ratifying. And, of course, amendments need [the approval of] two-thirds of each house of Congress and three-quarters of the states. But more importantly, an Iraqi constitution that is unacceptable to the Kurds or the Sunni Arabs is a formula for renewed conflict. So clearly, it must be acceptable to all three groups if it`s going to work.

That requires a certain amount of negotiation.

Absolutely. The fundamental problem, to make this very clear, is that not only is there a significant part of the population of Iraq that does not want to be Iraqi, namely the Kurds, but there are also very different visions of what Iraq should be, from the secular, more democratic, Kurdish vision in the north, to the Shiite, Islamic vision that seems to be predominate in the south. They are irreconcilable in the context of a unitary state. But they can work in the context of a very loose federation in which each can have what it wants.

What about control of oil revenues? The oil fields are located primarily in Shiite areas in the south and near Kirkuk in the north, which is outside the Kurd-administered zone.

There are really two issues: oil and security. With regard to oil, what both the Kurds and the Shiites proposed during the course of the debate over the interim constitution is that the oil should be owned and managed by the regions, but that there should be a mechanism for sharing the revenue in an equitable way. In effect, what this would mean is a redistribution of revenue from the south to the Sunni Arab territories and also to Kurdistan, at least depending on what happens to the Kirkuk oil field.

How can the issue of control of the Kirkuk oil field be resolved?

It ought to have its own special status, in which there`s power-sharing among the four communities there: the Kurds, Turkmen, Arabs, and the Christians who are Chaldean and Assyrians. If you bring Kirkuk into Kurdistan, which may be the decision that the majority of Kurds would like, you risk importing into Kurdistan a lot of trouble both with Turkey over the Turkmen and the Iraqi Arabs over the Arabs.

And the security issue?

The coalition has had this idea of creating a single Iraqi national army and other security institutions, but it`s unworkable. It demonstrably has failed as it did in Falluja and the south, where the army either refused to fight or melted away or in some cases joined the insurgents. But there are local institutions that are capable of providing security. In Kurdistan, the security is provided by the pesh merga, who are not a militia but an organized and effective military force. They were major American allies in the war. And as a result of their presence, Kurdistan is the most secure and peaceful region of Iraq, with just 300 coalition troops. Why would anybody want to change that?

If you try to bring the Iraqi army to Kurdistan, the Kurds will never accept this because they associate the Iraqi army with the repression of 80 years and the genocide of the 1980s. And frankly, administration [officials are] now facing up to this reality. They have agreed that Kurdistan will continue to have a very substantial internal security force, which will be responsible to the Kurdistan government. The reality is that the Iraqi army will never return there. The agreement on the internal Kurdistan security forces has already been reached, and the Kurds said that they will never accept the Iraqi army back and nobody is going to force them to do it.

There won`t even be a fig leaf of them being part of the army?

No. Actually, the Kurds proposed the creation of an Iraqi-Kurdistan national guard, which they would have created, officered, and appointed a commander [to lead], but which would have been under the control of Iraq`s national civilian military command. The administration rejected that idea and has now agreed to something that would be purely under the control and command of the local government.

What`s critical for the Kurds is security. Having their own military is not a first step to independence; it is a way to guarantee the security of their region. First, because they have no confidence in the effectiveness of central government institutions, and second, because they fear the central government institutions will be new engines of repression. Now in the south, the Shiite religious institutions have been providing security and other services from April of 2003. And it seems to me that if you allow the creation of a southern region and convert some of the militias associated with moderate Shiite leaders, like the Badr Brigade [the military wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)], into the military force of the southern region, then they too can provide security and, under those circumstances, might be more likely to take on the likes of [rebel cleric] Muqtada al-Sadr.

That`s one of the weaknesses: Sistani has no troops, right?

Yes, but [the head of the SCIRI, Abdul Aziz al-] Hakim does. But as long as it`s a war between the United States and al-Sadr, al-Sadr gets new recruits and the influence of the moderates diminishes.

And the Sunni Arabs?

The first point I`d make is that we Americans like to think there`s a solution to every problem, and that isn`t necessarily so. The problem in the Sunni area is that there are no visible leaders who have a constituency, as best we can tell. And with the insurgency, which has both elements of regime dead-enders and now, increasingly, Sunni Islamic fundamentalists, it`s very hard for an indigenous leadership to develop. But what I would say is that if you had a Sunni entity, this provides some chance that some leadership will develop, but there`s no guarantee. But the other side of my argument is that even if that doesn`t happen, you would have limited the area the coalition needs to focus on to three places: the Sunni triangle, Baghdad, and Kirkuk.

Have you talked about your ideas with the administration? What kind of response did you receive?

No. I can say that the ideas have attracted a lot of interest in the uniformed military, in the Pentagon, who I think are desperate for some way out. I tried to talk about this a year ago to people like [Deputy Defense Secretary] Paul Wolfowitz, whom I`ve known well, but it was nothing they wanted to hear at that time.

Do you have any thoughts as to who would be a good head of the government during the interim period after June 30?

If you have one president, two vice presidents, and a prime minister, and the prime minister has almost all the power, close to a dictator, I would have thought you would want to have a Shiite prime minister, whether it`s somebody more technocratic or one of the more political Shiite leaders. In some sense, it would be better if it were somebody with more political clout; I don`t think Iraq is well-suited to a technocratic government. But whether consensus could be formed around Hakim or [Ibrahim al-] Jafari, the head of the Da`wa Party, I don`t know. It`s easier to see who the Kurdish vice president would be, if he would take it, which is [President of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Jalal] Talabani. [The Leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party Massoud] Barzani doesn`t want it. And then, [former, pre-Baathist Foreign Minister Adnan] Pachachi is either the overall president or the Sunni vice president.

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May 21, 2004
Friends Like This

Before the war, Ahmad Chalabi told Washington hawks exactly what they wanted to hear about Saddam Hussein`s weapons of mass destruction and the warm welcome American troops could expect from liberated Iraqis. They responded in kind, picturing Mr. Chalabi — who has lived most of his life outside Iraq and who was convicted in absentia in Jordan for bank fraud — as exactly the kind of secular Shiite to lead a new, democratic Iraq. Now reality has come crashing down on both sides, and the friendship has crumbled along with self-delusion.

Yesterday, American and Iraqi security forces raided and ransacked Mr. Chalabi`s home and offices in Baghdad, supposedly as part of an investigation into still-unspecified offenses. Earlier in the week, the United States halted the monthly $335,000 payments it had been giving to the Iraqi National Congress, the Chalabi political organization. The money was supposed to be for intelligence gathering, and it had continued to flow even after it had become apparent that much of the information Mr. Chalabi had produced was dead wrong. He was one of the chief cheerleaders for the theory that Iraq had vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction. Secretary of State Colin Powell`s disastrous misstatements to the United Nations about mobile weapons labs in Iraq now seem to have been based on fabrications by an informer linked to Mr. Chalabi.

Lately, Mr. Chalabi — who has no genuine political base — has concluded that anti-Americanism is the key to political popularity. He is also an opponent of Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations official whom the United States is counting on to form a new Iraqi government by June 30. As the Chalabi and American interests diverged, the relationship naturally soured. Nevertheless, the sight of American-controlled forces smashing their way into the home of a leading politician, even one this unappetizing, was troubling. American authorities` claims that it was an Iraqi operation were implausible; they failed to explain who would order the police to attack a member of the Governing Council because the interior minister said he had not.

Many people in the Bush administration have been growing angry at the way Mr. Chalabi keeps biting the hand that fed him so well for so long. Some of them also say the rosy picture he and his fellow exiles drew of Iraqis` welcoming the American troops along those never-seen flower-strewn highways contributed to one of the most disastrous miscalculations of the war: Donald Rumsfeld`s decision to send too few troops to secure the country after Saddam Hussein fled.

There`s little to recommend Mr. Chalabi as a politician, or certainly as an informer. But he can`t be made a scapegoat. The Bush administration should have known what it was doing when it gave enormous credence to a questionable character whose own self-interest was totally invested in getting the Americans to invade Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld desperately wanted to prove his theories of light warfare, and everyone in the White House, with their eyes on that big tax-cut plan, wanted to believe that Iraq was as the exiles said: practically begging to be invaded, and possible to run on the cheap.

Even at this late date, it`s good to see that Washington is distancing itself from the man who is the symbol of all those disastrous blunders. But so far, the ham-handed raid seems only to have given the opportunistic Mr. Chalabi, with his absurd "let my people go" sound bite yesterday, a way to portray himself as a martyred Iraqi patriot.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com

New Details of Prison Abuse Emerge
Abu Ghraib Detainees` Statements Describe Sexual Humiliation And Savage Beatings

By Scott Higham and Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 21, 2004; Page A01

Previously secret sworn statements by detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq describe in raw detail abuse that goes well beyond what has been made public, adding allegations of prisoners being ridden like animals, sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to retrieve their food from toilets.

The fresh allegations of prison abuse are contained in statements taken from 13 detainees shortly after a soldier reported the incidents to military investigators in mid-January. The detainees said they were savagely beaten and repeatedly humiliated sexually by American soldiers working on the night shift at Tier 1A in Abu Ghraib during the holy month of Ramadan, according to copies of the statements obtained by The Washington Post.

The statements provide the most detailed picture yet of what took place on the cellblock. Some of the detainees described being abused as punishment or discipline after they were caught fighting or with a prohibited item. Some said they were pressed to denounce Islam or were force-fed pork and liquor. Many provided graphic details of how they were sexually humiliated and assaulted, threatened with rape, and forced to masturbate in front of female soldiers.

"They forced us to walk like dogs on our hands and knees," said Hiadar Sabar Abed Miktub al-Aboodi, detainee No. 13077. "And we had to bark like a dog, and if we didn`t do that they started hitting us hard on our face and chest with no mercy. After that, they took us to our cells, took the mattresses out and dropped water on the floor and they made us sleep on our stomachs on the floor with the bags on our head and they took pictures of everything."

The prisoners also provided accounts of how some of the now-famous photographs were staged, including the pyramid of hooded, naked prisoners. Eight of the detainees identified by name one particular soldier at the center of the abuse investigation, Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., a member of the 372nd Military Police Company from Cresaptown, Md. Five others described abuse at the hands of a solider who matches Graner`s description.

"They said we will make you wish to die and it will not happen," said Ameen Saeed Al-Sheik, detainee No. 151362. "They stripped me naked. One of them told me he would rape me. He drew a picture of a woman to my back and makes me stand in shameful position holding my buttocks."

The Pentagon is investigating the allegations, a spokesman said last night.

"There are a number of lines of inquiry that are being taken with respect to allegations of abuse of detainees in U.S. custody," Bryan Whitman said. "There is still more to know and to be learned and new things to be discovered."
Threats of Death and Assault

The disclosures come from a new cache of documents, photographs and videos obtained by The Post that are part of evidence assembled by Army investigators putting together criminal cases against soldiers at Abu Ghraib. So far, seven MPs have been charged with brutalizing detainees at the prison, and one pleaded guilty Wednesday.

The sworn statements, taken in Baghdad between Jan. 16 and Jan. 21, span 65 pages. Each statement begins with a handwritten account in Arabic that is signed by the detainee, followed by a typewritten translation by U.S. military contractors. The shortest statement is a single paragraph; the longest exceeds two single-spaced typewritten pages.

While military investigators interviewed the detainees separately, many of them recalled the same event or pattern of events and procedures in Tier 1A -- a block reserved for prisoners who were thought to possess intelligence that could help thwart the insurgency in Iraq, find Saddam Hussein or locate weapons of mass destruction. Military intelligence officers took over the cellblock last October and were using MPs to help "set the conditions" for interrogations, according to an investigative report complied by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. Several MPs have since said in statements and through their attorneys that they were roughing up detainees at the direction of U.S. military intelligence officers.

Most of the detainees said in the statements that they were stripped upon their arrival to Tier 1A, forced to wear women`s underwear, and repeatedly humiliated in front of one another and American soldiers. They also described beatings and threats of death and sexual assault if they did not cooperate with U.S. interrogators.

Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, detainee No. 151108, told investigators that when he first arrived at Abu Ghraib last year, he was forced to strip, put on a hood and wear rose-colored panties with flowers on them. "Most of the days I was wearing nothing else," he said in his statement.

Hilas also said he witnessed an Army translator having sex with a boy at the prison. He said the boy was between 15 and 18 years old. Someone hung sheets to block the view, but Hilas said he heard the boy`s screams and climbed a door to get a better look. Hilas said he watched the assault and told investigators that it was documented by a female soldier taking pictures.

"The kid was hurting very bad," Hilas said.

Hilas, like other detainees interviewed by the military, said he could not identify some of the soldiers because they either covered their name patches or did not wear uniforms. But he and other detainees did know the names of three, including Graner and Sgt. Javal S. Davis, both of whom have been charged and now face courts-martial. Some of the detainees described a short female MP with dark hair and a blond female MP of medium height who watched and took part in some of the abuses. Three female MPs have been charged in the case so far.

Hilas told investigators that he asked Graner for the time one day because he wanted to pray. He said Graner cuffed him to the bars of a cell window and left him there for close to five hours, his feet dangling off the floor. Hilas also said he watched as Graner and others sodomized a detainee with a phosphoric light. "They tied him to the bed," Hilas said.

Graner`s attorney, Guy L. Womack, did not return phone messages yesterday. In previous interviews, he has said that his client was following the lead of military intelligence officers.

Mustafa Jassim Mustafa, detainee No. 150542, told military investigators he also witnessed the phosphoric-light assault. He said it was around the time of Ramadan, the holiest period of the Muslim year, when he heard screams coming from a cell below. Mustafa said he looked down to see a group of soldiers holding the detainee down and sodomizing him with the light.

Graner was sodomizing him with the phosphoric light, Mustafa said. The detainee "was screaming for help. There was another tall white man who was with Graner -- he was helping him. There was also a white female soldier, short, she was taking pictures."

Another detainee told military investigators that American soldiers sodomized and beat him. The detainee, whose name is being withheld by The Post because he is an alleged victim of a sexual assault, said he was kept naked for five days when he first arrived at Abu Ghraib and was forced to kneel for four hours with a hood over his head. He said he was beaten so badly one day that the hood flew off his head. "The police was telling me to crawl in Arabic, so I crawled on my stomach and the police were spitting on me when I was crawling, and hitting me on my back, my head and my feet," he said in his sworn statement.

One day, the detainee said, American soldiers held him down and spread his legs as another soldier prepared to open his pants. "I started screaming," he said. A soldier stepped on his head, he said, and someone broke a phosphoric light and spilled the chemicals on him.

"I was glowing and they were laughing," he said.

The detainee said the soldiers eventually brought him to a room and sodomized him with a nightstick. "They were taking pictures of me during all these instances," he told the investigators.

Mohanded Juma Juma, detainee No. 152307, said he was stripped and kept naked for six days when he arrived at Abu Ghraib. One day, he said, American soldiers brought a father and his son into the cellblock. He said the soldiers put hoods over their heads and removed their clothes.

Then, they removed the hoods.

"When the son saw his father naked he was crying," Juma told the investigators. "He was crying because of seeing his father."

He also said Graner repeatedly threw the detainees` meals into the toilets and said, "Eat it."

Hussein Mohssein Mata Al-Zayiadi, detainee No. 19446, told investigators that he was one of the hooded prisoners shown in photographs masturbating before American soldiers. "They told my friend to masturbate and told me to masturbate also, while they were taking pictures," he said.

Al-Zayiadi also said he and other detainees were beaten and tossed into separate cells.

"They opened the water in the cell and told us to lay face down in the water and we stayed like that until the morning, in the water, naked, without clothes," he said in his statement.

He also said soldiers forced him and others to perform like animals.

"Did the guards force you to crawl on your hands and knees on the ground?" a military investigator asked.

"Yes, they forced us to do this thing," Al-Zayiadi said.

"What were the guards doing while you were crawling on your hands and knees?"

"They were sitting on our backs like riding animals," Al-Zayiadi said.

He said the guards took pictures of the incident.
Photographs Described

Al-Zayiadi also described what has become one of the iconic photographs in the prison abuse scandal.

"They brought my friends, Haidar, Ahmed, Nouri, Ahzem, Hashiem, Mustafa, and I, and they put us two on the bottom, two on top of them, and two on top of those and one on top," he said. "They took pictures of us and we were naked."

Another publicized photograph -- that of a hooded detainee hooked up to wires and standing on a box -- is also described in the statements.

"On the third day, after five o`clock, Mr. Graner came and took me to room Number 37, which is the shower room, and he started punishing me," said Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh, detainee No. 18170. "Then he brought a box of food and he made me stand on it with no clothing, except a blanket. Then a tall black soldier came and put electrical wires on my fingers and toes and on my penis, and I had a bag over my head."

Al-Sheik said he was arrested on Oct. 7, and brought to Abu Ghraib, where he was put in a tent for one night. The next day, he was transferred to the "hard site," the two-story building that held about 200 prisoners and contained Tiers 1A and 1B.

He said a bag was put over his head and he was made to strip. He said American soldiers started to taunt him.

"Do you pray to Allah?" one asked. "I said yes. They said, `[Expletive] you. And [expletive] him.` One of them said, `You are not getting out of here health[y], you are getting out of here handicapped. And he said to me, `Are you married?` I said, `Yes.` They said, `If your wife saw you like this, she will be disappointed.` One of them said, `But if I saw her now she would not be disappointed now because I would rape her.` "

He said the soldiers told him that if he cooperated with interrogators they would release him in time for Ramadan. He said he did, but still was not released. He said one soldier continued to abuse him by striking his broken leg and ordered him to curse Islam. "Because they started to hit my broken leg, I cursed my religion," he said. "They ordered me to thank Jesus that I`m alive."

The detainee said the soldiers handcuffed him to a bed.

"Do you believe in anything?" he said the soldier asked. "I said to him, `I believe in Allah.` So he said, "But I believe in torture and I will torture you.` "

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
The New Images
Videos Amplify Picture of Violence

By Josh White, Christian Davenport and Scott Higham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 21, 2004; Page A01

The video begins with three soldiers huddled around a naked detainee, his thin frame backed against a wall. With a snap of his wrist, one of the soldiers slaps the man across his left cheek so hard that the prisoner`s knees buckle. Another detainee, handcuffed and on his back, is dragged across the prison floor.

Then, the human pyramid begins to take shape. Soldiers force hooded and naked prisoners into crouches on the floor, one by one, side by side, a soldier pointing to where the next ones should go. The video stops. But there is more.

In a collection of hundreds of so-far-unreleased photographs and short digital videos obtained by The Washington Post, U.S. soldiers are shown physically and emotionally abusing detainees last fall in the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

The new pictures and videos go beyond the photos previously released to the public in several ways, amplifying the overt violence against detainees and displaying a variety of abusive techniques previously unseen. They show a group of apparently cavalier soldiers assaulting prisoners, forcing detainees to masturbate, and standing over a naked prisoner while holding a shotgun. Some of the videos echo scenes in previously released still photographs -- such as the stacking of naked detainees -- but the video images render the incidents more vividly.

Defense Department spokesman Lawrence T. DiRita said the photographs, by description, sounded like those the Pentagon has exhibited to members of Congress and that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had warned might yet become public. "There are a series of investigations going on as a result of the disclosure of the activities depicted on photos," DiRita said last night.

The new images do not shed light on who directed the abuse, a question central to the court cases of the 372nd Military Police Company soldiers charged in the abuse scandal. But the pictures do show soldiers appearing to delight in the abuses, and they starkly reveal several detainees cowering in fear.

In one video clip, five hooded and naked detainees stand against the wall in the darkness, each masturbating, with two other hooded detainees crouched at their feet. Another shows a prisoner handcuffed to the outside of a cell door. He repeatedly slams his head into the green metal, leaving streaks of blood before he ultimately collapses at the feet of a cameraman.

In one photo, a soldier is seen cocking his fist as he holds a hooded detainee in a headlock amid a pile of several detainees. Later, he is seen kneeling atop the same pile, flexing his muscles, a broad smile on his face, posing.

Another soldier is seen in a photo brandishing a black baton as a naked prisoner -- cuffed at the ankles and smeared with a brown substance -- stands at the center of the prison hallway and holds his arms spread to either side.

Detainees recoil from unmuzzled dogs in at least four photos.

In one, a prisoner in an orange jumpsuit sits up against a wall, his hands behind his back. His fear is unmistakable as a black dog snarls at him, the animal`s long, sharp teeth bared inches from his face. The dog is leashed by an unidentified U.S. soldier in a flak jacket and wool hat, the soldier using both hands to keep the dog restrained.

In another photo, the same handler has the black dog, which this time looks ready to pounce as a naked detainee shrinks away in the middle of a prison hallway, his hands defensively up in front of him. Another soldier, his hands in his pockets, watches.

The photos continue, showing an array of abuse in what appear to be different rooms, cells, showers and hallways of Abu Ghraib.

Hooded and cloaked men are handcuffed to hallway rails. A prisoner in flexible handcuffs is made to use a banana to simulate anal sex. Two naked male detainees are handcuffed to each other. A naked detainee hangs upside down from a top bunk. Another naked detainee grimaces, his face pressed against the ground, a soldier bending his arm behind his back. Blood covers the detainee`s left knee, and another soldier grabs his right leg.

In one photo, a detainee is stripped to his underwear, in a hood. He is standing, crouched, on top of two boxes of MRE military meals, his arms cuffed around his left knee, his right ankle chained to a cell door.

Another detainee appears to be the victim of a cruel joke: A photo shows the man`s deformed left hand emerging from an orange jumpsuit, the words "The Claw" written in English on his left breast pocket. A crude drawing of the man`s hand appears on the back of his jumpsuit in another photo, with "The Claw" scrawled across his shoulder blades in black ink.

The situation inside the prison became so chaotic that U.S. soldiers turned their cameras on themselves, filming scenes of consensual sex.

Photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib were presented to Army investigators in January. They began to surface publicly last month, severely damaging the U.S. reputation in the Arab world.

"Be on notice," Rumsfeld said in a standing-room-only Senate hearing room May 8. "There are a lot more photographs and videos that exist. If these are released to the public, obviously it`s going to make matters worse."

Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Macromedia Flash. Ich kann die Bilder nicht verlinken. Wenn jemand weiß wie es geht, bitte die Bilder einstellen oder den Weg an mich per BM.
Die Anmeldung bei der Post ist kostenlos und führt auch nicht zu mehr Spam.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/flash/photo/world/2004-…

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DIE ZEIT

21/2004

Nach dem Entsetzen

Herunterspielen und schönreden – mit dieser Taktik führt die Bush-Regierung sich und den Irak noch näher an den Abgrund. Doch mehr denn je gilt: Die Demokratisierung der arabischen Welt darf nicht aufgegeben werden

Von Richard Herzinger für ZEIT.de

Nur kurze Zeit schien US-Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld angeschlagen. Sah man ihn eben noch wie in Erwartung von Schlägen geduckt und mit Schweißperlen auf der Stirn Entschuldigungen stammeln, präsentierte er sich buchstäblich über Nacht wieder ganz oben auf. Mit stolzgeschwellter Brust nahm er die Lobrede seines Präsidenten entgegen, mit frischem Mut verteidigte er Praktiken wie Schlafentzug und Isolationshaft als mit der Genfer Konvention vereinbare Methoden zur Vorbereitung von Verhören. Beim Truppenbesuch im Irak hatte er schon wieder das altvertraute, herausfordernde Grinsen im Gesicht.

Augen zu und durch? Zu dieser Strategie scheint sich die Bush-Regierung nach der ersten Erschütterung durch die Enthüllungen über den Folterskandal in irakischen Gefängnissen entschlossen zu haben. Bei den Tätern, die sich in sadistischer Weise an Häftlingen vergangen haben, handele es sich um wenige „unamerikanische“ Elemente, die in keiner Weise den „fantastischen Charakter“ der amerikanischen Truppen im Irak widerspiegelten, gab der Präsident selbst als offizielle Lesart aus.

Doch die zur Schau gestellte patriotische Selbstsicherheit und groteske schönfärberische Selbstbeweihräucherung verschleiern nur schlecht, wie ratlos die Bush-Regierung in Wahrheit ist. Alle Beteuerungen, die abgründigen Entgleisungen in Abu Ghraib und anderswo berührten nicht die unbefleckt strahlenden „wahren“ amerikanischen Werte, sind pures Pfeifen im Walde. Denn genau das ist der Kern der Katastrophe: nicht nur die Glaubwürdigkeit amerikanischer Demokratisierungsbestrebungen im Irak und im gesamten Nahen Osten ist durch die Praktiken von Teilen des US-Militärpersonals auf absehbare Zeit ruiniert worden. Jedes Plädoyer für die Verbreitung von Demokratie und Menschenrechten wird bis in ferne Zukunft von den Horrorbildern über die Gefangenenmisshandlungen – die schlimmsten haben wir wohl noch gar nicht gesehen – überschattet werden.

Ahnt der stellvertretende Verteidigungsminister Paul Wolfowitz, dass eine Strategie des Schönredens und Herunterspielens das Unternehmen Irak, das er wie kein anderer aus ideologischer Überzeugung betrieben hatte, nur noch tiefer in den Abgrund führen wird? Maßnahmen wie Schlafentzug von bis zu 72 Stunden und Isolationshaft von mehr als 30 Tagen Dauer klängen wohl „wie eine Verletzung der Genfer Konvention“, räumte er ein und widersprach damit implizit seinem Vorgesetzten Rumsfeld. Erste Anzeichen von Auflösungserscheinungen im Bush-Lager?

Über der Aufregung um den Folterskandal und die Frage, wie tief greifend er das moralische Selbstbewusstsein der Vereinigten Staaten unterminiert haben mag, tritt das für alle beunruhigendste Problem in den Hintergrund: wie soll es nun im Irak weitergehen? Der Schock von Abu Ghraib hat die Gefahr eines desaströsen Scheiterns der USA beim Wiederaufbau des Landes unter zivilisierten Bedingungen extrem zugespitzt – doch sie ist nicht erst dadurch entstanden. Selbst wenn sich die Folterpraktiken nur auf kleine Teile des Militärapparats beschränken sollten – was kaum glaubhaft ist: die Tatsache, dass die politische und militärische Führung der Vereinigten Staaten nicht fähig oder willens war, sie zu verhindern, wirft ein exemplarisches Licht auf die Konzeptionslosigkeit und Überheblichkeit, mit der das „nation building“ im Zweistromland in Angriff genommen wurde. Im Augenblick ist von Seiten Bushs und seiner Getreuen kaum noch ein anderer strategischer Ansatz zu erkennen als der teils verzweifelte, teils dreiste Versuch, sich möglichst ungeschoren über die Präsidentenwahlen im November zu retten.

Das Ziel der Stabilisierung und Demokratisierung des Irak wird durch das politische und moralische Versagen der amerikanischen Besatzungsmacht nicht hinfällig. Auch für die Kriegsgegner besteht nicht der geringste Anlass zu Triumphgefühlen. Im Gegenteil – die selbst verschuldete Delegitimierung der Führungsrolle der USA setzt die Europäer unter noch größeren Zugzwang, nunmehr mit konkreten Vorschlägen zur Lösung eines Dilemmas beizutragen, das die angespannte Situation spätestens nach der für den 1. Juli geplanten Machtübergabe an eine Übergangsregierung in die Explosion treiben könnte: Nach wie vor verfügen nur die USA über die Machtmittel, eine relative Stabilität im Lande und einigermaßen gesicherte Voraussetzungen für eine weitere Entwicklung rechtsstaatlicher und pluralistischer Verhältnisse zu gewährleisten. Doch diese Macht braucht dringend eine zusätzliche internationale Legitimation – und neue, erfolgversprechende Strategien, vor allem auf dem Gebiet des Aufbaus tragfähiger zivilgesellschaftlicher Strukturen.

Das weitere Schicksal des Irak betrifft nicht nur diesen allein. Am 22. und 23. Mai wollen sich in Tunis die arabischen Regierungen zu einem Gipfeltreffen versammeln, bei dem sie sich über einen Plan zur Modernisierung und Demokratisierung der Region verständigen sollen. Der Entwurf ist wesentlich auf amerikanischen Druck zustande gekommen. Zu befürchten ist nun, dass der Folterskandal den arabischen Diktaturen als Steilvorlage dienen wird, diesen Prozess weiter zu verwässern und zu verschleppen.

In einem Artikel für das „Wall Street Journal“ warnte der arabisch-amerikanische Politologe Fouad Ajami unlängst vor der Gefahr, die Bush-Administration könne sich aus „Panik“ angesichts ihres drohenden moralischen Bankrotts bei den arabischen Regimes anbiedern und den angestoßenen Prozess der Demokratisierung des arabischen Raums damit wieder zurückdrehen. Er weist auf die Heuchelei der arabischen Herrscher hin, die sich vor Empörung über die amerikanischen Untaten in irakischen Gefängnissen kaum fassen können, während des jahrzehntelangen Terrors unter Saddam Hussein aber stets weg gesehen haben. Man könnte hinzufügen: von ihren eigenen Untaten sprechen sie am wenigsten gern. Bushs Entschuldigungen, kritisiert Ajami, zielten verständnis- und hilfeheischend auf die Ohren der arabischen Diktaturen und Halb-Diktaturen – notwendig aber wäre gewesen, sich, statt an einen jordanischen Fernsehsender, direkt an die irakische Bevölkerung zu wenden – denn ihr schuldet Bush mehr als einstudierte Zerknirschung. Er schuldet ihr rest- und schonungslose Aufklärung und handfeste, kontrollierbare Garantien, dass ähnliche Zustände wie in Abu Ghraib in Zukunft ausgeschlossen sind.

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Erinnern Sie sich noch an den Fall Yamashita?
von Sodei Rinjiro
ZNet 19.05.2004


Während der jüngsten Befragungen von Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld und anderen vor dem Kongress war die Luft angefüllt von Militärjargon wie „Gerichtsbeeinflussung [1]“ und „Befehlskette“, doch nirgends wurde der Terminus „Befehlsverantwortung [2]“ gebraucht. Im Jahre 1945 wurde nach Japans Kapitulation vor den Alliierten General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Befehlshaber der japanischen Streitkräfte auf den Philippinen, vor einem amerikanischen Militärtribunal wegen Kriegsverbrechen angeklagt, für schuldig befunden und gehängt. Sein Verbrechen: Versagen, Befehlsverantwortung über alle auf den Philippinen eingesetzten japanischen Truppen aufrecht zu erhalten.

Taumelnd von der Wucht von General Douglas MacArthurs Invasion des Archipels liefen die isolierten japanischen Kräfte (hauptsächlich Marine) Anfang 1945 in Manila Amok und vergewaltigten und massakrierten Zehntausende unschuldiger Zivilisten. Die Vergewaltigung von Manila war ein Verbrechen gemäß dem internationalen Kriegsrecht. Nach der amerikanischen Militärkommission, die seinen Fall verhandelte, war General Yamashita rechtlich verantwortlich für alle Missbräuche und Gräuel, die von seinen Truppen begangen worden waren, weil er allein die Befehlsverantwortung innehielt und von solchen Verheerungen gewusst haben sollte. Yamashita ging in Berufung vor den Obersten Gerichtshof der USA, der das Urteil des Tribunals aufrecht erhielt und mit fünf zu zwei Stimmen gegen ihn entschied.

In seiner Mindermeinung jedoch argumentierte Bundesrichter Murphy, dass „mit dem Einsetzen einer nüchternen Nachbetrachtung begriffen werden wird, welche grenzenlosen und gefährlichen Implikationen der heute sanktionierte Prozess mit sich bringt. Niemand in einer Befehlsposition in einer Armee, vom Unteroffizier bis zum General, kann diesen Implikationen entgehen. Tatsächlich mögen die Schicksale einiger zukünftiger Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten und ihrer Stabschefs und Militärberater durch diese Entscheidung besiegelt sein.“ Aber die Meinung von Bundesrichter Murphy war Mindermeinung, und die Rechtsfigur der Befehlsverantwortung wurde im amerikanischen Gesetz festgeschrieben.

Traurigerweise entschlossen sich die Vereinigten Staaten hiernach, diesen Präzedenzfall zu ignorieren. 1971 wurde nur Leutnant William Calley ordnungsgemäß nach Gesetz für das Massaker an 567 vietnamesischen Zivilisten in Mylai 1968 bestraft und erhielt lebenslänglich (was später beträchtlich reduziert und dann umgewandelt wurde). Sein Oberkommandierender, der das Strafmaß herabsetzte, wurde nie angeklagt oder auch nur zur Verantwortung gezogen für dieses Verbrechen. Amerika das Mächtige macht ein Gesetz und, wenn es Zweckdienlichkeit diktiert, bricht es ungestraft.

Amerikas Gräuel an irakischen Häftlingen haben viele Formen und schließen nicht notwendig direktes Morden mit ein. Doch die Verletzung von Menschenrechten durch Verhörer der US-Armee kommt moralischem und geistigem Mord gleich. Amerika muss noch verstehen, wie sehr es dem stolzen irakischen Volk Unrecht getan und es entrüstet hat, und wie viel Ansehen es in den Augen der internationalen Meinung verloren hat. Sollte Verteidigungsminister Rumsfeld gehängt werden? Sollte Präsident Bush angeklagt werden? Die Welt wartet auf das Urteil des amerikanischen Volkes.

Sodei Rinjiro ist Professor Emeritus der Hosei-Universität und Autor des preisgekrönten japanischen Buches „Die zweitausend Tage von MacArthur“. Dieser Kommentar wurde für den Japanfokus [von znet] geschrieben. Der Autor kann unter [e-mail] erreicht werden.

[1] In der amerikanischen Militärgerichtsbarkeit können bestimmte Stellen der Militärhierarchie bestimmtes Gerichtspersonal berufen, sich über Befangenheitsklagen hinwegsetzen etc., was in Zivilprozessen nicht möglich wäre. Diese nicht wünschenswerte, aber rechtlich oft mögliche Beeinflussung des Prozessausganges wird als „command influence“ bezeichnet. (Anm. d. Übers.)
[2] „command responsibility“



[ Übersetzt von: Benjamin Brosig | Orginalartikel: "Remember" ]

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GI: Boy mistreated to get dad to talk

By Mike Dorning Washington Bureau

05/20/04 "Chicago Tribune" -- A military intelligence analyst who recently completed duty at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq said Wednesday that the 16-year-old son of a detainee there was abused by U.S. soldiers to break his father`s resistance to interrogators.

The analyst said the teenager was stripped naked, thrown in the back of an open truck, driven around in the cold night air, splattered with mud and then presented to his father at Abu Ghraib, the prison at the center of the scandal over abuse of Iraqi detainees.

Upon seeing his frail and frightened son, the prisoner broke down and cried and told interrogators he would tell them whatever they wanted, the analyst said.

The new account of mistreatment came as Army Spec. Jeremy Sivits was sentenced in Iraq to a year in prison Wednesday and a bad-conduct discharge after pleading guilty in the first court-martial stemming from the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

In Washington, top commanders for U.S. forces in Iraq told senators they never approved abusive techniques for interrogating prisoners. But they also promised that investigators would scrutinize everyone in the chain of command, including the generals themselves.

Sgt. Samuel Provance, who maintained the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion`s top-secret computer system at Abu Ghraib prison, gave the account of abuse of the teenager in a telephone interview from Germany, where he is now stationed. He said he also has described the incident to Army investigators.

Provance`s account of mistreatment of a prisoner`s son is consistent with concerns raised by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had received reports that interrogators were threatening reprisals against detainees` family members.

Provance already has been deemed a credible witness by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who included the Army sergeant in a list of witnesses whose statements he relied on to make his findings of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib.

Although Pentagon officials have portrayed the abuses at the prison as the isolated conduct of a few out-of-control guards, Provance`s account offers fresh evidence of broader participation. He said members of Abu Ghraib`s military intelligence unit were well aware that prisoners were subjected to sexual humiliation and other abuse.

One female interrogator told him of forcing detainees to wear nothing but women`s underwear and questioning a male prisoner who was kept naked during interrogation, Provance said. He said he overheard colleagues in the military intelligence battalion laughing as a soldier in the unit described watching MPs use two detainees as "practice dummies," first knocking one prisoner unconscious with a blow and then doing the same to the other.

Account is 2nd-hand

Provance, 30, said he was not present for the mistreatment of the detainee`s son, which he said occurred in December or possibly January. But he said an interrogator described the incident to him shortly afterward. When contacted by the Tribune on Wednesday, that soldier declined to comment.

Provance said he escorted the boy from the interrogation cellblock to the prison`s general population immediately after the encounter between the teenager and his father.

"This kid was so frail. He was shaking like a leaf," he said.

Provance said he urged the interrogators not to put the teenager in the prison`s unruly, poorly supervised general population, but was rebuffed.

"I even went inside and said, `This kid is scared for his life. He`s probably going to be raped. He can`t be put in general population,`" Provance said.

He said he did not know the identity of either the father or son but said the father was described to him as a "high-level individual" who had not provided useful intelligence in previous questioning.

Army spokesman Col. Joseph Curtin said he could not comment on the incidents described by Provance because they are part of an investigation. But Curtin said, "We are working very hard to get to the truth."

Maj. Paul Karnaze, a spokesman for the Army Intelligence School at Ft. Huachuca, Ariz., said Army policy forbids any abuse or threats of abuse against family members during interrogations. "That`s just so far from the Army values we train," Karnaze said.

Provance said he described the incidents to investigators, most recently in an interview this month with Maj. Gen. George Fay, who is overseeing the Army`s investigation of military intelligence officials` involvement in prisoner abuse.

Concerns over a cover-up

Provance said he became concerned about a possible cover-up of the role of military intelligence officials after receiving written instructions shortly after the interview telling him not to discuss Abu Ghraib.

In addition, Provance said, Fay warned that he likely would recommend administrative action against Provance for not reporting abuses before his first sworn statement, made in January. The administrative action would effectively bar promotions for Provance.

"I felt like I was being punished for being honest," Provance said.

An Army official said it was routine procedure for military investigators to instruct witnesses not to discuss events that are under examination.

Provance said he questioned treatment of prisoners several times last fall without effect.

"I would voice my opinion . . . and they would say, `What do you know? You`re a system administrator,`" he said. Among the interrogators "there`s a certain cockiness," he added.

Provance said his duties recently were switched from a computer systems administrator to a military intelligence analyst but he remains on duty with his unit, which returned from Iraq in February. He is now stationed in Heidelberg, Germany, he said.

Copyright: Chicago Tribune

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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Officials Say Rumsfeld OKd Harsh Interrogation Methods
Account by those at the Pentagon acknowledges that the secretary personally approved a tough policy for Guantanamo detainees.
By John Hendren
Times Staff Writer

May 21, 2004

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last year personally approved a series of aggressive interrogation techniques for suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees to extract information about the Sept. 11 attacks and help prevent future ones, Pentagon officials said Thursday.

Rumsfeld approved in April 2003 a request five months earlier by Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who had arrived at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in November 2002 to oversee prisoners. Miller sought permission to use a broad range of extraordinary "nondoctrinal" questioning techniques on an Al Qaeda detainee, a general with the Pentagon`s Judge Advocate General`s office said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The defense officials did not detail the procedures Miller had sought to use, or identify the detainee, but they said the prisoner was believed to have valuable information about future attacks by Osama bin Laden`s Al Qaeda network. Pentagon lawyers and interrogators clashed over the proposed procedures, which some of the lawyers said would violate international law.

The account confirmed portions of media reports on the development of post-Sept. 11 interrogation practices. But it was the first official acknowledgment that Rumsfeld had been personally involved in the development of interrogation policies for war detainees.

Miller was sent to Iraq to oversee prison operations after physical abuse and sexual humiliation of detainees were uncovered at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Miller also issued a report last year recommending improvements at the prison, including more effective interrogation.

The abuse scandal touched off congressional hearings that have widened from an investigation into the conduct of seven military police officers at a single cellblock to an inquiry into the Pentagon`s detention policy and interrogation practices. Human rights groups have accused the United States of violating terms of the Geneva Convention.

The methods Miller sought to use at Guantanamo were harsher than those used in standard military doctrine, and some drew objections from military lawyers in the Judge Advocate General`s office, the JAG official said. Intelligence and other Pentagon officials, however, said they felt an immediate need for better information.

"There became some urgency because we had an individual that had some information that people at Guantanamo believed was important not just to 9/11, but to future events," a senior Pentagon lawyer said.

The Pentagon general counsel`s office gathered a group of military and civilian lawyers, intelligence officials, officers from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, regional commanders and Pentagon policymakers for a summit on the plan for more permissive interrogations.

The effort to define how far interrogators can go in pressuring detainees for information without violating international law exposed the rift between interrogators and JAG lawyers, who considered some of the techniques Miller proposed to be illegal.

"You had intelligence officials that might have been pulling in a direction that was different from the lawyers," Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said. "It`s a competitive process."

Military lawyers successfully argued for the removal of some practices from the list, although some of those had already been used on detainees, officials said. Countering the earlier news reports, the JAG officer said that "substantially less" than 72 techniques had been proposed. He did not say how many were actually on the proposed list or on the list finally approved.

Rumsfeld trimmed the list of requested interrogation techniques by about one-third, and he insisted that he personally approve a "handful" of techniques, the senior Pentagon lawyer and the JAG official said. Rumsfeld approved the revised proposal in April 2003.

"The final report did not raise any legal objections," the JAG official said. "We were comfortable with the direction that was provided."

Officials provided few details of the case that had prompted Rumsfeld`s review and have declined to say which interrogation tactics drew criticism from military lawyers and whether the techniques yielded any useful information. The officials stressed that while prisoners at Guantanamo are considered "enemy combatants" rather than prisoners of war, those held in Iraq are considered POWs. The Pentagon insists that the Iraqi detainees are covered by the Geneva Convention while the Guantanamo prisoners are not, although U.S. officials insist that they observe the spirit of international law.

Rumsfeld did not personally approve the interrogation procedures for prisoners in Iraq, Di Rita said.

One of the seven military police officers at Abu Ghraib has pleaded guilty at his court-martial; the rest face similar proceedings. Seven other officers have been recommended for reprimands. Top military officials said more charges could be lodged.

The cases at Abu Ghraib are among 35 Pentagon investigations into alleged abuse at U.S. military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan and 42 additional inquiries into alleged abuses outside prisons. At least 25 deaths have resulted, including three homicides, according to the Pentagon.The general who preceded Miller as commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison told Associated Press that during his tour there in 2002, he was under constant pressure to bend his "by-the-book" rules for handling the more than 600 detainees there. Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus said military intelligence officials during that time sought rules that allowed "putting the detainees in isolation, or in different locations."


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY
A Dangerous Dreamer
Spurned by the U.S., Chalabi emerges as a Shiite firebrand
By Andrew Cockburn

May 21, 2004

The raid by U.S. and Iraqi forces on "the China House," as Ahmad Chalabi`s headquarters in Baghdad is known locally, may seem to many as merely the coup de grâce on a washed-up politician.

After all, it has seemed for some time that Chalabi`s days as a potent player in Baghdad and Washington were over.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has made it known that Chalabi, who currently sits on the Iraqi Governing Council, will not figure in the Iraqi administration he is assembling for a June 30 transfer of power. And just this week the Pentagon revealed that it is at last suspending Chalabi`s $340,000 monthly subsidy.

That`s not all. The discrediting of Chalabi`s prewar "intelligence" on Saddam Hussein`s WMD and terror links has wrecked his once-warm relations with the U.S. media. And his senior aides are under investigation for robbery and kidnapping, the official reason for Thursday`s raid. The raid was not insignificant; it was an indication of just how seriously the U.S. occupation authorities consider Chalabi a threat to their plans for the future of Iraq.

In recent months he has been adopting an increasingly strident tone in denouncing both the U.S. occupation and the U.N. role in Iraq. He has recently compared American officials bringing former Iraqi generals to Fallouja to "putting the Nazis back in power" and has derided Brahimi as "an Algerian with an Arab nationalist agenda."

Less publicly, he has been putting together a sectarian Shiite bloc with the aim of immediately destabilizing whatever arrangement Brahimi unveils in 10 days` time. Many fear Chalabi could, for example, champion a move for a separate Shiite state, or indeed, foment anti-Sunni demonstrations. This is indeed a far cry from the days when Chalabi posed as the champion of liberal Iraqi democracy for U.S. supporters, though Iraqis who know him are less surprised at the cynical turnabout.

As one Iraqi who has known and worked with Chalabi in the past observes: "His dream has always been to be a sectarian Shia leader. Not in the religious sense, but as a political leader." Leading fellow sectarians in opposition to the U.S. and U.N. plans would be a vital step in realizing this dangerous dream.

No one should take Chalabi and his ambitions lightly. This is the man who for years waged a determined struggle to draw the U.S. into war with Iraq — even as he was abandoned and derided by his original sponsors at the CIA — and he ultimately succeeded.

Following last year`s invasion, Chalabi`s fans among the neocon faction in the Pentagon — who supported him despite his conviction for fraud and embezzlement in Jordan — were of course unable to impose him as ruler upon a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

The overwhelming majority of Iraqis regarded him as a carpetbagger and an American stooge. In response, even as he worked quickly to restore the Iraqi fortune abandoned by the Chalabis when they fled the 1958 revolution (he has reclaimed family properties and made profitable deals including, allegedly, trading oil), Chalabi began to burnish his credentials as a Shiite leader. While attempting to cloak himself in the robe of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, he also, for example, deployed his nephew Salem, a U.S.-trained lawyer, to inject as much of the credo of Shiite Islam as possible into the interim constitution.

Following the horrifying bombings at a recent Shiite religious festival in Karbala, which were clearly intended to incite Shiite-Sunni conflict, a Chalabi aide went on Iraqi radio uttering barely concealed threats of civil war against the Sunnis. As many in Iraq shrank from the prospect of civil war, Chalabi gave the appearance of encouraging it.

As it became more evident that Brahimi had the total backing of Washington in excluding Chalabi from office, Chalabi`s promotion of sectarian politics, from which Iraq has traditionally been free, became even more pronounced.

He initiated a "Supreme Shiite Council," modeled on a similar institution created during the bloody Lebanese civil war of the 1970s and 1980s. Among its leading lights were Seyyid Mohammed Bahr Uloum, a fellow member of the Governing Council, who for years has been close to Chalabi. (Chalabi helped fund the mortgage of his house in London in the early 1990s.) Also involved in Chalabi`s group were two other more obscure members of the Governing Council, and, more significantly, both Iraqi Hezbollah and a faction of the Shiite Dawa party. These Dawa adherents helped link Chalabi to the rising star of Shiite extremism, Muqtada Sadr.

Sooner or later, Sadr is going to be killed, one well-informed Iraqi told me, which would leave thousands of his supporters adrift, looking for a new leader. If Chalabi plays the role of victim (of the Americans) he can take on that role.

Many people, including Saddam Hussein and members of the CIA, have counted Chalabi out at various times over the years. By now, his former allies in Washington must realize that he has the skills and resources to cause enormous damage in pursuit of his ambition. As his former associate notes, "he is a gambler, ready to bring it all down."

The irony is, of course, that having a U.S. gun to his head, as his nephew reports happened during the raid, will only further burnish his credentials among those Shiites he aims to lead into a divided Iraq.

Andrew Cockburn is the co-author of "Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein" (HarperPerennial, 2000).



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/174286_thomas21.html

Kerry should restage war protest

Friday, May 21, 2004

By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, is doing better in the polls and has a slight edge over President Bush. But one step he should take to dramatically frame his candidacy would be to make a total break with Bush`s failing policy in Iraq.

Kerry, who first came to the national political scene with his anti-Vietnam War mission in the `70s, should concede he made a big mistake in supporting the invasion of Iraq and blame it on Bush for giving him false information about Saddam Hussein`s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Kerry has a great opportunity coming up to make that break -- on June 30 when a U.N.-created caretaker Iraqi government takes over sovereignty of its country.

That would be the time for Kerry to acknowledge the truth that Congress and he -- and the entire nation -- were misled by the administration`s claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to the al-Qaida terrorists. The facts show that these claims were false. The only question is whether the CIA made a good-faith mistake on those points -- or whether high Bush administration officials pressured the CIA to fabricate those findings and thus provide an excuse for Bush to order an attack on Iraq.

Kerry should declare that if he were elected president, he would set a timetable for gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, with the pullout complete by January, when Iraqi elections are to be held.

Such a bold move by Kerry would show courage and it would blunt any political appeal that Ralph Nader`s tough anti-war rhetoric may attract.

How long does Kerry want to subject American troops to a no-win war in Iraq?

While there is no way to "win" this war, we can salvage some honor by leaving gracefully.

There is growing evidence that the American people are getting fed up with the administration`s shifting rationale for keeping U.S. troops in the hostile nation.

The world won`t soon forget the disgrace of the Iraqi prisoner abuse and the shameful detentions of many innocent Iraqis.

The tragedy of a war of "choice" resulting in hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis dead surely has dawned on Kerry. Public support for this war is becoming fainter, with even some hawks eager to find a way out.

Kerry`s Vietnam experience should serve as a model for him.

Along with most of his Senate colleagues, Kerry supported the congressional resolution that gave Bush a green light for his ill-advised and unprovoked war. Few lawmakers asked questions at the time.

That resolution is along the same lines as the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave President Lyndon B. Johnson the green light to go into the Vietnam debacle.

In both cases -- Iraq and Vietnam -- the president was permitted to do what is "necessary" to protect the United States.

Kerry came home from Vietnam as a Navy officer with three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for combat.

Disillusioned with the war, he organized the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and testified in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee against further U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

That`s when he said famously, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?"

Some 30-plus years later, he has become establishment, cautious and self-protective, in contrast to his forthright youth.

During the primary season, some anti-war Democrats taunted Kerry and accused him of giving Bush a blank check to wage war. Indeed, Kerry`s foreign policy is hardly distinguishable from Bush`s. After 18 comfortable years in the Senate, Kerry has lost the persona that had set him apart back in the Vietnam era.

On the Middle East, Kerry is simply a "me too" echo of Bush when it comes to endorsing Israel`s illegal land grab on the Palestinian-occupied West Bank.

Kerry also has yet to make a strong clear difference with Bush on domestic issues.

The presidential election should be a referendum on Bush`s unpopular decision to take this country into a costly and unnecessary war that has lost us respect around the world.

It`s time for Kerry to split with the administration on this ill-conceived war. Otherwise, disaffected voters may decide to sit this one out.

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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Bush: Dumb Like A Bullet
Is Dubya both a bumbling simpleton *and* a shrewd manipulator who smirked at tortures in Iraq?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, May 21, 2004
©2004 SF Gate

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…

When last we left our sneering caped crusaders, Rummy had testified under oath that he didn`t really know who ordered what at Abu "Tortures `R` Us" Ghraib prison, and George "Wha Happun?" Bush was mumbling into his hand puppet about how he was utterly shocked and appalled and was blaming the whole thing on "a coupla bad apples" and gul-dangit, he warn`t gunna stan` fer it.

And while he still loved Rumsfeld like a drunken frat brother and swore Rummy was doing a "superb job" and stood by him `til death or impeachment they do part, something must be done and some heads were gonna roll and it would definitely be some sad pregnant trailer-park chick from West Virginia ha-ha snicker.

What a difference a couple weeks make. Now word is emerging like ugly greased lightning that not only did Rummy himself order the Abu Ghraib tortures, but it was also a long-standing super-secret plan based on ultra-vile (and morally repugnant) interrogation techniques already employed in Afghanistan.

Not only that, but the plan was authorized across the board, from the Pentagon to the National Security Council to the CIA and then on up the ladder to where Bush his own dumbstruck self was fully informed and fully aware of the general plan to make a sad mockery of the "quaint" and "obsolete" Geneva Convention.

Remember that piffling thing? It basically states you gotta treat all war prisoners with a shred of humanitarian dignity or you can`t call yourself a fair and civilized Christian superpower, and if you don`t follow those basic rules you are, in essence, no different from the terrorists and the dictators you claim to abhor and you are bombing the crap out of.

Let`s just say it again: Rummy allegedly ordered the torture plan. Rummy`s undersecretary, Stephen Cambone, ran it. Bush knew about it, even way back in February. As did all of his senior staff. As did the CIA and the NSC and even the Red Cross.

They knew of the torture and humiliation techniques. Knew of the secret beatings. Knew of the electrodes and the snarling dogs and the pistol whippings and, very possibly, of the forced sodomy and the rapes. Not of suspected terrorists, but of people. Men. Women. Young boys. Suspected Iraqi "insurgents," many of whom were, by the military`s own admission, wrongly detained in the first place. What fun.

Word has it Bush probably didn`t hear the actual details, of the specific brand of U.S.-made hoods or of the rape techniques employed, because, as everyone knows, Bush is a "big-picture guy" who likes only the general Cliff`s Notes overviews of world events and can barely find Baghdad on a map and can`t really handle too many simultaneous thoughts.

But here`s where it gets sticky. Here`s where the smell of rot starts to really singe your intuitive nose hairs. Because every president, no matter how unsophisticated or perpetually tuned out (Hi, Mr. Reagan) or disconnected from what`s actually happening in his regime, must get briefed. Every day.

And when you`re a president who lusts after war the way Bush does, you gotta hear all the grisly facts, the various actions and tactics and super-secret operations, lest you seem completely out of touch during one of your incredibly rare press conferences wherein you scrunch your face all tight and furrow your brow and wag your finger and say things like, "My job is to, like, think beyond the immediate."

It is the eternal Bush conundrum. How to appear sort of blank faced and ignorant of the true atrocities your administration commits so as to avoid any sort of direct accountability, and yet still pretend to be a savvy, aware, tough-guy leader who gets things done and takes no bull and launches unprovoked wars on anything that stands in the way of his dad`s portfolio.

After all, it has always been far too easy to smack BushCo around as being an aww-shucks dumb-guy AWOL simpleton daddy`s boy with a low-C average and a painfully inarticulate approach to the world, coupled with an astounding, world-famous ability to mangle both the English language and every foreign policy ever implemented.

It`s always felt like a bit of a grand ruse, Bush`s Forrest Gump-style dunderheadedness, a clever (if entirely plausible) way to deflect much of the responsibility for his regimes`s carnage, all designed to make the nation believe that this guy simply couldn`t be all that bad because, well, he just ain`t all that bright.

But, ironically enough, as far as the Abu Ghraib mega-scandal is concerned, Bush has dug his own hole. It is his very own bull-headed, infantile, stay-the-course, admit-no-mistakes, bomb-first-ask-questions-never approach that has caged him in and makes any move toward getting the U.S. out of the Iraq quagmire nearly impossible. It`s not the sign of a dimwit. It`s the sign of a dimwit with delusions of shrewdness. Which is, of course, far more dangerous.

Any major moves now -- like firing Rummy, or Wolfie or Uncle Dick, or even apologizing for all the Saddam-grade rapes and tortures -- would make Dubya appear contradictory or unstable or inconsistent, which is exactly the mass illusion he simply must maintain right now lest his approval rating drop even farther, to where it finally matches his IQ. Whoops, sorry. Cheap shot. See how easy it is?

Probably doesn`t help that Colin Powell has stepped up and admitted how he was deliberately deceived about WMDs in Iraq, and how he`s pretty much sick of being treated like a BushCo lackey and a footnote and a scapegoat errand boy who puts out piddling fires and has to step in front of the U.N. and present reams of bogus CIA data and blurry satellite photos and silly cartoon graphics to try to prove the existence of nonexistent nuclear arsenals in Saddam`s rec room.

And then comes word of how Michael Moore`s somber new film "Fahrenheit 9/11" illuminates, in painful and appalling detail, Bush`s $1.5 billion connection to various Saudi families -- including the chummy bin Laden clan -- and how, even while all commercial aircraft across the U.S. were grounded just after the WTC attack and millions were stranded and the nation was on high alert, Bush had planes sent around the country to pick up his Saudi buddies to fly them home.

So then. You gotta admit, maybe Bush isn`t all that stupid after all. Maybe he`s not the smirking aww-shucks born-again simpleton he constantly appears to be, the one who sits back and lets his henchmen do all the dirty work and all the complex thinking while he lets Condi Rice massage his ego and fill him in at the ranch while taking more vacation time than any other president in history.

Or, rather, maybe Dubya really is that stupid, just not in the ways anyone really imagined. Maybe Bush is stupid in a way that is far worse, and far more dangerous for the health of this planet, than mere inarticulate, nonintellectual, semiliterate Texas cow-pie bumbling.

It is, in short, the stupidity of the indignant and the self-righteous, of the morally arrogant, of someone whose power base is threatened and yet who is still blindly forcing America down this nightmare path, even when all signs and all leaders and all U.N. councils and all weapons investigators and all flagrant U.S.-sanctioned rapes and tortures are veritably screaming in his face that it is a mistake of increasingly epic, treacherous proportions.

And so maybe, ultimately, it all comes back to us. Maybe it is the majority of people in this flag-wavin`, happily deluded, fear-drenched country who can`t believe it could happen, who simply, you know "misunderestimated" just how poisonous Bush`s savage brand of stupidity really is.
# Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
# Mark`s column archives are here

Mark Morford`s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. Subscribe to this column at sfgate.com/newsletters.

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Columns
Lee Waters
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/10/2004/891" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/10/2004/891
SATIRE: `Why isn`t David Souter Dead?` Leaked White House Transcript (12)
May 18, 2004

Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Powell, Ridge, Rumsfeld, Powell, Scalia, Rove

PRESIDENT BUSH: Alright, gentlemen. You really screwed up this time. We have very serious business to discuss.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: I know, George. Those damn Iraqis are going nuts on us. The assassination of our designated council leader. The beheading of Nick Berg. And those photos of the abuse. They`ve really hurt us. It`s time we took action. Every media outlet that carried those photos needs to be shut down. We`re going to crush these people once and for all.

KARL ROVE: We`re taking steps to destroy CBS, Ted Koppel and all the other clowns that ran with that story. This won`t happen again.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: And Seymour Hersh, you can count your days.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: Media use of photos of Iraqis tortured by American troops is an act of terrorism.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Whoa whoa whoa, guys. First things first. We`ll deal with that Iraqi stuff in good time. I want to talk about what`s really important. Why isn`t David Souter dead?

JUSTICE SCALIA: You people promised me he`d be gone. I`m tired of dealing with his wimpy liberal ass. We need clarity on the court. David Souter is unconstitutional.

SECRETARY RIDGE: Justice Souter was mugged recently while jogging.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: And unfortunately, he lived. Whose responsibility was it?

JUSTICE SCALIA: All I know is, when I put you people in the White House I was assured I would not have to deal with any more liberals on the Court. These wimps waste my time. I want people like Clarence and Rehnquist around me. People who do what they`re told when I tell them to do it.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Tony Tony Tony. I know. I know. I know. The contract was arranged. They just screwed up.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: Allowing liberal Supreme Court justices to live is an act of terrorism.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Aside from the contract on Souter, you and I had a contract of our own, George. When I stopped the vote count in Florida in 2000, we agreed that four Justices would disappear from the Court by 2004. David Souter was at the top of the list.

PRESIDENT BUSH: You got your $10 million, Tony. Right on time. All five of you did. The other stuff takes time.

JUSTICE SCALIA: You promised I`d be Chief Justice.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, right now Tony, George W. Bush is the Chief of the World. That`s me. You`ve done a lot for us, don`t get me wrong. But...

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: You know, Tony, we at Halliburton make a really nice set of cement shoes. One size fits all.

KARL ROVE: Tony, how about next time Rummy goes over to Baghdad, you go with him. The Iraqis could use some instruction in jurisprudence. Just don`t lose your head.

ALL (except Justice Scalia): Loud, prolonged laughter.

JUSTICE SCALIA: A deal`s a deal, George.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Well, we had a deal to make Izzadine Saleem head of Iraq, and look what just happened to him.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Who?

SECRETARY RIDGE: Izzadine Saleem was our designated head of Iraq. He was just blown up.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, did we do it, or did the Iraqis do it?

SECRETARY RIDGE: The Iraqis.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Damn, they are really a bunch of savage barbarians over there. Why can`t we just get them Christianized. What`s the goddam holdup?

JUSTICE SCALIA: It`s time I got back to the Court. Clarence wants to review that Playboy case.

KARL ROVE: We`ve got a long list of decisions for you and Clarence to render, Tony. Once our next term`s nailed down, the sky`s the limit. You know that. You want the liberals gone, it`s done. You want Rehnquist`s seat, it`s yours. We take of our people.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Thank you, Karl. I never doubted it.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, watch that temper of yours. With this damn First Amendment thing still hanging over us we`re like a theater in a crowded fire. But once the election`s over, or else we get rid of it, we`ve got to stick softly and carry a tire iron.

SECRETARY RIDGE: Mr. President, Colin Powell is at the door.

KARL ROVE: Beat it, Tony. This guy still has some funny ideas about an independent judiciary.

PRESIDENT BUSH: There`s a secret door through the bathroom. We call it the Monica.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Put that list in your pocket.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Clarence wants some of those prison sex videos.

SECRETARY RIDGE: So does Ken Starr. He says Clinton`s involved. He wants to go to Iraq and see for himself.

PRESIDENT BUSH: I hear he still gets horny over that Monica report.

KARL ROVE: I`ll have them sent. Now get out of here. And give Clarence our best.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Thanks, Karl. You too, Dick.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Quack Quack.

SECRETARY POWELL: Was that Tony Scalia ducking into the bathroom?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Lighten up, Colin.

SECRETARY POWELL: I`m sure I saw Justice Scalia go into that bathroom. The Constitution is quite explicit on the need for an independent judiciary. If a Justice of the Supreme Court were to meet with you, especially with cases pending that involve you directly, it would be a terrible breach.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: What? Me lie?

ALL (except Secretary Powell): Loud, prolonged laughter.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Actually, Colin, what`s in that bathroom are those weapons of mass destruction. Why don`t you go tell the UN?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, we`ve had our differences, Mr. President. So I`ve come to tell you that I`m handing in my resignation.

KARL ROVE: Right. And Rummy here is going to work for Mother Theresa.

SECRETARY POWELL: You can mock me all you want, Karl. But these torture and sexual abuse scandals are way over the line. And now our designated leaders are being blown up. I simply cannot stomach any more.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Mother Theresa? Isn`t she a country singer?

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Didn`t seem to bother you in Vietnam, Colin. That massacre at My Lai that you covered up. Now that you`re on top, are you getting squeamish?

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: The Geneva Convention is obsolete. Mentioning war crimes as designated by the obsolete Geneva Convention is an act of terrorism.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Didn`t Mother Theresa sing "Light My Fire"?

SECRETARY POWELL: I don`t recall photos of sexual abuse coming out of Vietnam. I don`t even recall stuff like this coming out of Nazi Germany. And I haven`t read that the Geneva Convention was rescinded. What have we become?

KARL ROVE: Well, we`ve definitely taken a hit in the polls, Colin. They`re showing Kerry up now. But we`re about to spend $2 billion burying him. So I`m as worried about the Geneva Convention as I am about the Kyoto Accords.

PRESIDENT BUSH: You want the Al Ghraib videos, Colin? We`re doing some up for...

KARL ROVE: We`re about the flood the airwaves with a tidal wave of smear ads, Colin. Are you with us, or are you a terrorist?

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: For a Secretary of State to resign in the middle of an election campaign is an act of terrorism.

SECRETARY POWELL: I`ve been a proud member of the United States military all my life. We are the nation of Washington and Lincoln, of Franklin and Jefferson. How can you sit there and quote me poll numbers when the proud heritage of a great nation is being destroyed?

KARL ROVE: We are well aware of the long-term damage this could do to America, Colin. Forcible sexual abuse is exactly what will most inflame the Arab world. That`s why we`re taking steps to put the blame where blame belongs: on the Jews.

COLIN POWELL: The Jews? Who in this room is Jewish?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I`m not. God told me I`m not. And I checked with my mother. But I think I was circumscribed.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: It`s all set up, Colin. The neo-cons. Wolfowitz. Abrams. Kristol. They`re going to take the fall. Why do you think we chose that kid from Pennsylvania to get his head cut off? Berg. Right.

COLIN POWELL: You set him up?

KARL ROVE: We scrounged up a bunch of freelancers and threw them in the jails for our Iraqi operatives to shop them around. Naturally they chose a Jewish kid.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: You really timed that one, Karl. They took his head off and got you the tape just in time to upstage the video show for those idiots in Congress. Fox and Rush lapped it right up. Even McCain fell for it.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Godammit, I`m not going back over there. You go yourself next time. Or send Colin.

SECRETARY POWELL: I have resigned. I`m not going anywhere.

KARL ROVE: We`re on top of this, guys. The liberals are up in arms about the voting machines, but we`ve got enough leeway from Diebold to guarantee us the margin we need. We`ve got the media and the money to bury Kerry. We`ve got the Democratic Leadership Council on our payroll stabbing him away wherever necessary. We`ve got bin Laden coming out in October, along with some well-placed terrorist attacks. But the margins are still thin. We don`t need a Secretary of State resigning before the votes are counted.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: Threatening the victory of George W. Bush is a sin against the Higher Father.

SECRETARY POWELL: What`s this blame it on the Jews stuff. You told me to back Israel 100%.

KARL ROVE: We have a Christian fundamentalist movement in this country that loves Israel but hates Jews.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Just like everybody in this room.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: They all must come to Jesus. Not coming to Jesus is an act of terrorism.

KARL ROVE: So we play both sides. We get Sharon to inflame the Arabs. We pretend to back him to feed the Christian right. But when it`s time to plant the cross, we`re with them that gots the oil.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Prince Bandar is going to lower oil prices. He promised.

KARL ROVE: What wins elections is low gas prices. We`ve got them jacked up now. But watch over the next few months. People will remember they were high and then came down. And they`ll thank us.

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, they haven`t exactly dropped as we planned. We thought that Iraqi oil would drive down gas prices by now. Not exactly "Mission Accomplished," is it Karl?

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: You say "Mission Accomplished" again, Colin, you say them to the fishes.

SECRETARY POWELL: Are you threatening me?

KARL ROVE: You`d best plan to see this through to January, Colin. Yes, we`ve had some miscalculations. And your resignation is not about to be one of them. Just let me know what you want, we`ll see what we can arrange.

SECRETARY POWELL: I don`t want to be associated with mass-scale military sexual perversion like the world has never seen. I don`t want to be associated with the destruction of 225 years of sterling American pride. I don`t want to be part of the obliteration of the world`s oldest democracy. I don`t want to keep telling one vile lie after another.

KARL ROVE: Is this all something you didn`t know about before you signed on with us?

SECRETARY POWELL: I had absolutely no idea how deep this went.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: What did you expect, a warning label? Karl and I broke in with Dick Nixon. We did the dirty work for Donald Segretti and G. Gordon Liddy. Can`t you read?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: You should`ve seen the look on Hillary Clinton`s face when we showed those videos in Congress. I thought she was going to lose her lunch.

SECRETARY POWELL: They`re screaming at us! The whole world is nauseated beyond belief! We look like a bunch of sick, lying, murderous psychos, killing and raping whoever we want for oil and Christian fanaticism. Now the Iraqis have blown up the guy you were going to have run the country. Is that your idea of public service?

KARL ROVE: So far, we can win this election. But it`s tight. You resigning will throw off my timing. So forget it.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: You know, we at Halliburton have an interesting array of services we perform.

SECRETARY POWELL: I`m not afraid of you, Dick.

KARL ROVE: We`re not counting on many black votes, but you`ll take whatever we`ve got, and we need them. Plus some moderates. So we give you what we gave Tony. Ten million.

SECRETARY RIDGE: The latest economic indicators show that Japan, China and India will soon dwarf the United States in economic might. With the European Union on the rise the US will soon be a distant third---and a third world country. These military expenditures are gutting our economic strength as happened to Rome as it fell.

PRESIDENT BUSH: That`s all history. We`ll all be dead.

KARL ROVE: You`re not going anywhere, Colin.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: As leader of the US military, my assessment is we`re going to need a lot more troops to secure those oil fields and lower gas prices by November.

PRESIDENT BUSH: The Saudis will do it for us, Don. But they want more beheadings. They loved how I ran our prisons in Texas. And now they see we`re doing the same stuff in Iraq and they just can`t get enough.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: You fried 152 Texans, buddy. You could open a burger shop.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Rummy, I`ll tell you what I`ve told the world. You`re doing a superb job. Who do we attack next?

LEAKED WHITE HOUSE TRANSCRIPTS: INSIDE BUSH`S OVAL OFFICE, 2004-2002, a satire by Lee Waters, will soon be available via www.freepress.org.

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Berg beheading: No way, say medical experts
By Ritt Goldstein

American businessman Nicholas Berg`s body was found on May 8 near a Baghdad overpass; a video of his supposed decapitation death by knife appeared on an alleged al-Qaeda-linked website (www.al-ansar.biz) on May 11. But according to what both a leading surgical authority and a noted forensic death expert separately told Asia Times Online, the video depicting the decapitation appears to have been staged.

"I certainly would need to be convinced it [the decapitation video] was authentic," Dr John Simpson, executive director for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, said from New Zealand. Echoing Dr Simpson`s criticism, when this journalist asked forensic death expert Jon Nordby, PhD and fellow of the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators, whether he believed the Berg decapitation video had been "staged", Nordby replied: "Yes, I think that`s the best explanation of it."

Questions of when the video`s footage was taken, and the time elapsed between the shooting of the video`s segments, were raised by both experts, reflecting a portion of the broader and ongoing video controversy. Nordby, speaking to Asia Times Online from Washington state, noted: "We don`t know how much time wasn`t filmed," adding that "there`s no way of knowing whether ... footage is contemporaneous with the footage that follows".

While the circumstances surrounding both the video and Nick Berg`s last days have been the source of substantive speculation, both Simpson and Nordby perceived it as highly probable that Berg had died some time prior to his decapitation. A factor in this was an apparent lack of the "massive" arterial bleeding such an act initiates.

"I would have thought that all the people in the vicinity would have been covered in blood, in a matter of seconds ... if it was genuine," said Simpson. Notably, the act`s perpetrators appeared far from so. And separately Nordby observed: "I think that by the time they`re ... on his head, he`s already dead."

Providing another basis for their findings, in the course of such an assault, an individual`s autonomic nervous system would react, typically doing so strongly, with the body shaking and jerking accordingly. And while Nordby noted that "they rotated and moved the head", shifting vertebrae that should have initiated such actions, Simpson said he "certainly didn`t perceive any movements at all" in response to such efforts.

During the period when Berg`s captors filmed the decapitation sequence, circumstances indicate that he had already been dead "a quite uncertain length of time, but more than ... however long the beheading took", Simpson stated. Both Simpson and Nordby also noted the difficulty in providing analysis based on the video, the inherent limitations presented by this. But both also felt that Berg had seemed drugged.

A particularly significant point in the video sequence occurred as Berg`s captors attacked him, bringing the supposedly fatal knife to bear. "The way that they pulled him over, they could have used a dummy at that point," reflected Simpson regarding what the video portrayed. Separately, Nordby said Berg does not "appear to register any sort of surprise or any change in his facial expression when he`s grabbed and twisted over, and they start to bring this weapon into use".

Subsequently, Nordby said it was likely that the filming sequence was manipulated at the point immediately preceding this, allowing Berg`s corpse to be used for the decapitation sequence. Nordby also emphasized that the video "raises more questions than it answers", with the most fundamental questions of "who are you, and how did you die", being impossible to answer from it. But broad speculation exists regarding a number of factors surrounding both Berg`s death and the video, and its timing in regard to revelations of US prison atrocities.

In a May 13 article, the Arabic newsgroup Aljazeera reported that a Dubai-based Reuters journalist first broke the story, "but while Fox News, CNN and the BBC" were able to secure the video from the "Arabic-only website" that hosted it, Aljazeera was unable to locate it. And also on May 13, the Associated Press (AP) reported that the US Central Intelligence Agency had determined that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the individual who beheaded Berg.

Since Secretary of State Colin Powell`s United Nations presentation of February 5, 2003, al-Zarqawi has been portrayed as the single most dangerous element facing the Bush administration`s "war on terror". Powell`s UN presentation has since been widely accepted as empty; nevertheless, al-Zarqawi appears to have surpassed even Osama bin Laden as the administration`s No 1 terror target. And on May 15, Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, the Coalition Provisional Authority`s chief Iraq military spokesman, declared that al-Zarqawi will be eventually caught, though that may prove particularly difficult.

On March 4, Brigadier-General David Rodriguez of the Joint Chiefs of staff revealed that the Pentagon didn`t have "direct evidence of whether he`s [al-Zarqawi] alive or dead", providing commentary on the nature of prior "evidence" linking al-Zarqawi to attacks and bombings. But that same day, AP reported that an Iraqi resistance group claimed al-Zarqawi had been killed the April prior in the US bombing of northern Iraq.

Speaking off the record, intelligence community sources have previously said they believe it "very likely" that al-Zarqawi is indeed long dead. Such a fact makes al-Zarqawi`s alleged killing of Berg difficult to reconcile, and there has been broad speculation that blaming al-Zarqawi is an administration ploy. Further anomalies surrounding Berg`s death have fueled added speculation.

According to e-mails sent from a US consular officer in Baghdad, Beth Payne, to the Berg family, Nick Berg was being held in Iraq "by the US military in Mosul". A May 13 AP report notes that a US State Department spokesperson subsequently said this was untrue, an error, and that Berg was being held by Iraqi authorities. But another May 13 AP report quoted "police chief Major-General Mohammed Khair al-Barhawi" as claiming that reports of Iraqi police having held Berg were "baseless".

And Berg is seen on the beheading videotape in what appears to be US military prison-issue clothing, sitting in what appears to be a US military-type white chair, virtually identical to those photographed as used at Abu Ghraib prison. However, the taking of hostages has occurred in the region, and beheadings are not unheard of.

According to a February 2003 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), on September 23, 2001, radical Islamists captured a group of 25 Kurdish fighters in the Iraqi village of Kheli Hama. "Some prisoners` throats had been slit, while others had been beheaded," HRW reported, noting that the television station KurdSat had broadcast pictures of the dead that September 26. The report also noted that a videotape "apparently filmed" by those committing the atrocities had been found.

The strict Islamist community in Iraq denied that the acts were committed by their people, stating that the incident was fabricated.

Additional reports of beheadings also exist, with the victims usually noted as killed with a bullet before the beheading occurs. But HRW`s report also raised an issue that the Berg video`s makers, and Berg`s father, both raised: prisoner exchange.

HRW noted that Iraq`s radical Islamists did pursue exchanges of captives, and the Berg video specifically noted that his captors claimed they were killing him as their attempts to exchange Berg had been rebuffed by US authorities. Berg`s father, Michael, has pressed the administration of US President George W Bush as regards what the facts of this allegation are, with the administration denying any knowledge that such a trade was offered. And added questions still exist.

Because Iraq`s radical Islamists speak in a particular manner, and live by a closely proscribed code, apparent contradictions between these ways and the way Berg`s captors appeared has generated speculation. Some observers have speculated on the possibility that the individuals weren`t native Arabic speakers. Conversely, it is reported that in Saudi Arabia, where Sharia law allows for beheadings in cases of severe crimes, the condemned is heavily drugged with tranquilizers prior to the execution, reportedly leaving them in a state similar to that which Berg appeared in during parts of the video.

Again, Nordby emphasized that the video "raises more questions than it answers".

Ritt Goldstein is an American investigative political journalist based in Stockholm. His work has appeared in broadsheets such as Australia`s Sydney Morning Herald, Spain`s El Mundo and Denmark`s Politiken, as well as with the Inter Press Service (IPS), a global news agency.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)



May 22, 2004

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Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion

Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Die Homepage von Prof. Cole ist immer einen Blick wert, weil er auch meist die Nachrichten kommentiert. Sein wissenschaftlicher Schwerpunkt liegt im Nahen und Mittleren Osten.

http://www.juancole.com/2004_05_01_juancole_archive.html#108…

Friday, May 21, 2004

Shiite Demonstrations in Bahrain

Violent demonstrations broke out in Bahrain protesting the US fighting in Karbala.


"Violence broke out on Friday after police fired tear gas to disperse thousands of mainly Shia Muslim demonstrators demanding the withdrawal of US forces from the southern Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala. One police car was set on fire. "Death to America...death to Israel," chanted the protesters in the pro-Western Gulf Arab state, home to the US Navy`s Fifth Fleet."



You wonder whether, when Bush gave the order to get Muqtada "dead or alive", initially to the Spanish and then to the US military, whether he even knew that a majority of the population in Bahrain, where the US has a major naval base, is Shiite or that they would mind if the US army demolished much of the Mukhayyam Mosque in Karbala trying to get at Muqtada`s militiamen.

In all probability? No.

Could these dmonstrations in Bahrain be significant? Yes. Bahrain has a Sunni monarchy. Lately it has taken baby steps toward democracy and more open elections, but these did not benefit the Shiites because they wanted even more open elections, and boycotted them. Therefore, the Sunni fundamentalists largely won the seats (and the Sunni fundamentalists don`t even represent most Bahraini Sunnis much less the Shiites). So the situation there is potentially volatile. The US is doing nothing to make it less so, and everything to exacerbate it.

The other shoe? Will the Shiites of al-Hasa in Eastern Arabia, where the oil is and where there are 90,000 Americans at Dhahran, be the next to riot?

It is most unwise for the US miitary to fight in downtown Najaf and Karbala near the shrines. I say it again.

posted by Juan at 5/21/2004 03:08:17 PM

Heavy Fighting in Holy Cities

The Associated Press reports that

"American tanks and AC-130 gunships pounded insurgent positions near two shrines in the center of the holy city of Karbala early Friday, and the U.S. military said it killed 18 fighters loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The fighting began after insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. tanks patrolling Karbala`s so-called ``Old City,`` said U.S. Army Col. Pete Mansoor of the 1st Armored Division. The tanks returned fire, and more than two hours of heavy fighting followed. Smoke billowed from burning buildings. A rebel weapons cache was hit, the military said. Much of the fighting was near the city`s Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas shrines, which U.S. forces allege are being used by militiamen as firing positions or protective cover. Mansoor said the shrines were not damaged."



Even if the shrines were not damaged, you can`t imagine how much Shiites don`t want to hear phrases like "American tanks and AC-130 gunships pounded insurgent positions near two shrines in the center of the holy city of Karbala early Friday . . . " I cringed when I saw it. I don`t see how Iraqi Shiites are going to forgive us for this. Ever.

There was also more fighting in the other holy city, Najaf. Al-Hayat reports that Muqtada al-Sadr met with local tribal chieftains from Najaf and its environs, who gave him a letter asking his forces to vacate the holy places of Najaf. The letter threatened that if he did not do so voluntarily, the tribes are strong enough to kick him out.

See Omayma Abdel Latif in al-Ahram for analysis of Shiite politics at the moment. The threat, mentioned at the end, that Sistani might give up his quietism seemed chilling.

posted by Juan at 5/21/2004 09:01:38 AM

[Joerver]

________________

[Joerver]

Sometimes the Best Beer is Root Beer (Blort)
Hilarious ICB Root Beer commercial. [SWF]

http://www.ircuser.org/files/monkey.swf

[Joerver]

Between tortures: Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, shortly after U.S. forces rebuilt and refitted it as a facility for the detention and interrogation of Iraqis. Once one of Saddam Hussein`s most infamous jails, it was become newly notorious for what Americans have done there.

May 23, 2004
Regarding the Torture of Others
By SUSAN SONTAG

I.

For a long time -- at least six decades -- photographs have laid down the tracks of how important conflicts are judged and remembered. The Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one. Photographs have an insuperable power to determine what we recall of events, and it now seems probable that the defining association of people everywhere with the war that the United States launched pre-emptively in Iraq last year will be photographs of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by Americans in the most infamous of Saddam Hussein`s prisons, Abu Ghraib.

The Bush administration and its defenders have chiefly sought to limit a public-relations disaster -- the dissemination of the photographs -- rather than deal with the complex crimes of leadership and of policy revealed by the pictures. There was, first of all, the displacement of the reality onto the photographs themselves. The administration`s initial response was to say that the president was shocked and disgusted by the photographs -- as if the fault or horror lay in the images, not in what they depict. There was also the avoidance of the word ``torture.`` The prisoners had possibly been the objects of ``abuse,`` eventually of ``humiliation`` -- that was the most to be admitted. ``My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture,`` Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said at a press conference. ``And therefore I`m not going to address the `torture` word.``

Words alter, words add, words subtract. It was the strenuous avoidance of the word ``genocide`` while some 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda were being slaughtered, over a few weeks` time, by their Hutu neighbors 10 years ago that indicated the American government had no intention of doing anything. To refuse to call what took place in Abu Ghraib -- and what has taken place elsewhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay -- by its true name, torture, is as outrageous as the refusal to call the Rwandan genocide a genocide. Here is one of the definitions of torture contained in a convention to which the United States is a signatory: ``any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession.`` (The definition comes from the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Similar definitions have existed for some time in customary law and in treaties, starting with Article 3 -- common to the four Geneva conventions of 1949 -- and many recent human rights conventions.) The 1984 convention declares, ``No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.`` And all covenants on torture specify that it includes treatment intended to humiliate the victim, like leaving prisoners naked in cells and corridors.

Whatever actions this administration undertakes to limit the damage of the widening revelations of the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere -- trials, courts-martial, dishonorable discharges, resignation of senior military figures and responsible administration officials and substantial compensation to the victims -- it is probable that the ``torture`` word will continue to be banned. To acknowledge that Americans torture their prisoners would contradict everything this administration has invited the public to believe about the virtue of American intentions and America`s right, flowing from that virtue, to undertake unilateral action on the world stage.

Even when the president was finally compelled, as the damage to America`s reputation everywhere in the world widened and deepened, to use the ``sorry`` word, the focus of regret still seemed the damage to America`s claim to moral superiority. Yes, President Bush said in Washington on May 6, standing alongside King Abdullah II of Jordan, he was ``sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families.`` But, he went on, he was ``equally sorry that people seeing these pictures didn`t understand the true nature and heart of America.``

To have the American effort in Iraq summed up by these images must seem, to those who saw some justification in a war that did overthrow one of the monster tyrants of modern times, ``unfair.`` A war, an occupation, is inevitably a huge tapestry of actions. What makes some actions representative and others not? The issue is not whether the torture was done by individuals (i.e., ``not by everybody``) -- but whether it was systematic. Authorized. Condoned. All acts are done by individuals. The issue is not whether a majority or a minority of Americans performs such acts but whether the nature of the policies prosecuted by this administration and the hierarchies deployed to carry them out makes such acts likely.

II.

Considered in this light, the photographs are us. That is, they are representative of the fundamental corruptions of any foreign occupation together with the Bush adminstration`s distinctive policies. The Belgians in the Congo, the French in Algeria, practiced torture and sexual humiliation on despised recalcitrant natives. Add to this generic corruption the mystifying, near-total unpreparedness of the American rulers of Iraq to deal with the complex realities of the country after its ``liberation.`` And add to that the overarching, distinctive doctrines of the Bush administration, namely that the United States has embarked on an endless war and that those detained in this war are, if the president so decides, ``unlawful combatants`` -- a policy enunciated by Donald Rumsfeld for Taliban and Qaeda prisoners as early as January 2002 -- and thus, as Rumsfeld said, ``technically`` they ``do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention,`` and you have a perfect recipe for the cruelties and crimes committed against the thousands incarcerated without charges or access to lawyers in American-run prisons that have been set up since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

So, then, is the real issue not the photographs themselves but what the photographs reveal to have happened to ``suspects`` in American custody? No: the horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were taken -- with the perpetrators posing, gloating, over their helpless captives. German soldiers in the Second World War took photographs of the atrocities they were committing in Poland and Russia, but snapshots in which the executioners placed themselves among their victims are exceedingly rare, as may be seen in a book just published, ``Photographing the Holocaust,`` by Janina Struk. If there is something comparable to what these pictures show it would be some of the photographs of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880`s and 1930`s, which show Americans grinning beneath the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them from a tree. The lynching photographs were souvenirs of a collective action whose participants felt perfectly justified in what they had done. So are the pictures from Abu Ghraib.

The lynching pictures were in the nature of photographs as trophies -- taken by a photographer in order to be collected, stored in albums, displayed. The pictures taken by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib, however, reflect a shift in the use made of pictures -- less objects to be saved than messages to be disseminated, circulated. A digital camera is a common possession among soldiers. Where once photographing war was the province of photojournalists, now the soldiers themselves are all photographers -- recording their war, their fun, their observations of what they find picturesque, their atrocities -- and swapping images among themselves and e-mailing them around the globe.

There is more and more recording of what people do, by themselves. At least or especially in America, Andy Warhol`s ideal of filming real events in real time -- life isn`t edited, why should its record be edited? -- has become a norm for countless Webcasts, in which people record their day, each in his or her own reality show. Here I am -- waking and yawning and stretching, brushing my teeth, making breakfast, getting the kids off to school. People record all aspects of their lives, store them in computer files and send the files around. Family life goes with the recording of family life -- even when, or especially when, the family is in the throes of crisis and disgrace. Surely the dedicated, incessant home-videoing of one another, in conversation and monologue, over many years was the most astonishing material in ``Capturing the Friedmans,`` the recent documentary by Andrew Jarecki about a Long Island family embroiled in pedophilia charges.

An erotic life is, for more and more people, that whither can be captured in digital photographs and on video. And perhaps the torture is more attractive, as something to record, when it has a sexual component. It is surely revealing, as more Abu Ghraib photographs enter public view, that torture photographs are interleaved with pornographic images of American soldiers having sex with one another. In fact, most of the torture photographs have a sexual theme, as in those showing the coercing of prisoners to perform, or simulate, sexual acts among themselves. One exception, already canonical, is the photograph of the man made to stand on a box, hooded and sprouting wires, reportedly told he would be electrocuted if he fell off. Yet pictures of prisoners bound in painful positions, or made to stand with outstretched arms, are infrequent. That they count as torture cannot be doubted. You have only to look at the terror on the victim`s face, although such ``stress`` fell within the Pentagon`s limits of the acceptable. But most of the pictures seem part of a larger confluence of torture and pornography: a young woman leading a naked man around on a leash is classic dominatrix imagery. And you wonder how much of the sexual tortures inflicted on the inmates of Abu Ghraib was inspired by the vast repertory of pornographic imagery available on the Internet -- and which ordinary people, by sending out Webcasts of themselves, try to emulate.

III.

To live is to be photographed, to have a record of one`s life, and therefore to go on with one`s life oblivious, or claiming to be oblivious, to the camera`s nonstop attentions. But to live is also to pose. To act is to share in the community of actions recorded as images. The expression of satisfaction at the acts of torture being inflicted on helpless, trussed, naked victims is only part of the story. There is the deep satisfaction of being photographed, to which one is now more inclined to respond not with a stiff, direct gaze (as in former times) but with glee. The events are in part designed to be photographed. The grin is a grin for the camera. There would be something missing if, after stacking the naked men, you couldn`t take a picture of them.

Looking at these photographs, you ask yourself, How can someone grin at the sufferings and humiliation of another human being? Set guard dogs at the genitals and legs of cowering naked prisoners? Force shackled, hooded prisoners to masturbate or simulate oral sex with one another? And you feel naive for asking, since the answer is, self-evidently, People do these things to other people. Rape and pain inflicted on the genitals are among the most common forms of torture. Not just in Nazi concentration camps and in Abu Ghraib when it was run by Saddam Hussein. Americans, too, have done and do them when they are told, or made to feel, that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be humiliated, tormented. They do them when they are led to believe that the people they are torturing belong to an inferior race or religion. For the meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators apparently had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show.

Even more appalling, since the pictures were meant to be circulated and seen by many people: it was all fun. And this idea of fun is, alas, more and more -- contrary to what President Bush is telling the world -- part of ``the true nature and heart of America.`` It is hard to measure the increasing acceptance of brutality in American life, but its evidence is everywhere, starting with the video games of killing that are a principal entertainment of boys -- can the video game ``Interrogating the Terrorists`` really be far behind? -- and on to the violence that has become endemic in the group rites of youth on an exuberant kick. Violent crime is down, yet the easy delight taken in violence seems to have grown. From the harsh torments inflicted on incoming students in many American suburban high schools -- depicted in Richard Linklater`s 1993 film, ``Dazed and Confused`` -- to the hazing rituals of physical brutality and sexual humiliation in college fraternities and on sports teams, America has become a country in which the fantasies and the practice of violence are seen as good entertainment, fun.

What formerly was segregated as pornography, as the exercise of extreme sadomasochistic longings -- as in Pier Paolo Pasolini`s last, near-unwatchable film, ``Salo`` (1975), depicting orgies of torture in the Fascist redoubt in northern Italy at the end of the Mussolini era -- is now being normalized, by some, as high-spirited play or venting. To ``stack naked men`` is like a college fraternity prank, said a caller to Rush Limbaugh and the many millions of Americans who listen to his radio show. Had the caller, one wonders, seen the photographs? No matter. The observation -- or is it the fantasy? -- was on the mark. What may still be capable of shocking some Americans was Limbaugh`s response: ``Exactly!`` he exclaimed. ``Exactly my point. This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we`re going to ruin people`s lives over it, and we`re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time.`` ``They`` are the American soldiers, the torturers. And Limbaugh went on: ``You know, these people are being fired at every day. I`m talking about people having a good time, these people. You ever heard of emotional release?``

Shock and awe were what our military promised the Iraqis. And shock and the awful are what these photographs announce to the world that the Americans have delivered: a pattern of criminal behavior in open contempt of international humanitarian conventions. Soldiers now pose, thumbs up, before the atrocities they commit, and send off the pictures to their buddies. Secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamor to be invited on a television show to reveal. What is illustrated by these photographs is as much the culture of shamelessness as the reigning admiration for unapologetic brutality.

IV.

The notion that apologies or professions of ``disgust`` by the president and the secretary of defense are a sufficient response is an insult to one`s historical and moral sense. The torture of prisoners is not an aberration. It is a direct consequence of the with-us-or-against-us doctrines of world struggle with which the Bush administration has sought to change, change radically, the international stance of the United States and to recast many domestic institutions and prerogatives. The Bush administration has committed the country to a pseudo-religious doctrine of war, endless war -- for ``the war on terror`` is nothing less than that. Endless war is taken to justify endless incarcerations. Those held in the extralegal American penal empire are ``detainees``; ``prisoners,`` a newly obsolete word, might suggest that they have the rights accorded by international law and the laws of all civilized countries. This endless ``global war on terrorism`` -- into which both the quite justified invasion of Afghanistan and the unwinnable folly in Iraq have been folded by Pentagon decree -- inevitably leads to the demonizing and dehumanizing of anyone declared by the Bush administration to be a possible terrorist: a definition that is not up for debate and is, in fact, usually made in secret.

The charges against most of the people detained in the prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan being nonexistent -- the Red Cross reports that 70 to 90 percent of those being held seem to have committed no crime other than simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught up in some sweep of ``suspects`` -- the principal justification for holding them is ``interrogation.`` Interrogation about what? About anything. Whatever the detainee might know. If interrogation is the point of detaining prisoners indefinitely, then physical coercion, humiliation and torture become inevitable.

Remember: we are not talking about that rarest of cases, the ``ticking time bomb`` situation, which is sometimes used as a limiting case that justifies torture of prisoners who have knowledge of an imminent attack. This is general or nonspecific information-gathering, authorized by American military and civilian administrators to learn more of a shadowy empire of evildoers about whom Americans know virtually nothing, in countries about which they are singularly ignorant: in principle, any information at all might be useful. An interrogation that produced no information (whatever information might consist of) would count as a failure. All the more justification for preparing prisoners to talk. Softening them up, stressing them out -- these are the euphemisms for the bestial practices in American prisons where suspected terrorists are being held. Unfortunately, as Staff Sgt. Ivan (Chip) Frederick noted in his diary, a prisoner can get too stressed out and die. The picture of a man in a body bag with ice on his chest may well be of the man Frederick was describing.

The pictures will not go away. That is the nature of the digital world in which we live. Indeed, it seems they were necessary to get our leaders to acknowledge that they had a problem on their hands. After all, the conclusions of reports compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other reports by journalists and protests by humanitarian organizations about the atrocious punishments inflicted on ``detainees`` and ``suspected terrorists`` in prisons run by the American military, first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, have been circulating for more than a year. It seems doubtful that such reports were read by President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney or Condoleezza Rice or Rumsfeld. Apparently it took the photographs to get their attention, when it became clear they could not be suppressed; it was the photographs that made all this ``real`` to Bush and his associates. Up to then, there had been only words, which are easier to cover up in our age of infinite digital self-reproduction and self-dissemination, and so much easier to forget.

So now the pictures will continue to ``assault`` us -- as many Americans are bound to feel. Will people get used to them? Some Americans are already saying they have seen enough. Not, however, the rest of the world. Endless war: endless stream of photographs. Will editors now debate whether showing more of them, or showing them uncropped (which, with some of the best-known images, like that of a hooded man on a box, gives a different and in some instances more appalling view), would be in ``bad taste`` or too implicitly political? By ``political,`` read: critical of the Bush administration`s imperial project. For there can be no doubt that the photographs damage, as Rumsfeld testified, ``the reputation of the honorable men and women of the armed forces who are courageously and responsibly and professionally defending our freedom across the globe.`` This damage -- to our reputation, our image, our success as the lone superpower -- is what the Bush administration principally deplores. How the protection of ``our freedom`` -- the freedom of 5 percent of humanity -- came to require having American soldiers ``across the globe`` is hardly debated by our elected officials.

Already the backlash has begun. Americans are being warned against indulging in an orgy of self-condemnation. The continuing publication of the pictures is being taken by many Americans as suggesting that we do not have the right to defend ourselves: after all, they (the terrorists) started it. They -- Osama bin Laden? Saddam Hussein? what`s the difference? -- attacked us first. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, before which Secretary Rumsfeld testified, avowed that he was sure he was not the only member of the committee ``more outraged by the outrage`` over the photographs than by what the photographs show. ``These prisoners,`` Senator Inhofe explained, ``you know they`re not there for traffic violations. If they`re in Cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they`re murderers, they`re terrorists, they`re insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands, and here we`re so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.`` It`s the fault of ``the media`` which are provoking, and will continue to provoke, further violence against Americans around the world. More Americans will die. Because of these photos.

There is an answer to this charge, of course. Americans are dying not because of the photographs but because of what the photographs reveal to be happening, happening with the complicity of a chain of command -- so Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba implied, and Pfc. Lynndie England said, and (among others) Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, suggested, after he saw the Pentagon`s full range of images on May 12. ``Some of it has an elaborate nature to it that makes me very suspicious of whether or not others were directing or encouraging,`` Senator Graham said. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said that viewing an uncropped version of one photo showing a stack of naked men in a hallway -- a version that revealed how many other soldiers were at the scene, some not even paying attention -- contradicted the Pentagon`s assertion that only rogue soldiers were involved. ``Somewhere along the line,`` Senator Nelson said of the torturers, ``they were either told or winked at.`` An attorney for Specialist Charles Graner Jr., who is in the picture, has had his client identify the men in the uncropped version; according to The Wall Street Journal, Graner said that four of the men were military intelligence and one a civilian contractor working with military intelligence.

V.

But the distinction between photograph and reality -- as between spin and policy -- can easily evaporate. And that is what the administration wishes to happen. ``There are a lot more photographs and videos that exist,`` Rumsfeld acknowledged in his testimony. ``If these are released to the public, obviously, it`s going to make matters worse.`` Worse for the administration and its programs, presumably, not for those who are the actual -- and potential? -- victims of torture.

The media may self-censor but, as Rumsfeld acknowledged, it`s hard to censor soldiers overseas, who don`t write letters home, as in the old days, that can be opened by military censors who ink out unacceptable lines. Today`s soldiers instead function like tourists, as Rumsfeld put it, ``running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise.`` The administration`s effort to withhold pictures is proceeding along several fronts. Currently, the argument is taking a legalistic turn: now the photographs are classified as evidence in future criminal cases, whose outcome may be prejudiced if they are made public. The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner of Virginia, after the May 12 slide show of image after image of sexual humiliation and violence against Iraqi prisoners, said he felt ``very strongly`` that the newer photos ``should not be made public. I feel that it could possibly endanger the men and women of the armed forces as they are serving and at great risk.``

But the real push to limit the accessibility of the photographs will come from the continuing effort to protect the administration and cover up our misrule in Iraq -- to identify ``outrage`` over the photographs with a campaign to undermine American military might and the purposes it currently serves. Just as it was regarded by many as an implicit criticism of the war to show on television photographs of American soldiers who have been killed in the course of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it will increasingly be thought unpatriotic to disseminate the new photographs and further tarnish the image of America.

After all, we`re at war. Endless war. And war is hell, more so than any of the people who got us into this rotten war seem to have expected. In our digital hall of mirrors, the pictures aren`t going to go away. Yes, it seems that one picture is worth a thousand words. And even if our leaders choose not to look at them, there will be thousands more snapshots and videos. Unstoppable.

Susan Sontag is the author, most recently, of ``Regarding the Pain of Others.``


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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More than an hour after the blast, smoke rose from several wrecked cars, and debris was scattered in the street.
May 22, 2004
Bomb Kills 5 Outside Iraqi Official`s Home
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 4:01 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A car bomb exploded outside the home of a senior Iraqi security official Saturday, killing at least five people and destroying several vehicles on an east Baghdad street, police said.

The blast wounded Abdul-Jabbar Youssef al-Sheikhli, one of three deputy interior ministers and a member of the Shiite Muslim Dawa party. A ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said al-Sheikhli had head and chest injuries and was in stable condition at a nearby hospital.

It was the second blast in a week to target a top Iraqi government official. On Monday, a suicide car bombing killed the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Izzadine Saleem, and several other people near the headquarters of the U.S.-run coalition in the capital.

Police and U.S. military officers at the scene said the five dead included four Iraqi policemen and a woman neighbor who died in her home.

U.S. Army Capt. Brian O`Malley said the blast occurred at about 8:05 a.m. was caused by a ``vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.`` It was unclear whether the bomb was detonated by a suicide attacker.

More than an hour after the blast, smoke rose from several wrecked cars, and debris was scattered in the street. The explosion also knocked down part of a wall adjoining the sidewalk.

Three palm trees in the garden of the deputy minister`s home were blackened from the explosion. Bloodstains could be seen inside the two-story house and on the street.

Interior Minister Samir Shaker Mahmoud al-Sumeidi visited the site and was mobbed by distraught neighbors who screamed at him to ``come and see what happened to our homes.``

``God does not accept this,`` one man shouted.

Al-Sumeidi described the attack as a ``terrible crime`` and promised to catch those responsible.

``It would seem that the criminals do not want the law to prevail or the security men to implement it,`` he told reporters. ``I want every honorable man in this country to condemn this crime.``

U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police, one of whom appeared to have a fresh cut on his face, milled around. Two American soldiers tended to an injured person lying on the ground.

On Monday, a suicide car bombing killed the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Izzadine Saleem, and about six other people near the headquarters of the U.S.-run coalition in the capital.

In Karbala Friday, American AC-130 gunships and tanks battled militiamen near shrines in this Shiite holy city, and fighting was heavy in two other towns south of Baghdad. More than 450 Iraqis were released from the notorious Abu Ghraib jail -- some emerging with fresh claims of abuse.

The U.S. military said it killed 18 fighters loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who launched an uprising against the American-led coalition in early April and is wanted in the murder of a rival moderate cleric last year. Hospital officials reported 12 deaths, including two Iranian pilgrims. A driver for the Arab television network Al-Jazeera was also killed.

Much of the fighting was near the city`s Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas shrines, which U.S. forces say are being used by militiamen as firing positions or protective cover.

At least six people were killed and 56 were injured in fighting in Najaf and neighboring Kufa, where al-Sadr delivered a defiant sermon to 15,000 worshippers in which he urged his supporters to resist the coalition.

At a checkpoint in Kufa, American forces shot at a car carrying a close aide of al-Sadr, Mohammed al-Tabtabaei, injuring him and killing his driver, al-Sadr`s office in Najaf said. Al-Tabtabaei was taken into custody.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said 454 prisoners were released Friday from the Abu Ghraib prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad. Between 3,000 and 4,000 people are still believed held at the prison. The military is still sending detainees considered security risks to Abu Ghraib.

A convoy of at least six buses, accompanied by U.S. troops in armored vehicles and jeeps, took detainees to several areas, including Tikrit and Baqouba, north of the capital.

Some of those who were freed Friday told of beatings and psychological abuse. They kissed the ground and kneeled to pray after walking out of the police compound in Baqouba.

Abdul Salam Hussain Jassim, 18, said he was held for three months after an explosion.

``Don`t even talk about torture. They destroyed me,`` Jassim said. He said a family of five brothers and sisters was detained in the same block and that one of the men was beaten so badly he died two days later.

The Pentagon has begun criminal investigations of at least 37 deaths involving detainees held by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials said Friday. There are 33 cases involved, the officials said, eight more than the military reported two weeks ago.

Another freed prisoner from Abu Ghraib, Maher Saeed, said he was tied to a car and dragged through the sand for several hundred yards.

A man who identified himself as Ghazwan said he was held with his brother and father for nine months. He spent six in isolation.

``They were psychologically torturing us especially in the heavy quarantines, they were abusing us inside these quarantines by beating us and forcing us to take off all our clothes,`` he said. ``They were forcing detained women to distribute food to us while we were naked.``

The military periodically frees prisoners from Abu Ghraib, which was also notorious as the site of executions and torture during Saddam Hussein`s regime.

The release came as new photographs and shots from a video of alleged abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners were published in The Washington Post. The newspaper reported that some prisoners at Abu Ghraib were ridden like animals, fondled by female soldiers, forced to curse their religion and required to retrieve their food from toilets.

The first American accused in the scandal, Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, was sentenced Wednesday to a year in prison for sexually humiliating detainees and taking a photo of prisoners stacked naked in a human pyramid.

Kimmitt said coalition forces on Wednesday captured four people suspected of involvement in Berg`s killing, and were still questioning the two still in custody.

``I don`t know their prior affiliations or prior organizations,`` he said. ``We have some intelligence that would suggest they have knowledge, perhaps some culpability.``

An Iraqi security official also told The Associated Press that four people were arrested in the case, but he appeared to be referring to a different group of detainees that he said was led by a relative of Saddam.

The official said Iraqi police on May 14 arrested four suspects -- all former members of Saddam`s Fedayeen paramilitary organization -- in a raid in Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad. The group was led by Yasser al-Sabawi, a Saddam nephew who was not among those captured, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Berg, of West Chester, Pa., was in Iraq seeking business for his communications company. His body was found May 8 near a highway overpass in Baghdad. He was last seen April 10 when he left his Baghdad hotel.

American officials have previously said they believe Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian wanted for allegedly organizing attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq on behalf of al-Qaida, personally carried out Berg`s decapitation.

In Washington, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers said the United States was investigating possible links between al-Zarqawi and alleged foreign fighters who were hit by a U.S. aerial attack Wednesday in Mogr el-Deeb, a desert village near Iraq`s border with Syria.

``We feel at this point very confident that this was a legitimate target, probably foreign fighters, still to be determined their relationship to Zarqawi, but not out of the question,`` he said.

But survivors of the attack, which killed up to 45 people, told the AP that the U.S. military had struck a wedding party and that there were no foreign fighters among them. An AP reporter was able to identify at least 10 of the bodies as those of children.

Associated Press Television News footage showed pieces of rockets, bullet casings, pots and pans, destroyed musical instruments, pillows, mattresses and blankets scattered at the devastated site. Tufts of women`s hair and bits of what appear to be human flesh lie in a shallow ditch. An arm lies in the rubble. A crowd of young men stand around a huge blood stain on the ground.

Also Friday, the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council condemned the raids on the home and offices of Ahmad Chalabi, a council member once groomed by the Pentagon as a possible replacement for Saddam but who has since fallen out of favor with the Bush administration.

Chalabi spokesman Entifadh Qanbar said Chalabi and two other council members offered their resignations but that the council rejected them.

It was unclear why Chalabi`s home in Baghdad was raided Thursday. A senior coalition official said an Iraqi judge had issued several warrants, and details would be released later.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

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May 22, 2004
Dogs and Other Harsh Tactics Linked to Military Intelligence
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT

ASHINGTON, May 21 — The use of dogs to intimidate prisoners during interrogation at Abu Ghraib in Iraq was approved by military intelligence officers at the prison, and was one of several aggressive tactics they adopted even without approval from senior military commanders, according to interviews gathered by Army investigators.

Intelligence officers also demanded strict limits on Red Cross access to prisoners as early as last October, delaying for a day what the military had previously described as an unannounced visit to the cellblock where the worst abuses occurred, according to a document from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The role of intelligence officers in the abuse scandal is still under investigation, and the newly disclosed documents provide further details of their involvement in abuses that so far have resulted in formal charges against the prison guards, but not the interrogators.

Other Army documents first obtained by The Denver Post provided new evidence that harsh treatment extended beyond Abu Ghraib to more American-run detention centers in Iraq, revealing details about three previously unreported incidents in which Iraqi prisoners died after questioning by American interrogators.

At the Pentagon on Friday, the Army revised an earlier estimate to say that it is now actively investigating the deaths of nine prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, and that eight had already been determined by medical examiners to be possible homicides, involving acts committed before or during an interrogation.

In previous statements, it was not clear that so many prisoners died in interrogation, rather than being shot during riots or escape attempts. At Abu Ghraib, military intelligence units were responsible for interrogations, and military police units for guarding the prisoners and preparing them for interrogation.

The documents assembled by Army investigators starting in January and obtained by The New York Times cite accounts by American dog handlers who say the use of military working dogs in interrogations at Abu Ghraib was approved by Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. Previously, Pentagon and Army officials have said that only the top American commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, could have approved the use of the animals for interrogations. A "memorandum for the record" issued on Oct. 9 by the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the prison listed as permissible a number of interrogation procedures that Army officials have said were allowed only with approval from General Sanchez. Among other things, the memorandum said the use of dogs in interrogations and the confining of prisoners to isolation cells was permitted in some cases without a prior approval from General Sanchez.

In a November report to military commanders in Iraq that was included in the documents, the Red Cross complained that its inspectors had faced restrictions "at the behest of Military Intelligence," including a one-day delay in interviewing prisoners, who were to be seen for only a short time, and asked only about their names and their health.

In the four-page report, which has not previously been made public, the Red Cross said it had nonetheless found naked prisoners covering themselves with packages from ready-to-eat military rations, and subjected to "deliberate physical violence and verbal abuse." Prisoners were found to be incoherent, anxious and even suicidal, with abnormal symptoms "provoked by the interrogation period and methods."

The document said the prison authorities "could not explain" the lack of clothing for prisoners and "could not provide clarification" about other mistreatment of prisoners.

On Capitol Hill, some Senate Republicans and Democrats expressed concern that the Pentagon withheld important supporting documents when it sent Congress copies of the 6,000-page investigative report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba.

But a spokesman for Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, said the Army was working to fill any gaps in materials. "There does not appear to be a problem in producing materials that are germane to the facts of the inquiry," said the spokesman, John Ullyot.

The documents show that military intelligence officers at the prison and civilian contractors under their control adopted harsher tactics than previously known, and enlisted the military police in some of their interrogation methods. In many details, the documents elaborate on what has already been known since the photos of the abuses first became public last month.

To date, only seven enlisted soldiers from a military police company have been charged with crimes in connection with the abuses at Abu Ghraib, all in a single cellblock, known as Tier 1. But most have argued that they were acting with the knowledge or encouragement of the military intelligence officers who oversaw the interrogations and exerted authority over the cellblock.

A new time line provided by an Army spokesman also showed that the involvement of military intelligence personnel in abuses at Abu Ghraib began in October 2003. The first reported episode involved soldiers assigned to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, months before the major criminal investigation initiated in January into misconduct at the prison, which focused on the involvement by the military police.

Three enlisted soldiers from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion were fined and demoted in the incident, whose broad outlines have been reported previously. The spokesman, Lt. Col. Billy Buckner, declined to identify the soldiers involved or the details of the incident, citing privacy concerns.

The documents obtained by The Times included transcripts of sworn statements from military intelligence, the military police, civilian contractors and others who were interviewed by Army investigators last January as they began to look into allegations of abuse.

The statements include several accounts from officers, including Capt. Donald J. Reese of the 372nd Military Police Company, who acknowledged having seen Iraqi prisoners stripped naked while in American detention. Captain Reese, among others, said they had been told that nudity was part of "an interrogation procedure used by M.I." or military intelligence.

One intelligence officer, Specialist Luciana Spencer, said interrogations had been staged "in the showers, stairwell or property room" of the cellblock, as well as in two interrogation centers that were formally in control of the Joint Information and Debriefing Center. The officer in charge was Capt. Carolyn A. Wood of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, who other Army officers have said brought to Iraq the aggressive procedures the unit had developed during her previous service in Afghanistan, from July 2002 to January 2003. She served in Afghanistan as the operations officer in charge of the Bagram Collection Point.

Steven A. Stefanowicz, a civilian interrogator who worked under contract to the intelligence unit, described an interrogation tool that he called a "Sleep Meal Management Program," in which prisoners were allowed no more than four hours of sleep in a 24-hour period, in a regime that usually lasted 72 hours. Mr. Stefanowicz said in a statement that military police were "allowed to do what is necessary," within certain limits, to keep prisoners awake during that period.

At least two noncommissioned officers, Sgts. Michael J. Smith and Santos A. Cardona, said they had used unmuzzled military dogs to intimidate prisoners under interrogation. They said they were acting under instructions from Colonel Pappas, the commander of the intelligence brigade.

Both sergeants said Colonel Pappas had assured them that the use of dogs in interrogation was permitted and did not require written authorization or approval from senior officers. The memorandum for the record issued by the interrogation center on Oct. 9 also listed the "presence of working dogs" as "approved" on the basis of authorization from the interrogation officer in charge.

Colonel Pappas has declined requests for interviews, but other Army officials have said the use of dogs in interrogations could have been approved only by General Sanchez, as outlined in a policy he issued on Oct. 10. An unclassified Dec. 12 situation update sent by Colonel Pappas`s unit describes interrogation techniques permitted for use in Iraq, including "sleep management, sensory deprivation, isolation longer than 30 days, dogs," as among the "harsh approaches" that could be introduced only with prior approval from General Sanchez.

Some new details involving deaths of Iraqi prisoners that are being investigated as possible homicides were first reported in Wednesday`s editions of The Denver Post, and several of them involved Special Operations Forces. The details of the incidents were confirmed Friday by Pentagon officials, who said the deaths were among the nine now being investigated by the Army.

Among the previously unknown incidents was the death in January 2004 of an Iraqi prisoner at a forward operating base in Asad, Iraq, where a detainee had resisted questioning by Special Forces soldiers from Operational Detachment Delta. The prisoner died after he was gagged and his hands were tied to the top of his cell door, in an incident being reviewed for "consideration of misconduct," the Army documents said.

In a second incident in June 2003, at a "classified interrogation facility" in Baghdad, an Iraqi prisoner was found dead after being restrained in a chair for questioning, and after being subjected to physical and psychological stress, the Army documents show. The Denver Post said an autopsy had determined that he died of a "hard, fast blow" to the head; and that while an investigation was continuing, no disciplinary action has been taken.

A third incident, whose broad outlines had been previously known, involved the death in custody of a high-ranking general, Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who died in November at a detention facility run by the Third Armored Cavalry, a unit based in Fort Carson, Colo. A Nov. 27 announcement by the American military command in Baghdad described General Mowhoush as having died "of natural causes."

In fact, according to the Army documents cited by The Denver Post, General Mowhoush died after being shoved head-first into a sleeping bag, and questioned while being rolled repeatedly from his back to his stomach. Then, according to the documents, an interrogator sat on the general`s chest and placed his hands over his mouth.

The documents say the "preliminary report lists the cause of death as asphyxia due to smothering and chest compressions." American intelligence officials have said General Mowhoush died several days after C.I.A. officers handed over custody of him to the military, but they say the agency`s inspector general is examining possible wrongdoing involving C.I.A. personnel.

Altogether, a senior military official said at a Pentagon briefing on Friday afternoon, 37 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since August 2002, all but five in Iraq.

Of these, 15 prisoner deaths have been determined by the Army to be cases of death by natural or undetermined causes, and 8 as justifiable homicides. Two have been determined to be homicides inside American detention centers.

Three others, including one homicide, took place outside American prisons, the senior military officer said. The officer described the remaining nine as being under active investigation. Of them, the Army official said, two were at Abu Ghraib, including the death of a prisoner there in an incident that the C.I.A. has said involved agency personnel.

The Pentagon also released copies of 23 death certificates of prisoners who died while in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department announced Friday that it was opening a criminal investigation into a civilian contractor in Iraq. The action represents the first time that the Justice Department has formally begun a criminal investigation in the prisoner abuse scandal, although it has been reviewing its jurisdiction in three death cases involving the C.I.A., including one in Afghanistan.

Justice Department officials said they had received a criminal referral from the Pentagon on Thursday, but would not identify the civilian contractor who is under investigation. An internal Army report in March identified two contractors at Abu Ghaib who were suspected of abuses, but it is not clear whether either one of them is the subject of the criminal investigation.

The Justice Department has asserted its jurisdiction over the conduct of civilians working for the military under an as yet untested federal statute, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which allows contractors and other nonmilitary personnel working for the armed forces to be charged with crimes in civilian courts.

David Johnston and Kate Zernike contributed to this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Specialist Michael Finnegan, 21, of West Haven, Conn., in a Bradley fighting vehicle preparing for a patrol early Friday in Karbala, Iraq.
May 22, 2004
SERMONS
Clerics Urge End to Clashes Between U.S. and Rebels
By EDWARD WONG

ARBALA, Iraq, May 21 — Hundreds of worshipers poured into two holy Shiite shrines here on Friday to hear clerics demand an end to continuing clashes between American forces and insurgents loyal to the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

The clerics called for the withdrawal of fighters from both sides but carefully avoided singling out either the Americans or Mr. Sadr`s militia, the Mahdi Army.

The Americans had in fact already retreated from the city center earlier Friday. American commanders said the military had left downtown Karbala to allow local leaders to reach an "Iraqi solution" to the standoff with Mr. Sadr`s forces.

As they pulled back, starting just after midnight, fierce battles erupted, leaving at least 21 insurgents dead, many near this city`s holiest shrines, according to Col. Peter R. Mansoor, commander of the First Brigade of the First Armored Division.

On Friday afternoon, he added, the police chief of Karbala said scores of Mahdi fighters had been killed.

Mr. Sadr, who lives in the nearby holy city of Najaf, has been leading a six-week revolt against the occupation forces. Some of the bloodiest fighting has occurred over the last two-and-a-half weeks in downtown Karbala. Entire city blocks have been ruined.

More than 120 Iraqis have been killed in all. Insurgents, including a very skilled sniper, have killed 4 American soldiers and wounded at least 52 others.

Beyond Karbala, Mr. Sadr`s militiamen, many from the sprawling slum of Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad, have also taken Najaf and are attacking other cities across the south.

At Friday Prayers in nearby Kufa, The Associated Press reported, Mr. Sadr told 1,500 worshipers, "Don`t let my killing or arrest be an excuse to end what you`re doing, supporting the truth and standing up to the wrong."

But other clerics spoke Friday in Karbala at the blue-tiled Shrines of Hussein and Abbas, dedicated to two of Shiite Islam`s most revered martyrs. One of the clerics, Ahmed al-Safi, represented Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential religious leader in Iraq. The ayatollah demanded earlier this week that all armed forces withdraw from Karbala and Najaf and asked for people to demonstrate against the violence.

"We don`t want anybody to manipulate these two cities, whatever his identity might be," Mr. Safi said at his sermon.

After Friday Prayers ended at the Shrine of Hussein, many of the worshipers marched along a wide plaza to the Shrine of Abbas, calling for peace. The plaza is usually thronged with pilgrims, many from Iran, but visitors have dropped off considerably since the fighting began.

Many pilgrims have opted to stay inside their hotel rooms or to not come at all, while merchants have shut down sidewalk stalls where they sold Shiite religious souvenirs.

The American military canceled a major operation at the last minute on Thursday night and decided to pull its forces back early Friday from the Mukhaiyam Mosque, which it had occupied on May 12 after a pitched battle.

The mosque, once a stronghold for the insurgents, was being used by the Americans as a forward base to run patrols into the old city. It had turned into a lightning rod for attacks, drawing mortar and sniper fire from the insurgents. Three American soldiers were killed while defending the mosque or patrolling the immediate area.

As a company of tanks began rolling past the shrine area early Friday on their way back to Camp Lima, a military base on the city`s outskirts, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at them. One M1 Abrams tank fired at a building northeast of the Shrine of Abbas with its powerful main gun. An AC-130 gunship pounded the area with 40-millimeter cannons.

Insurgents with rocket-propelled grenades were holed up in a school northeast of the shrine area. Intelligence indicated that many of those fighters might have come from outside Karbala, military officials said. The AC-130 opened fire on the school and a building immediately south of the Shrine of Hussein that was believed to be the headquarters of Hamza al-Tai, the local leader of the Mahdi Army.

[A car bomb exploded outside the Baghdad home of Iraq`s deputy interior minister on Saturday, killing at least five people and wounding several others, the police and witnesses told Reuters.

[American soldiers said one of the wounded was Gen. Abdel Jabar al-Shikli, the deputy minister. The bomb detonated directly in front of his house, they said.]

Also in Baghdad, an American soldier and two Iraqi civilians were killed when a roadside bomb exploded Thursday, the military said.

The American military has come under increasing scrutiny for its activities since the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and an air strike near the Syrian border that killed 41 people on Wednesday.

The American presence in the holiest cities of Shiite Islam has provoked protests throughout the region, including small demonstrations in Iran and Jordan. Tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims demonstrated in Beirut Friday to protest the American operations, and 30 people were wounded in clashes with police in Bahrain, where about 5,000 people turned out, the Associated Press reported.

Al Jazeera, the popular Arab satellite TV network based in Dubai, said one of its drivers was killed by gunfire while standing with a television crew on the roof of a hotel in Karbala`s downtown.

After American troops completed their withdrawal from the Mukhaiyam Mosque, Iraqi policemen entered the downtown, trying to take control for the first time since April, when Mr. Sadr`s forces seized the area, Colonel Mansoor said. "It seems like a good thing," he added.

But there are doubts that Iraqi security forces are prepared or willing to rid the area of insurgents. Last month, when the uprising began, many Iraqi policemen and members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a national militia, ran from the insurgents or even joined in attacks against the Americans.

After the Americans seized the Mukhaiyam Mosque, they had to cajole Iraqi security forces to help them guard the mosque. When policemen did turn up, they sat in the relative safety of the mosque`s covered rooms while American soldiers went out on patrols. The policemen soon disappeared.

The Americans are still running heavy patrols into the city. On Friday evening, it sent an entire company of infantrymen into Karbala. Windows rattled as Bradley fighting vehicles, M113 armored personnel carriers and other armored behemoths rolled through the streets, looking for a fight. But not a single shot was fired at the patrols.

U.S. Holds 2 in Berg Death

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 21 — American officials said Friday they had detained four men suspected of involvement in the murder of Nicholas Berg, the American civilian who was beheaded earlier this month, but that two had since been released. The men were captured during a raid carried out in Baghdad on Wednesday by American soldiers, the officials said.

Mr. Berg, who had come to Iraq looking for work, was kidnapped in April by anti-American insurgents. His beheading was videotaped and released on Islamist Web sites. Mr. Berg last contacted his family on April 6. His body was found May 8 near an overpass in Baghdad.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy chief of operations here, declined to address reports that one of the suspects was a relative of Saddam Hussein. American officials have said that Mr. Berg`s killer was probably Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an Islamic militant suspected in many bombings here.

Of the two men still in custody, General Kimmitt said: "We have some intelligence that would suggest they had knowledge, perhaps some culpability, but we`re not going to know until we`ve actually finished the questioning."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company



Images A militiaman surveying damage to the offices of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr in Karbala, where American forces left the city center early Friday. At least 21 insurgents were killed as the troops pulled back.

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May 22, 2004
An Abu Ghraib Investigation

It has been gratifying to see Senator John Warner, the Republican who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, lead a bipartisan effort to look into the abuse of prisoners in Iraq. The hearings have already done far more than the Pentagon ever intended to do in providing a public airing of the Abu Ghraib disaster. But with each day`s horrible revelations, it seems evident that the hearings will not be enough. It is also hard to believe that the military`s own investigations will yield much, given the shifting of blame offered up by top Pentagon leaders, who continue to insist that the nightmare at Abu Ghraib was an isolated case of unsanctioned behavior by a few sick soldiers.

That defense, never particularly credible, has been undercut by the Red Cross, by the emerging testimony of detainees and now by the Pentagon`s own records. The Denver Post reported this week that military records documented the deaths of at last five Iraqi prisoners during brutal interrogations, only one of them at Abu Ghraib. In one especially chilling case, the former head of Iraq`s air force turned himself in and was held at a "high value" prison, where interrogators appear to have killed him by stuffing him headfirst into a sleeping bag, sitting on his chest and covering his mouth. The Pentagon papered this over with a press release saying the prisoner "said he didn`t feel well and subsequently lost consciousness."

Despite the efforts of some of the senators — notably two Republicans, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and three Democrats, Carl Levin, Jack Reed and Hillary Clinton — each new panel of witnesses simply adds to the fog of misunderstanding. This week, for example, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the troops in Iraq, said he had never seen a protocol permitting the harsh treatment of prisoners until it surfaced at a hearing a week earlier. The Army`s subsequent claim that the orders were the work of a single captain seemed even more implausible.

The theory that a midranking intelligence officer carried out such a drastic shift in the military`s normal rules did fit right in with the overriding theme of testimony thus far: senior officers blaming those far below them for everything. General Sanchez said Red Cross reports on prisoner abuse had gone to low-level officers who had never passed them on. Other accounts contradict that. But in any case, that`s not a defense — it`s an indictment of his command.

Among the big questions that need to be answered is how the government and the military handled the repeated complaints from the Red Cross. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and some of his closest aides said they had been kept in the dark even longer than General Sanchez. But Red Cross officials met more than once in the past year with top American officials in Iraq and in Washington. Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt reported in The Times this week that the American military`s first response had been to curtail Red Cross inspections. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Red Cross had been so outraged by the soldiers` treatment of prisoners that it considered changing its policy and making its reports public.

The military has repeatedly assured us that it will get to the bottom of this mess, but it has not provided any evidence that it`s really capable of doing so. Senator Warner, meanwhile, has a long list of witnesses to call. He also wants the Pentagon to deliver a pile of documents, including all reviews by Defense Department lawyers of interrogation rules at Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay. Mr. Rumsfeld should fully and immediately comply.

But given the quality of the testimony so far, it is not likely that the Senate hearings will produce the answers the public deserves. While this may not be the ideal time for an independent investigation, it is getting hard to see another option. Neither the Defense Department`s inspector general nor Mr. Rumsfeld`s office seems capable of mounting a reliable investigation so close to home. The best bet is for Congress to form a special committee with subpoena powers and an investigative staff. That would require, however, that other Republican leaders in Congress show the same honorable determination that Mr. Warner has demonstrated.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 22, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Sticking Up for Rumsfeld
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Donald Rumsfeld has presided over the most foolish conflict since the War of Jenkins` Ear in the 18th century, and he is at the top of a military force that tortured prisoners. So Washington is humming with widespread calls, including one from this newspaper, for him to be fired.

But those demands strike me as unfair and premature.

Frankly, I`m astonished to be speaking up for Mr. Rumsfeld. But fairness must govern our handling of American defense secretaries as well as Iraqi prisoners. The central point is that we have no proof that Mr. Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for the torture.

So far the evidence is mixed about whether there was a policy of abusing prisoners to get intelligence. It`s troubling that there was similar misconduct in Afghanistan, and that some of the techniques reflect expertise in torture. On the other hand, interviews with inmates and guards alike have suggested that most of the really horrifying abuses may have been limited to the night shift at one cellblock of one particular prison. The latest revelations from The Washington Post are horrifying; guards threw inmates` food into toilets and tortured them into renouncing their religion.

So we need a thorough investigation. If Mr. Rumsfeld turns out to be complicit, he must go. But if, as Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba has said in his report (deservedly praised as tough and unsparing), the problems were at much lower levels, then why make a scapegoat of the defense secretary?

It`s true that the torture arose in a climate of administration contempt for the Geneva Conventions, particularly reflected in those shameful Justice Department memos outlining loopholes so the U.S. could evade responsibility for war crimes. But this disregard for ethics and law arose mostly from the White House and the Justice Department.

The better argument for Mr. Rumsfeld`s ouster is that he led us, poorly prepared and clutching the hands of a charlatan, Ahmad Chalabi, into a quagmire. His doctrine of underwhelming force hobbled our occupation and is partly responsible for the mess. According to a poll cited in The Financial Times, 58 percent of Iraqis now support Moktada al-Sadr, one of our enemies.

But remember: this is not Mr. Rumsfeld`s war. It is President Bush`s.

Mr. Rumsfeld is not a neo-conservative hawk. He is an old-fashioned conservative, a realist like the first President Bush, and he did not particularly press for war with Iraq. The real culprits are the neo-con ideologues who screamed for war: people like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby and the current President Bush himself.

Mr. Rumsfeld did not display the wisdom of Colin Powell, who pushed back against Mr. Bush in the run-up to war. But neither was he a jingoist. According to Bob Woodward`s new book, Mr. Rumsfeld spent meetings asking questions rather than taking positions. So why fire Mr. Rumsfeld for carrying out his boss`s invasion?

True, he has managed it poorly, and there`s an argument for firing Mr. Rumsfeld for incompetence. But how do we justify retaining Mr. Cheney, who bears central responsibility for everything that has gone wrong, and George Tenet, who managed both to miss the 9/11 plot and to "find" slam-dunk evidence of Iraqi W.M.D.?

Indeed, under the neo-cons the war would have been even more mishandled. Mr. Wolfowitz believed that a small number of troops could seize Iraq`s southern oil fields and that Saddam`s regime would then fall.

What would firing Mr. Rumsfeld achieve? In its favor, it would send a message to the world that we are as appalled by our own war crimes as by Saddam`s. But it would also leave a vacuum. The people immediately below Mr. Rumsfeld — Mr. Wolfowitz and Mr. Feith — are more culpable and would need to follow him out the door. Emptying the top three jobs in the Pentagon would be a nice gesture of accountability, but would also lead to paralysis and more Americans coming home in body bags.

So until proof emerges that Mr. Rumsfeld was directly connected to the torture, it would be unfair to single him out. That`s why only 20 percent of Americans say in an ABC poll that Mr. Rumsfeld should lose his job. Even Democrats oppose firing Mr. Rumsfeld by a ratio of two to one.

The person who charted the course into Iraq and who bears ultimate responsibility is not Mr. Rumsfeld but Mr. Bush — and his bosses will get a chance to fire him in November.

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Diese Geschichte von dem Soldaten mit dem amputierten Bein hat eine Diskussion in den USA ausgelöst. Manche Zeitungen haben die Folgen nicht abgedruckt.

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Punishment and Amusement
Documents Indicate 3 Photos Were Not Staged for Interrogation

By Scott Higham and Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A01

Prisoners posed in three of the most infamous photographs of abuse to come out of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were not being softened up for interrogation by intelligence officers but instead were being punished for criminal acts or the amusement of their jailers, according to previously secret documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Several of the photographs taken by military police on the cellblock have become iconic, among them the naked human pyramid, the hooded man standing on a box hooked up to wires, and the three naked prisoners handcuffed together on the prison floor. The documents show that MPs staged the photographs as a form of entertainment or to discipline the prisoners for acts ranging from rioting to an alleged rape of a teenage boy in the prison.

The documents include statements by four of the seven MPs now charged in the abuse scandal: Spec. Sabrina Harman, Spec. Jeremy Sivits, Sgt. Javal S. Davis and Pfc. Lynndie England. Their statements provide new insights into the unfolding case.

For instance, they contain tantalizing hints about the role of military intelligence officers who operated in the shadows of Tier 1A at the prison. One military police officer said in a sworn statement that civilian and military intelligence officers frequently visited Tier 1A at night, spiriting detainees away for questioning out of sight of the MPs inside a "wood hut" behind the prison building. The documents also offer the first detailed account of how the abuse scandal unraveled.

Spec. Joseph M. Darby told investigators that he returned to Abu Ghraib from leave in November and heard about a shooting at the prison`s "hard site," which contains Tier 1A. He said that he asked the MP in charge of the tier`s night shift, Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., if he had any photographs of the cell where the shooting took place.

Darby said Graner handed him two CDs of photographs.

"I thought the discs just had pictures of Iraq, the cell where the shooting occurred," Darby told investigators.

Instead, Darby viewed hundreds of photographs showing naked detainees being abused by U.S. soldiers.

"It was just wrong," Darby said. "I knew I had to do something."

He said that he asked Graner, a Pennsylvania prison guard in civilian life, about the photographs. Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it`s wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, `I love to make a grown man piss himself.` "

In the newly obtained documents, the MPs who gave statements describe Graner and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II as the leaders and organizers of the abuse. Frederick was the enlisted man in charge of Tier 1A and worked as a prison guard in Virginia.

Graner, Frederick and Spec. Megan Ambuhl requested lawyers and declined to provide investigators with sworn statements.

Attorneys for several of the charged MPs said their clients were acting at the behest of military intelligence officers at the prison to soften up the detainees for interrogation sessions.

"They were following orders," said Danielle Guebert, an attorney for England. "The orders came from military intelligence."

Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski has said that military intelligence officers were in charge of the cellblock at the time. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross who visited the prison in mid-October, shortly before the worst of the recorded abuses, complained that detainees were being stripped and humiliated. "The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was `part of the process,` " the Red Cross said in a report. It remains unclear exactly what role military intelligence officers played in the abuses that have been documented in photographs and videos taken by MPs on the cellblock.

Davis, one of the MPs, said he lied when he was initially confronted by military investigators about his role in the abuse, according to the documents. He gave a second statement on Jan. 15. "It bothers me that I did not tell the truth," he said. "When I was asked about it today, I decided I needed to be honest and maintain my integrity and admit my fault."

Davis said that civilian and military intelligence personnel frequently visited Tier 1A and took detainees to a wood hut outside for interrogations.

Portions of Davis`s statement were included in an investigative report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. But his full statement contains fresh details about what took place on the cellblock.

There were different rules and procedures on Tier 1A, he said.

"I never saw a set of rules or SOP [standard operating procedure] for that section -- just word of mouth," Davis said. "I did see paperwork provided by the MI [military intelligence] soldiers regulating sleep and meals for some of the MI-hold prisoners."

He said he was asked by Graner to help prepare the detainees for interrogation. MPs or their attorneys have said that Graner served as the liaison on the cellblock between the MPs and the intelligence officers, who had taken control of Tier 1A by the fall of 2003.

Davis said Graner told him "the agents and MI soldiers would ask him to do things, but nothing was ever in writing, he would complain."

Special visitors frequented the wing at night, Davis said. They included representatives from the military`s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) and other government agencies (OGA), a common expression for the CIA.

"On the night shift, FBI, OGA, CID, MI would be in and out of the wing interrogating prisoners, bringing them in, or taking them away to the wood hut behind the hard site or away period," Davis said. "Someone was always there from the other agencies or military personnel, it seemed."

He said he was disgusted by the treatment of the detainees.

"You mentioned you saw various things you thought were immoral," one investigator asked him. "What things are you referring to?"

"The sleep and food plan that was the majority of the crap," Davis said. "You see inmates stand all day and not get food until they are scheduled to sleep. They stand for three to four hours. . . ."

"Why did you not inform your chain of command about this abuse?"

"Because I assumed that if they were doing anything out of the ordinary or outside the guidelines, someone would have said something," Davis said. "Also, the wing belongs to MI and it appeared MI personnel approved of the abuse."

Davis said Graner and Frederick encouraged him to participate in the incidents.

"The MI staffs, to my understanding, have been giving Graner compliments on the way he has been handling the MI holds," Davis said. "Example being statements like `Good job, they`re breaking down real fast`; `They answer every question`; `They`re giving out good information, finally`; and `Keep up the good work` -- stuff like that."

Investigators asked if he had heard military intelligence officers directing the guards to abuse detainees.

"Yes," he said.

Davis said the intelligence officers told Graner and Frederick: "Loosen this guy up for us. Make sure he has a bad night. Make sure he gets the treatment."

"What is the name of the MI staff member who made the previously stated comments?" investigators asked.

"I don`t know the name because they often don`t wear uniforms, and if they do they don`t have name tapes," Davis said.

Harman also hinted that military intelligence officers were orchestrating events on Tier 1A. She described a number of abuses, including soldiers letting a dog bite a detainee on both legs. She said that an interpreter practiced karate kicks to the head of another detainee, nicknamed the "Taxicab Driver." She said he was hit so hard he required stitches.

"MI, CID, OGA, etc., have all been involved," she told investigators.

England also told investigators that "MI had told us to `rough them` up to get answers from the prisoners."

All the MPs who provided statements also described abuses that appeared to have little to do with intelligence gathering. Instead, they said detainees were beaten and sexually humiliated as punishment or for fun.

On Oct. 24, the MPs decided to punish three detainees suspected of raping a teenage boy at the prison. To make the men confess, the MPs stripped them and handcuffed them together.

"They started to handcuff the two rapist together in odd positions/ways," England told investigators. "Once the two were handcuffed together, the third guy was brought over and handcuffed between the other two. Then they were laying on the floor handcuffed together, so all the other prisoners could see them. CPL Graner and SSG Frederick then asked me to start taking pictures with the camera."

The resulting images, which show several soldiers other than Graner and Frederick, have been cited by Graner`s attorney as evidence that such practices were condoned by military intelligence officers.

Several of the worst abuses photographed took place on a single day, Nov. 8.

In one of the most striking images to surface, a detainee jokingly referred to as "Gilligan" by the MPs was forced to stand on a box of food, with wires connected to his fingers, toes and penis.

Harman said she attached the wires to "Gilligan" and told him he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box.

"Why did you do this to the detainee `Gilligan`?" a military investigator asked.

"Just playing with him," Harman said.

Also that day, MPs punished seven detainees they said were instigating a riot in a part of the prison outside Tier 1A.

The detainees were stripped and forced to the floor of the cellblock.

"Graner was placing them into position," Harman told investigators.

"How long did the human pyramid last?" an investigator asked her.

"The pyramid lasted about 15 to 20 minutes," she said.

At one point, David jumped onto the pile of naked men, Sivits said.

"That is when Sergeant Davis ran across the room and lunged in the air and landed in the middle of where the detainees were," Sivits said. "I believe Davis ran across the room a total of two times and landed in the middle of the pile of detainees. A couple of the detainees kind of made an `ah` sound."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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`I Was Laughing at Some of the Stuff`



Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A16

It was the night of Nov. 8, and documents show that seven prisoners were brought into Tier 1 at Abu Ghraib for allegedly starting a riot in the outside tents at the prison compound. The detainees were dragged into piles, stripped and at times hit, according to photos and videos.

Then, soldiers told investigators, someone came up with the idea of placing the naked detainees into a pyramid in the middle of the floor. One detainee after another was put in a crouching position on the floor and a soldier directed the action. One by one they were placed on top of one another, forming a human tower.

The picture, of soldiers grinning behind the pile, is one of the most widely known images of humiliation at Abu Ghraib.

Harman said Graner was placing the detainees into position, and said the entire pyramid lasted 15 to 20 minutes. Sivits said he was surprised by some of what the soldiers were making the detainees do, which later included a string of naked, hooded detainees standing in a line masturbating.

"I was laughing at some of the stuff that they had them do," Sivits told investigators. "I was disgusted at some of the stuff as well. As I think about it now I do not think any of it was funny."

The investigator then asked: "What part did you think was funny?"

Sivits answered: "The tower thing."

Shortly after, the documents show, the detainees were ordered to masturbate while soldiers stepped back to take photos and video. England said she was then asked to walk over and point at one of the men, which she said she did reluctantly.

"I really didn`t want to get that close him masturbating but posed for the picture anyway," she said, referring to the well-known photo in which she points cheerily at a detainee`s genitals, a cigarette hanging lazily from her mouth.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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`I Simply Stood With The Strap in My Hand`



Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A16

Judging from the photo itself, it is unclear whether England is dragging the grimacing, naked prisoner across the floor, or if she is just standing there holding the leash around his neck.

According to the statement she gave investigators, it is the latter -- and it was not her idea.

England, whose family said she processed inmates but did not work inside the cellblock, said she visited a wing where many prisoners were held. Only two soldiers were on duty, Graner and Spec. Megan Ambuhl.

They had mentioned that there was a detainee named Gus in solitary confinement, England said. He had been arrested for "attacks on coalition forces," she said, and had told other soldiers that he "hated Americans and wanted to kill us."

Graner had suggested taking a picture of the detainee, and he wanted England to pose, "pretending to drag him on a leash-type thing," she said.

Graner got out the leash, and they went down to a solitary confinement cell where the detainee was being held, she said. The detainee emerged naked but not handcuffed. And after Graner made him lie down on the floor, she said, he loosely looped the strap around his neck and handed it to her.

Then he got out his camera, she posed and he snapped a photo.

"I did not drag or pull on the leash," she said. "I simply stood with the strap in my hand. Gus started to crawl on the floor and . . . Graner took another picture. We then took the strap off of him and placed him back in his cell."

All this time, she said, Ambuhl stood and watched.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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`Knocked the Detainee Unconscious`



Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A16

It was late October or early November, and the alleged abuses were escalating. According to soldiers, detainees and dozens of photographs, the physical violence included shoves into walls, slaps, punches and karate-style kicks to the head.

Some prisoners needed stitches; one was hit so hard in the chest that he stopped breathing; another was knocked unconscious by a single punch to the temple.

In a series of photographs, one soldier is seen with a pile of detainees. In one picture, he is cocking his fist while holding the detainee in a headlock; in another, he is posing on top of them, flexing his muscles for the camera.

The scene was one that several soldiers recounted in statements, and one that appeared to echo other, and similar, attacks on detainees.

"At one point after a couple of the detainees were stripped, and I do not know what provoked Graner, but Graner knelt down to one of the detainees . . . put the detainee`s head in a cradle position with Graner`s arm, and Graner punched the detainee with a lot of force, in the temple," Sivits told investigators. "Graner punched the detainee with a closed fist so hard in the temple that it knocked the detainee unconscious. . . . I do remember Graner saying `Damn, that hurt` . . . after Graner had done this he went over to the pile of detainees that were still clothed and he put his knees on them and had his picture taken."

Shalan Said Alsharoni, a detainee at Abu Ghraib, told investigators that the beatings were commonplace, intertwined with "torture" that included soldiers hitting prisoners` genitals with gloved hands. Alsharoni recalled an incident that appeared very similar to the image depicted in the photo, when he said a group of detainees resisted being placed naked next to each other.

"And when they refused, Graner beat them up until they put them on top of each other and they took pictures of them," Alsharoni said, according to the documents. "After they brought six people, and they beat them up until they dropped on the floor and one of them his nose was cut and the blood was running from his nose and he was screaming but no one responded."

Davis said he became emotional when dealing with some of the detainees.

"I did step on the inmates` hands and feet on purpose and not on purpose," Davis said. "I was very upset at the inmates for wanting to kill some of my fellow soldiers from my company. I wanted to scare them."

England told investigators that not all of the photos are what they appear to be. She said the photo of a soldier cocking his fist was a ruse.

"Graner and Frederick told me to grab the camera and get some pictures of them pretending to hit the prisoners," England said in her statement. "While I was taking the pictures at no time did they actually hit the prisoners."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

A hooded prisoner, cuffed at both wrists, collapses over a rail at Abu Ghraib prison.

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Unidentified U.S. soldiers surround an Iraqi detainee with dogs in this photo obtained by The New Yorker said to be taken in December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq
washingtonpost.com

`They Let the Dogs Corner Him`



Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A16

Dogs appear in at least four photographs with their unidentified handlers, who seem to be restraining the animals from attack. Terror is etched on the prisoners` faces as they cower, some in prison hallways, another backed into a corner, another naked against a wall.

The dogs are unmuzzled, and in some images their teeth can be seen. They are face to face with the inmates. "I recall an occasion when two dogs were brought into 1A to scare an inmate," Harman said.

"He was naked against the wall when they let the dogs corner him. They pulled them back enough and the prisoner ran . . . straight across the floor like he was trying to jump in their arms. The prisoner was cornered and a dog bit his leg."

This, apparently, wasn`t enough for the handlers. According to Harman`s account, the dogs were kept close enough to the detainee so they could strike again. "A couple seconds later he started to move again, and the dog bit his other leg," Harman said. "The guy ran straight for the door, where they tackled him."

According to Harman`s account, she ran to get a first-aid kit and another soldier then came to help stitch up the detainee`s wounds: "Pictures were taken, but not by us," she said. "The dog handlers have copies."

Harman said the handlers appeared in the cellblock by themselves. One detainee, Ameen Saeed Al-Sheik, said the soldiers threatened to unleash the dogs on him if he didn`t tell them what they wanted to hear.

"They said they will torture me, and they will come every single night to ask me the same question accompanied with soldiers having weapons," he said. "And they point a weapon to my head and threaten that they will kill me, sometime with dogs. And they hang me to the door allowing the dogs to try to bite me."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

A U.S. soldier uses two hands to restrain an unmuzzled dog that is snarling at an Iraqi prisoner.[/url]

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A U.S. soldier, center, appears to be kneeling on naked Iraqi prisoners as other soldiers watch.

Zeittafel mit allen Ereignissen und Bildern
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2004/05/06/i…

Photo Timeline: Prisoner Abuse in Iraq
- Chronicle and SFGate.com Staff Report
Thursday, May 6, 2004

TIMELINE

2003

June: Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski is named commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, becoming the senior officer in charge of Abu Ghraib and two other military prisons in Iraq. She is suspended from this post in April 2004 amid investigations into claims of abuse.

Nov. 5: Army Provost Marshal Donald Ryder, the Army`s chief law- enforcement officer, forwards to his superiors a review of the military prison system in Iraq.

2004

Jan. 13: A soldier in the unit, disturbed by what he had witnessed, reports abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

Jan. 14: The Combined Joint Task Force-7 begins a criminal investigation of the allegations.

Jan. 16: Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, tells reporters about the allegations and the start of the investigation. Other investigations and assessments follow.

Jan. 31: Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, deputy commanding general for support for 3rd Army, begins conducting an administrative investigation of procedures at Abu Ghraib.

February: The Army inspector general`s office begins an assessment of detention operations throughout U.S. Central Command. Abu Ghraib is left out of this review because of the concurrent criminal investigation. Lt. Gen. James Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, orders an assessment of Army Reserve training, with an emphasis on military police and military intelligence activities related to prisoners.

March 3: Taguba forwards his findings to his boss, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan. The report remains classified.

March 15: The Army criminal investigation division issues some preliminary assessments regarding its probe.

March 20: Criminal charges are lodged against six soldiers.

April 6: McKiernan approves the findings in Taguba`s report, leading to six letters of reprimand, including two "reliefs for cause." All are from the military police unit.

April 15: Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, former commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, takes over the military prisons in Iraq.

April 23: Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, asks for an investigation on military intelligence practices in the country. Maj. Gen. George Fay, the Army deputy chief of staff for intelligence, initiates an investigation into the practices inside of Iraq, including Abu Ghraib.

April 28: CBS broadcasts on "60 Minutes II" some of the photos showing abuse and humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, setting off outrage across the Arab world.

May 1: Reports of prisoner abuse by British troops are published in London.

May 4: The Army says 20 investigations into prisoner deaths and assaults currently are under way in Iraq and Afghanistan.

May 5: President Bush gives interviews to two Arab-language networks, saying that he and the American people were appalled by the revelations.

May 6: New photos emerge showing abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Congressional Democrats call for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

May 7: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accepts full responsibility for the abuse of war detainees during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

May 7: Army Pfc. Lynndie England, shown in photographs smiling and pointing at naked Iraqi prisoners, is charged by the military for assaulting and conspiring to mistreat detainees.

May 9: Army Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, is the first soldier to face a court-martial in connection with the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

May 9: The New Yorker Magazine reports military police in charge of prisons in Iraq saw their mission shift from guarding prisoners to intelligence-gathering.

May 10: Responding to increasing pressure for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign, President Bush praised Rumsfeld as doing a `superb job` during a press conference at the Pentagon Monday.

May 11: Major General Taguba tells Congress the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners was a result of faulty leadership, a "lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision" of the troops.

May 11: A video released on a militant Islamic Web site linked to al Qaeda appeared to show the beheading of a civilian American contractor from Pennsylvania, identified as Nick Berg. In a statement the militants read before the execution they claimed their actions were a response to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

May 11: Army Pfc. Lynndie England says she was ordered to smile for the cameras to put psychological pressure on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

May 12: Sgt. Javal Davis, 26, of Maryland and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II of Buckingham, Va., are ordered to stand trial in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

May 13: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld makes a surprise visit to Abu Ghraib prison.

May 14: Nearly 300 Iraqi detainees are released from Abu Ghraib prison.

May 19: Army Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits receives the maximum penalty -- one year in prison, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge -- in the first court-martial of the Iraqi prisoner scandal.

May 21: New photos, shots from video and testimony detail more prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.
MILITARY INVESTIGATIONS

Ryder report: Although he notes that problems involving military police and intelligence operatives dated back to the war in Afghanistan, Ryder concludes in his November 2003 report that the situation does not yet constitute a crisis. He does call for guidelines "separating the actions of the guards from those of the military intelligence personnel."

Taguba report: In his 53-page report, sent up the chain of command in March, Taguba documents practices that he describes as "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" that occurred in late 2003 at Abu Ghraib, perpetrated by soldiers in the 372nd Military Police Companies and by military- intelligence interrogators. He harshly condemns all the perpetrators of such abuse and recommends disciplinary action against senior military officers and two CACI International civilian contractors. (View complete text of report)

Fay inquiry: Fay, the deputy commander of Army intelligence, is examining the interrogation practices of military intelligence officers at all U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.

Helmly inquiry: Lt. Gen. James Helmly, head of the Army Reserve, is assessing the training of all reservists, especially military police and intelligence officers.

CIA investigations: The agency`s inspector general is undertaking two probes into abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, including one investigation into a prisoner`s death.
WHO SAID WHAT

President Bush: "I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were. ... Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That`s not the way we do things in America. And so I didn`t like it one bit."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "The images that we`ve seen that include U.S. forces are deeply disturbing, both because of the fundamental unacceptability of what they depicted and because the actions by U.S. military personnel in those photos do not in any way represent the values of our country or of the armed forces."

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman, in remarks aimed at Iraqis: "...If you think those soldiers that are walking up and down the street approve of what they saw, condone what they saw or excuse what they saw, I can tell you that I`ve got 150,000 other American soldiers who feel as appalled and disappointed as I do at the actions of those few."

Sources: Chronicle news services; Chronicle archives; New Yorker magazine; www.defenselink.mil.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2004/05/06/i…



A naked Iraqi prisoner is cuffed at the ankles and covered with an unknown brownish substance while guarded by a baton-wielding U.S. soldier.

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washingtonpost.com

Convention as Farce



Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A26

DEMOCRATS WILL gather in Boston at the end of July to nominate their party`s presidential candidate -- a nominee whose identity has been clear since March. (Hint: his initials are JFK). Only now, the nominating convention -- for which, by the way, the party receives $15 million in public funds -- might not produce an official nominee. The point would be to give the eventual nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, several more weeks during which he can raise and spend private money before he takes the $75 million check that each major party candidate gets from the government, supposedly to provide the full financing for their general election campaigns.

The campaign`s argument for this unprecedented ploy is that it would like to even the financial playing field between the two candidates. Because the Democratic convention is five weeks earlier than the Republican gathering, Mr. Kerry would be at a disadvantage, having to spend his federal money over a longer period than would President Bush. This looked like a good deal to the Democrats when they thought they would have a candidate who would take government matching funds during the primary season and therefore agree to limit spending during that period. Then, an early infusion of general election financing was to the party`s benefit. But now, with Mr. Kerry having chosen to forgo matching funds and, like the president, raising unprecedented amounts on his own, the financial calculus has shifted. Mr. Kerry`s choice to be seen manipulating the rules will have its own cost, of course -- but it won`t be in cash. We do look forward to his non-acceptance speech.

This is a symptom of a presidential financing system that has degenerated into meaninglessness. Gushers of cash are flowing into both presidential campaigns for what are supposedly their "primary" contests. Boosted by the doubling of the contribution limit to $2,000, Mr. Bush has broken the $200 million barrier -- nearly twice his take four years ago, when he became the first eventual nominee to opt out of the matching fund system. Mr. Kerry announced yesterday that he has topped $117 million, most of it raised after he dispatched his primary opponents.

If the system is to remain in place, it must be dramatically overhauled to take into account the reality of a front-loaded primary calendar and soaring campaign costs. The existing matching fund system for the primaries is all but dead: It`s hard to imagine another successful party nominee who would participate in it. If it is to be continued, the amount that`s matched needs to be increased. The primary spending ceiling must be raised. And the time at which candidates receive their general election checks must be adjusted to comport with reality, not the artificial timing of nominating conventions that, if Mr. Kerry proceeds with this plan, will be more meaningless than ever.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com

Revisiting the Good War

By Ellen Goodman

Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A27

BOSTON -- In a few days we`ll go back to the good war. Just for a visit. We`ll rerun the tape of World War II with respect, gratitude and, maybe, nostalgia.

The memorial to what we have dubbed "the greatest generation" will be dedicated on the Mall in Washington next Saturday. The 60th anniversary of D-Day will be commemorated eight days later.

So we`ll listen to words carved into stone monuments. Dwight David Eisenhower`s exhortations to the D-Day troops embarking on "the Great Crusade." Franklin Delano Roosevelt extolling the "righteous might" of the American people.

We`ll bring to these ceremonies an appreciation of a time when victory was uncertain, sacrifice was enormous and the alternative was terrifying. We`ll celebrate a time when GIs were indeed greeted with sweets and flowers. When American armies were truly liberators -- of concentration camps. When Hitler was not a name we used all too loosely to label our enemies. And war wasn`t a choice -- it was thrust on us.

But I hope we also bring to these ceremonies an understanding of how the idea of a "good war" has been chiseled into our collective memory. For better and, maybe now, for worse.

What a powerful grip World War II still retains on our imagination. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the one analogy everyone made was to Pearl Harbor. In those first days when the president was at his best, he told the nation, "We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment. . . . Our nation -- this generation -- will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future."

Only later, after the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban had morphed into a war against Iraq, did I begin to wonder about the echoes he evoked with "our mission," "our moment," and "this generation."

Bush the father flew 58 combat missions in the Pacific. His generation had acquired its gravitas and its moniker in military service. Bush the son was a boomer whose international résumé was as light as a butterfly ballot. He found his calling, his generation`s calling, in the War on Terror. It would be our good war.

More than once, the president has told the country, "Either you support evil or you support good. This great nation stands on the side of good."

The language of good and evil barely changed as the reasons for the war in Iraq changed. "Goodness" became our moral cover story as the mission justified by weapons of mass destruction was rejustified for liberation. For sweets and flowers.

Over the past year, our moral "stand" as the good guys became shaky and then collapsed in a photo op of abuse. When Jeremy Sivits -- the soldier who took photographs of acts he should have stopped -- stood before a court-martial, he said in anguish: "This is not me." In story after story, hometown folks refer to soldiers now accused of shameful crimes as either "a gentle giant" or "a prankster" or, as it was said of Lynndie England, "a human being."

Are we remembering, finally, what a "human being" can do in war? What war can do to a human being? Turn someone into "not me." Is the president who proudly proclaimed that he sees black and white, not gray, getting Baghdad dust on his lenses?

Iraq is often -- too often -- compared to Vietnam. But those who recklessly embarked on this war skipped Vietnam with its heart of darkness and chose World War II instead as their upbeat model.

Today we rarely use Ike`s language of "crusade." It`s far too loaded in a Muslim world. Nor do we use FDR`s "righteous" vocabulary. But it has been harder to shake the idea of a good war loose from its moorings in our imagination.

There are atrocities in every war, although no digital cameras recorded them until now. We know or should know that war can hone a killer`s hardness against humanity in a way that may take a lifetime to soften. Would it be different, I wonder, if our World War II memorials included Hiroshima and Dresden, the human tragedies that come adhered even to victory?

The men I know who have a paid-up membership card in the greatest generation talk less of wartime heroism than of camaraderie and scared-to-the-bones hope of survival. They share a certainty that the war itself was right. By which they mean necessary.

So maybe we should pack understanding as well as gratitude for this year`s visit to our fathers` war. There are just wars and there are unjust wars. There are wars that are forced on us and wars we rashly choose. But there is no such thing, then or now, as a good war.

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© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com

A Better Transition Plan
Let a national conference choose an interim government.

By Marina Ottaway

Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A27

The plan for restoring Iraqi sovereignty on June 30 is threatened by the rapidly deteriorating security situation. Given the continuing violence in Najaf, Fallujah, Baghdad, Karbala and elsewhere, the idea that a government of technocrats can provide even minimal administration for six months, and also organize elections, seems increasingly divorced from reality. Such a government would not have sufficient authority to be effective.

The plan might have worked if the United States had firm control over Iraq, but that is not the case. The issue is no longer how much sovereignty the United States wants to cede to the interim government but whether it can maintain enough security for the interim government to function at all.

Unless Washington finds a mechanism to form a government acceptable to most of the groups that have demonstrated power, the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30 will be a futile gesture. It will not prevent the continuation of violence. It will not convince Iraqis that they are regaining control of the country. It will not curb the ambitions of armed groups and of politicians excluded from the interim government. It will not lead to successful elections at the end of the year.

Without the backing, or at least the acquiescence, of major political forces, the interim government cannot keep the country from sinking into chaos. If that happens, the temptation will grow for the United States to withdraw. The debate on withdrawal has already started, and it will undoubtedly intensify in the weeks to come, as control remains elusive and casualties continue to mount. But leaving behind a failed state would be disastrous. We have learned in Afghanistan how dangerous a failed state can be.

Iraq needs an interim government that has the support of major political forces, including, make no mistake, the likes of the Fallujah insurgents and the firebrand Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr. If the idea of giving even the bad guys a voice in the formation of an interim government seems preposterous, remember, this is precisely what the loya jirga did in Afghanistan.

An interim government enjoying broad acceptance could be formed by reversing the process now envisaged by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and the Coalition Provisional Authority. The current plan calls for formation of an interim government by the United Nations and the United States, followed by the convocation of a national conference, which could only rubber-stamp a done deal. The plan is dictated by President Bush`s determination to have a government in place by June 30, but it makes little sense politically. To give some legitimacy to the interim government, the national conference needs to come first, and to approve the government.

It would be possible to hold the national conference before the formation of a government and still meet the June 30 deadline. Sovereignty could be transferred not to the interim government but to the national conference, which would then set up the interim government. There is, of course, no precedent for transfer of sovereignty to a national conference, but there are examples of national conferences declaring themselves sovereign, deposing the incumbent government, setting up an interim one, and proceeding to organize elections. The best-known of these cases, in Benin in 1990, led to one of the most successful democratic transitions in Africa.

There are, to be sure, dangers in transferring sovereignty to a national conference that includes groups hostile to the United States -- including the possibility that the conference would ask U.S. troops to leave the country, or would set up a radical government. But a broad-based national conference is not likely to take extreme positions, because the participants would have to reach a compromise among themselves. Sadr can cause more damage as an insurgent defying the United States from Najaf than as the head of one of many organizations represented at a national conference and competing with other Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish groups.

Even if there is some risk involved, a sovereign national conference is the only means of setting up an interim government with a chance of surviving for six months and leading the country to elections. Without the backing of the groups that have the power to derail elections, an interim government cannot function. Furthermore, a national conference would test the willingness of the Iraqis to compromise and reach an agreement. Without such willingness, no amount of U.S. or U.N. involvement can turn Iraq into a stable country, let alone a democratic one. If that is the case, it is better to find out sooner rather than later, before more lives are lost in a futile endeavor.

The writer is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-director of its Democracy and Rule of Law Project.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Saturday, May 22, 2004
War News for May 21 and 22, 2004 draft

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, three wounded by car bomb near Mahmudiyah.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqi policemen, one Iraqi civilian killed in attempted assassination in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Eighteen Iraqi militiamen killed in heavy fighting in Karbala.

Bring ‘em on: Four ICDC members killed in ambush near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, two wounded in ambush near Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, three wounded in Baghdad RPG ambush.

Bring ‘em on: Green Zone mortared in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Heavy fighting continues in Najaf.

Bring ‘em on: Three US soldiers wounded in attack on Najaf police station.

CJTF-7 reports one US Marine died in a vehicle accident in al-Anbar province.

US troops arrest al-Sadr supporters in Kirkuk.

Sailboat fuel. A Halliburton Inc. subsidiary sent empty flatbed trucks crisscrossing Iraq more than 100 times this year, putting their drivers and military escorts at risk and handing taxpayers the bill with a little added profit. The drivers were in peril of insurgent attack while taking empty rigs on the 300-mile resupply run from Camp Cedar in southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda near Baghdad, said 12 current and former drivers for the company. The subsidiary, Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), billed the government for hauling what the drivers derisively called ‘sailboat fuel.’”

More Halliburton corruption. “But the insider who spoke to the Herald claimed that demands for kickbacks made to caterers seeking Halliburton contracts were well known in the industry. ‘It was too blatant, the corruption that was going on, not to be caught,’ he said. He claimed a Halliburton employee involved in contracting used a go-between to solicit the kickbacks. The go-between was a European consultant.” Why isn’t this story reported in the US media?

Rule of law, my ass. “The confidential memorandums, several of which were written or co-written by John C. Yoo, a University of California law professor who was serving in the department, provided arguments to keep United States officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated. They were endorsed by top lawyers in the White House, the Pentagon and the vice president`s office but drew dissents from the State Department. The memorandums provide legal arguments to support administration officials` assertions that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees from the Afghanistan war. They also suggested how officials could inoculate themselves from liability by claiming that abused prisoners were in some other nation`s custody.”

Commentary

Analysis: “Since the defining moment of the Bush presidency, the preposterous flight-suit, Fox News-produced photo-op on the Abraham Lincoln in front of the banner that read ‘Mission Accomplished,’ the shaming truth is that everything has gone wrong. Just as it was bound to go wrong, as many of us predicted it would go wrong--if anything more hopelessly wrong than any of us would have dared to prophesy. Iraq is an epic train wreck, and there`s not a single American citizen who`s going to walk away unscathed.”

Analysis: “This bureaucratic feud was so entrenched that when I visited Baghdad in the early months after the collapse of the regime, I was horrified to see how much time and energy went into interagency fighting. Despite the news media`s portrayal of Mr. Chalabi as "Washington`s favorite Iraqi," it was obvious that L. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Baghdad, was doing his utmost to limit his influence. Within the governing council, Mr. Chalabi was highly effective, the go-to guy for the occupation forces whenever there was a problem. But at the same time, Mr. Bremer`s staff worked hard to undermine Mr. Chalabi — haggling with him over government jobs; cutting off his communications with Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense; and eventually eliminating direct aid to the Iraqi National Congress. Vacillating between liberation and occupation, American rule in Iraq has created a power vacuum. You feel this in Baghdad. The Americans micromanage the governing council, deny Iraqis a voice, live in secluded compounds, make exclusive decisions on contracts, and push away secular liberals like Mr. Chalabi in favor of Shiite clergy and former Baathists.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Virginia soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Arkansas Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Virginia Marine dies in Iraq.

Local story: Illinois Marine wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Oklahoma soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: North Carolina Guardsman wounded in Iraq.

Awards and Decorations

Local story: Texas Marine decorated for valor.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



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John F. Kerry, a war hero and leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations committee in 1971.Massachusetts Democratic. Sen. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.

Veteran in Conflict
Sen. John Kerry`s struggle for leadership of a Vietnam veterans antiwar group in 1971 ended with his resignation at a stormy meeting in Kansas City, where militants advocated violence against the U.S.
By Gerald Nicosia

May 23, 2004

Arguably the most telling piece of information in the FBI files on Sen. John F. Kerry is his speech at the University of Nevada Las Vegas on Sept. 30, 1971. He was at the height of his success as a spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a motley, grass-roots group of about 20,000 war veterans trying to bring an immediate end to the Vietnam War.

Although the peace movement comprised hundreds of groups, this veterans organization caught the nation`s attention that year with a series of actions in Washington, D.C. Millions watched televised images of long-haired, angry veterans in fatigues, many bearing scars or missing limbs, throwing their medals over a wire-mesh fence at the Capitol. Another image that stood out was of a ruggedly handsome young Navy veteran with a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Vietnam War was an abomination, continued for the vanity of politicians while taking American and Southeast Asian lives for no good reason. That speech made Kerry a national figure, and he began speaking around the country. The FBI documents reveal that he earned as much as $1,200 plus expenses for a single appearance—a substantial amount in 1971.

Long before the era of PCs, the Internet and digital text, Kerry`s comments would have been lost to posterity had not the FBI been recording them—sometimes with a tape recorder, sometimes in notes and sometimes by pulling newspaper clippings. The Kerry who emerges from those files is a man far less guarded than the candidate we know today—a man experiencing a visible conflict between head and heart. "My 10 years of political consciousness in America is very wrapped up in gravestones," he told the 200 students at the Las Vegas campus. "These are the gravestones of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, the Kent State students, the men of Attica and the other 53,000 brothers in Vietnam."

Here he was, a New England Brahmin educated at Yale and St. Paul`s School, coaxed by class, culture and schooling to avoid emotional expression, telling students he couldn`t get dead people out of his head—and not just the Kennedys and the civil rights leaders, but also American students killed by a government suppressing dissent; prisoners and guards shot in a massive fusillade to quell a rebellion at New York`s Attica prison; and every American soldier who had lost his life in the Vietnam War.

Kerry`s anger and pain were close to the surface. In Las Vegas, the files show, he said his life would be dedicated to awakening Americans. "Somewhere, somehow, we lost track of where we are as a nation," Kerry lamented. He called for a "resensitization and revolution of America." "People must realize the disparity between the America of the speeches and the America of the streets. The thought `power to the people` is not revolutionary. Our country was founded on this concept."

For those remarks and others, the FBI regarded Kerry as potentially subversive and dangerous to the "national defense interest." But that was no surprise. It regarded the organization he led, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, as a security threat, and conducted a 20,000-documents-deep surveillance that gave thousands of special agents, informants, infiltrators and bureaucrats work for 10 years: 1967 to 1977.

Although the surveillance began in mid-1967, files show the real push began in the Oval Office, after the VVAW ran a full-page advertisement in the New York Times on Sunday, Nov. 19, 1967, signed by 65 veterans opposed to the war. Many people in the military reacted favorably to the ad, including retired Army Brig. Gen. Hugh B. Hester, who declared, "This is the best advertisement the peace movement has."

Reaction at the Pentagon was different. An FBI memo from Washington agent D.J. Brennan Jr. to fellow employee W.C. Sullivan on Nov. 19 says "Secretary of Defense [Robert] McNamara was very incensed" by the advertisement and planned to go to the White House "first thing Monday morning" to discuss it with President Lyndon Johnson. Out of McNamara and Johnson`s fury came a demand that the FBI run name checks on most of those who had signed the ad, apparently in the hope that they could be proven to be fake vets, since the phrase "alleged veterans" is thrown about in several memos.

The FBI dragnet rapidly grew—eventually pulling in members of organizations labeled "VVAW sympathizers," such as the Society of Friends and Unitarian Universalist Churches and even the Mothers For Peace. Inevitably, recently discharged Navy Lt. John Kerry would fall under the FBI`s watchful eye.

The surveillance captured Kerry`s swift rise in the VVAW, his growing unease with its turn toward a more radical agenda, and his resignation in Kansas City at a meeting so disturbing and contentious that it is still vivid in the memory of many of the participants—though apparently not remembered by Kerry himself.

Kerry had been introduced to the vvaw in 1969 by his sister peggy, but his attention was focused on running for Congress in Massachusetts at that point. After deciding not to run in 1970, he and his new wife, Julia Thorne, traveled to France in May to meet Madame Nguyen Thi Binh and other Viet Cong and Communist Vietnamese representatives to the Paris peace talks, a trip he now calls a "fact-finding mission." Shortly after his return, Kerry agreed to take part in the VVAW`s first major national action—Operation RAW (for Rapid American Withdrawal).

Operation RAW involved a march over Labor Day weekend by 300 vets along the 86 miles of George Washington`s route from Morristown, N.J., to Valley Forge, Pa. Vets would carry toy M-16 rifles and perform "search-and-destroy skits," so-called "guerrilla theatre," in little towns along the way to demonstrate the brutal things they had actually done in Vietnam. As the event approached, the FBI enlisted the help of police departments and federal intelligence agencies, including, the files show, the Naval Investigative Services Office, the Office of Special Investigations of the Air Force and the Army`s 108th Military Intelligence Group.

In the hundreds of documents the FBI amassed before Operation RAW, Kerry`s name was mentioned just once, in a two-page document listing speakers to appear in Valley Forge at the end of the march. "John Kerry" appears as a warmup speaker before, among others, actors Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda.

The march came close to violence many times. But Kerry had hedged his bet. He didn`t march. Instead, he arrived at Valley Forge to speak, then left. He made a powerful impression nonetheless. In the files, an FBI agent refers to "one John Kerry" and includes words from Kerry`s speech. Their eloquence jumps from the page:

"We are here because we, above all others, have earned the right to criticize the war in Southeast Asia. We are here to say that it is not patriotism to ask Americans to die for a mistake and that it is not patriotic to allow a President to talk about not being the first President to lose a war and using us as pawns in that game."

It turns out the agent had not noticed the words when spoken, but had been struck by them when reading about Operation RAW in the Sept. 8 Philadelphia Inquirer.

The next big event by the VVAW began in late January 1971, at a Howard Johnson`s Motor Lodge in Detroit. Kerry attended the Winter Soldier Investigation, reluctantly. Despite claims by recent Kerry-bashers, including Vietnam veteran Stephen Sherman in the Wall Street Journal (Jan. 26, 2004), that Kerry was the "emcee" of Winter Soldier, not a single FBI document concerning that event bears his name.

Winter Soldier "shattered" Kerry, he said to me in a 1988 interview. More than 100 veterans spoke. Kerry saw their discharge forms and talked with the vets enough, he said, to become satisfied that most were telling authentic stories—of torturing and murdering Viet Cong prisoners, raping village women, shooting villagers for target practice, cutting off ears and other body parts. These accounts were news to him and educated him, he said then. "It was a very, very heavy, difficult kind of thing to listen to, and it was painful."

Others wondered at the time if Kerry had made peace with his memories. Jack Smith, a veteran from Connecticut, says in a recent interview that he could see from Kerry`s eyes that he was struggling as he listened to veterans telling painful war stories. Peggy Kerry says that her brother "had the anguish" shared by so many other vets just back from Vietnam; she says he suffered "indescribable pain" about the people who`d died in the war, and that he would sometimes wake up screaming from nightmares that continued even into his present marriage with Teresa Heinz Kerry. At a rally on Wall Street in April 1971, the files show, Kerry spoke of being "guilty" like everyone else in the country "for having allowed the war to go on"—a burden that, he said to me in a second interview, in 1989, could have "croaked" him if he had not been personally strong enough to deal with it.

Winter Soldier was held in Detroit because its sponsor, Jane Fonda, wanted to reach the "working class." By then, Kerry`s public speaking had impressed two VVAW founders, Jan Barry and Sheldon Ramsdell. After Kerry`s speech at Valley Forge, Ramsdell had told Peggy Kerry: "Whoa! He looks like Lincoln, and he sounds like a Kennedy. Get him on the road!" Kerry quickly became what the FBI calls several times "National Spokesman for VVAW."

But the Winter Soldier meeting received virtually no publicity, which bothered Kerry, and gave him an opening. He called upon VVAW leaders to demonstrate in Washington, a proposal that brought Kerry his first taste of the opposition that would drive him from the organization later in 1971. Many veterans, especially the grunts, were tired of being led by officers. Mike McCusker, a former Marine sergeant who was then VVAW Oregon coordinator, says the dispute was between the "top-downers versus the bottom-uppers." McCusker says he and the other bottom-uppers won—for the moment—but only by agreeing to go along with the demonstration in Washington, known as Operation Dewey Canyon III.

The next month, in February, McCusker recalls walking into VVAW`s national office in New York and discovering to his dismay that Kerry was in charge of the meeting. Organization leaders were gathering for their first national steering committee meeting. Kerry looked "stiff and starchy," a "top-downer" if McCusker had ever seen one. But, he says, Kerry won him over in two ways. First, he saw that as the room filled with vets, Kerry loosened up, as if these truly were his brothers, people with whom he felt safe and comfortable. Second, Kerry began sounding unlike an officer, talking about his Paris trip to meet the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegates and about his great respect for the Vietnamese. Kerry and McCusker developed an immediate rapport.

After the New York meeting, Kerry began stumping the country to raise funds for the demonstration in Washington. FBI files show that the agency was unsure what to make of him, for despite his tailored suits, Gucci loafers and "JFK" monogrammed sweaters that other vets kidded him about, and despite the patrician manners and stock patriotic phrases, Kerry seemed to harbor, and at times openly express, some fairly radical beliefs. The files contain an array of his edgy political positions, including his statement in Philadelphia that "Ho Chi Minh is the George Washington of Vietnam." Southeastern VVAW coordinator Scott Camil says that he heard Kerry make the comment several times. Also in Philadelphia, according to the files, Kerry noted Ho Chi Minh`s understanding of the United States Constitution and his efforts "to install the same provisions into the government of Vietnam."

Kerry also attacked President Richard Nixon as relentlessly as he praised Ho Chi Minh, but his criteria for both, Camil says, was honesty and sincerity. What Kerry held most against Nixon was that he had been elected in 1968 on a promise to end the war, yet by mid 1971, Nixon had extended the ground war into Laos and Cambodia and had begun plans to massively escalate the air war against North Vietnam. "Nixon ran 3 1/2 years ago saying, `I have the secret plan for peace,` " the files say Kerry told one audience, "and now, the only promise he has kept is that the plan is still a secret."

Though Kerry at times lectured VVAW to stick to the single issue of ending the war, and to eschew attacks on racism, poverty and other broader issues, Kerry himself often condemned social injustices. He told an audience in Reno that, "The United States has become a society based on whose ox is being gored," and in Oklahoma City, he warned, according to a newspaper account, that the country must change its political power structure to avoid violent efforts to seize power.

Anyone who thinks, as some veterans do, that the young Kerry calculated his remarks with an eye toward running for president some day will have to deal with the many unequivocal charges he made against his own government and society as recorded in the FBI documents. At times, Kerry sounded more like Eugene Debs than today`s typical Republicrat. One newspaper reported: "Kerry said it is wrong for some persons to make millions of dollars and pay no taxes while others barely making a living have to pay them," and that "of 234 congressmen`s sons eligible for service in Vietnam, only 24 went there and only one of them was wounded."

Indeed, the files show that Kerry was far from politically correct even within his own organization. He joined in the dedication of Victor Westphall`s Vietnam War memorial, an activity hardly prescribed for VVAW leaders, in Angel Fire, N.M., on May 18, 1971. Nixon sent a supportive letter about the memorial to Westphall that month. An FBI agent, apparently spotting the potential for embarrassing Kerry by putting him on the same side of an issue with Nixon, forwarded both texts to the bureau`s Washington office.

The Kansas state coordinator for VVAW, John Musgrave, who spoke beside Kerry at a couple of colleges, says that Kerry impressed him by "always speaking directly from the pain and misery of a combat veteran. He adds, "I believed every word he said in those days." Musgrave, a Marine veteran who almost lost his life to three AK-47 rounds, recalls that Kerry touched hearts with his honesty and deep feeling—as though he were speaking for America`s conscience. He believes that Kerry played a major role because "the nation needs to hear what combat vets have to say, and Kerry was able to tell them." Musgrave is angry at Kerry today mainly because he believes that Kerry "has stopped speaking that way, and he owes it to the American people to speak like that again—like a human being, not a politician."

The five-day Dewey Canyon demonstration was to begin April 19, 1971. Kerry`s speaking fees had raised nearly $100,000, but the files show that he was outraged to learn that $94,000 had been spent for an advertisement in the April 11 issue of the New York Times. He told VVAW leaders that "further funds should be spent providing transportation rather than advertisement." He was fiercely upset to learn that 5,000 veterans around the country couldn`t afford bus fare to attend the march.

Kerry then called his friend Adam Walinsky, who had ties to the Democratic Party, and Walinsky led Kerry to the Seagram Building in New York for a meeting with Seagram CEO Edgar Bronfman, Rabbi Abe Feinberg, former Undersecretary of Commerce Howard Samuels, and other big Democratic Party fund-raisers. Kerry walked away with $50,000, which was forwarded to vets through the offices of Democratic Sens. George McGovern of South Dakota and Mark Hatfield of Oregon. In one of the funnier sections of the files, FBI agents who got wind of the $50,000 scrambled to figure out how the money suddenly appeared in VVAW`s hands, apparently in search of the "subversive influences" they were always looking for in the organization.

Another project Kerry supported, outside of the political limelight, was the Vietnam Casualty Farm operated by VVAW in Chesapeake, Va. There, vets who were unemployed, homeless, or otherwise at loose ends could live, do farm work, take workshops, get job training, receive medical treatment for drug abuse and various health problems, and obtain support to help them adjust after the war. The Casualty Farm was one of the many projects developed by VVAW to aid veterans after the war, including "rap" sessions for post-traumatic stress disorder, an Agent Orange study group, a literary publishing wing for veterans, a task force to rewrite Veterans Affairs legislation and reform the VA health-care system, and a Capitol Hill office to lobby for better GI benefits, veteran employment programs, plus a drug amnesty program to include special VA hospital "drug wards" for addicted veterans. These were VVAW good deeds that founder Jan Barry recalls wishing the FBI would pay attention to, rather than just focusing on antiwar activities.

For lack of money, many veterans never made it to Washington for Dewey Canyon. But thanks to Kerry`s last-minute fund-raising, more than 1,000 streamed into the capital on Sunday, April 18, the eve of the demonstration. What seemed to worry the FBI most was Kerry`s presence. The files show a warning passed directly to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that "Congress may be influenced" by Kerry`s proposals. The FBI knew that the vets planned to "conduct intensive lobbying activities in Congress to legislate the immediate end of the United States participation in the Indochina War," which included passage of the McGovern-Hatfield bill to cut off funding for the war by the end of the year.

It is interesting, and perhaps revealing, that with all the FBI monitoring of Kerry`s public speaking, the one speech it failed to record, or even to comment on, was the most famous one of his life: his address to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971, the day before the Washington march ended and the veterans threw back their medals. That was the speech that later got him in trouble with conservative veterans` groups for implications that most Vietnam veterans had committed atrocities—although, as Barry has pointed out, Kerry was just repeating the disturbing assertions he had heard months earlier at Winter Soldier.

The FBI seemed uncharacteristically cowed by the historical dimensions of Kerry`s televised appearance before the Senate committee. According to documents in the files, the agency temporarily scaled back its surveillance of VVAW in part because of what the FBI termed "the degree of favorable publicity received." As one agent wrote: "Considering sympathy for VVAW as result of their peaceful demonstration in WDC [Washington, D.C.], 4/71, and claims of ill treatment at hands of Justice Department which evicted them from the Mall, it is probable that considerable publicity would work in their favor and definitely against FBI." To get an idea of how far the vets had come out from under the shadow of FBI surveillance and into the public consciousness, one need only read the quip of a veteran at the march, also preserved in the FBI files: "Tourists were snapping pictures of us faster than the FBI."

The files also suggest that at least some agents were being won over by Kerry. In a rare exception to the habitually dull FBI language, one agent seemed to praise Kerry by contrasting him with Al Hubbard, a militant Air Force vet who claimed to have flown on secret U.S. support missions to the French in their war against the Vietminh in the early `50s. Hubbard had close ties to the Black Panthers, a black extremist group in the `60s that espoused armed overthrow of the U.S. government. Hubbard had been a force in turning the VVAW into a confrontational, in-the-streets, hard-core activist group.

Most VVAW leaders were being "overshadowed by a more popular and eloquent figure, John Kerry," the agent wrote. "Kerry was featured on the television show `Meet the Press` and he also appeared in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee room. Kerry was glib, cool, and displayed just what the moderate elements wanted to reflect. It appears that Al Hubbard revealed his own ambitions of becoming the VVAW National leader by lying about his former military rank. He claimed to be a captain, but in reality he was a sergeant."

Another memo recounts an episode from the day after Dewey Canyon, when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators mobbed Washington for the mass antiwar demonstration sponsored by the Communist Party-affiliated People`s Coalition for Peace and Justice. As various Communist and Socialist groups began arguing on the podium, "some individuals claiming to be veterans tried to tear down one of the gates surrounding the podium," states the FBI report. They were "held off," the agent recounts in a tone of wonder, "with the promise that John Kerry would speak for the veterans." It is safe to say that no other Vietnam veteran in those 20,000 pages receives such adulatory treatment.

Kerry`s public image was perhaps tarnished most in 1971 by his attempts to hasten the return of American POWs. The files record that Kerry made a second trip to Paris that summer to learn how the North Vietnamese might release prisoners. The files also record that he held a press conference with relatives of POWs to accuse Nixon of "using the prisoners of war for political purposes." Other kin of POWs, backed by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, showed up at the conference to denounce Kerry for using the prisoners for his own political purposes. "What are you running for now, Mr. Kerry?" one of them demanded. A newspaper account reported that the VFW regarded Kerry as "public enemy No. 1." In an interview, former Green Beret Capt. Rusty Lindley, VVAW`s legislative director at the time, says Nixon`s hatchet man Charles Colson had more than a little to do with the staged arrival of those anti-Kerry families.

In any case, those denunciations were merely icing on the cake, as Kerry had already been castigated by none other than the national commander of the American Legion, Alfred Chamie—also duly recorded in the FBI files. Chamie deplored the possibility that the Washington demonstration might cause the loss of "the vast treasure in lives and material already expended" on the war.

As 1971 wore on, something called "the sergeants rebellion" began to grow in VVAW. Based largely in the southern chapters, it comprised mostly enlisted men, many of them Marines who had seen the heaviest combat in Vietnam. Partly it arose out of frustration over the continuing war, and partly it came from that "bottom-up" impulse that had arisen at Winter Soldier. The rebellion came from grass-roots organizers in Florida, Arkansas, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Oregon and other places far from New York. These regional, state and city coordinators did not want to be constrained by the national officers, most of whom had also been military officers. The rebels felt that the national officers failed to understand the politics in America`s conservative rural byways and focused their activities too much inside the Beltway.

Instead, the rebels wanted to infiltrate and leaflet military bases and take other confrontational steps deemed too radical by the national office. At the same time, a slew of true leftist organizations, including the Socialist Workers Party, the Maoists of the Progressive Labor Party and Maoists of the Revolutionary Union, were quietly infiltrating the VVAW—often pushing the group toward law breaking and violence. Through the later months of 1971, the FBI documents record John Kerry struggling to contain these various impulses, and to insist on legal, nonviolent protest—or, as he emphasizes at George Washington University in September, "to utilize the political process to bring an end to the war in Vietnam." He was so effective that many rebels concluded they could never move the organization in their direction until Kerry was replaced.

Some rebels confronted Kerry at the second national steering-committee meeting of VVAW in St. Louis in June, a meeting heavily bugged by the FBI. They condemned him for his "class background" and "public behavior" and accused him of having "a stake in the profit-motivated system now in existence." Despite their opposition, Kerry won reelection to the executive committee. The FBI files include an astonishing internal memo from the militant Ft. Hood-Killeen chapter of VVAW. It articulates both contempt for Kerry as a would-be national leader and respect for his prowess at organizing and controlling those who disagree with him. The writer alerts fellow members to watch for tricks by which Kerry has "manipulated the veterans movement from becoming a real working militant organization." If there is a theme to the Kerry references throughout the FBI pages, it is the respect he is paid even by his enemies.

The climactic moment in Kerry`s relationship with the VVAW occurred at the organization`s third national steering committee meeting in Kansas City, Nov. 12 through 15, 1971. It is that meeting that presents the most questions for Kerry today.

Until two months ago, Kerry insisted that he had never attended any of the sessions in Kansas City, saying that he had resigned from the VVAW in June at the St. Louis meeting. After a Los Angeles Times review of a portion of the FBI files found that Kerry had been at Kansas City, the candidate said his memory must have been faulty. A full review of the FBI files shows that Kerry not only was in Kansas City, but he also attended the most controversial and explosive session the group ever held.

As the meeting approached in 1971, the FBI clearly knew big changes were coming. The agency not only bugged the meeting halls but arranged for numerous agents and undercover "sources" to be on hand, including one paid informer from Arkansas, a crazy, violence-prone, washed-out Green Beret vet named Bill Lemmer.

By then, Kerry was well aware of opposition to him within the VVAW. Just the week before, he had faced an incipient coup in Norman, Okla. Lemmer had gone there to hear Kerry speak, and to speak at a Winter Soldier hearing. Lemmer was among a group of veterans who, according to the files, harassed Kerry. Although Kerry`s audience was "quite large," a "source" whose name is blacked out (but whose aggressive language was typical of Lemmer) reported to the FBI that "many persons were upset because of the attitude of John Kerry and it appeared Kerry was the only reason for the convention." Another blacked-out source (possibly the same one) reported that "the entire conference lacked coordination and appeared to be a platform for John Kerry, National Leader of VVAW, rather than for VVAW and Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI)."

Curiously, those two undercover reports don`t jibe with several other "source" reports, or with newspaper accounts also saved by the FBI. They indicate the conference was well organized, and that Kerry was well-received. Lemmer, who was exposed two years later as the principal agent provocateur at the trial of the Gainesville Eight (eight VVAW members indicted for conspiracy), was often known to invent reports of VVAW`s violent intentions, and his reports were later found quite unreliable.

The files about the Oklahoma meeting are murky, partly because the FBI redacted large sections with black marker before they were released. But two facts stand out. Kerry cut short his attendance, perhaps in the face of hostility. Also, the FBI suddenly focused on Kerry again, with a teletype sent to the Washington bureau: "Furnish characterization of John Kerry."

The Kansas City gathering opened dramatically with a meeting at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 12 in a conference room on the local campus of the University of Missouri. It was closed, with only national leaders and regional and state coordinators allowed in—about 50 vets. All national officers were present, except for Hubbard. Acting as chairman of the meeting, national officer Mike Oliver began by reading a telegram that Missouri-Kansas regional coordinator Johnny Upton had just received from Hubbard in Paris. According to the FBI documents, "The telegram stated that Hubbard was in contact with the North Vietnamese peace delegation, and that Hubbard was confidentially told that the next prisoner of war (POW) release would be made to VVAW." Oliver told the group that a VVAW delegation of five people was going to Hanoi in December, just before Christmas, and hoped to bring home several POWs. The purpose, Oliver explained, as stated in the FBI file, "would be to demonstrate to the persons participating in the national actions that VVAW had real power and had effected the release of the POWs."

Then Oliver dropped a bombshell. Hubbard, he said, had concluded his negotiations with the North Vietnamese that morning and was currently on a plane en route to Kansas City—expected to arrive in an hour or so.

Kerry evidently kept his cool, as there is no record in the file of anyone objecting at this point. He and Hubbard had had a brief falling out after Hubbard lied about his rank on "Meet the Press," but they had patched it up for the sake of the organization. The FBI files even record them having a chicken dinner together at the St. Louis meeting. But Kerry had tried to distinguish between his own trips to meet with the Vietnamese in Paris, which he considered necessary to fight through the lies of his own government, and actual negotiations with the enemy, which Kerry knew were illegal. There was no question now that Hubbard, as one of the other vets at the meeting puts it, "had gone over to the enemy side."

Kerry, the FBI files tell us, "announced to those present he was resigning from the executive committee for personal reasons; however, he would be available to speak for VVAW." The report of a separate undercover FBI source adds, "John Kerry mentioned on Friday that he was going to resign his position on the national executive committee because of politics," presumably referring to Kerry`s possible run for Congress the following year.

Two hours into the meeting, Hubbard arrived by taxi, and the fireworks began. Kerry, the files show, "attempted to get Al Hubbard voted out of the executive meeting." Hubbard, as one of the original organizers of VVAW, still had a strong following and beat back the attack. Then Skip Roberts, another national officer aligned with Kerry, declared that all six national officers should resign to allow for a fresh start. The motion lost by two votes.

By Saturday morning, trouble was brewing and everyone knew it. Members of the "sergeants rebellion" were agitating for the national officers to step down and make way for more confrontational-minded local leaders to stage attention-getting (and maybe illegal) actions. There was talk by the Philadelphia chapter of a takeover of the Statue of Liberty. The group met in an open meeting, run by Oliver, at a church called the Institute for Human Studies at 2 W. 40th St. The files show that tempers flared over the issue of the national office refusing to share authority with local chapters. An attempt was made to divide responsibilities between state and regional coordinators, but Oliver consistently called only on the regional coordinators, and many of the delegates began to feel they were being scammed. Especially outraged were delegates from Detroit, who demanded the same voting power as the Michigan regional coordinator. Oliver consistently avoided dealing with them.

The vets discussed national antiwar actions that VVAW would stage over Christmas in five parts of the country. Many coordinators pushed for civil disobedience. Scott Camil recalls becoming incensed by "really stupid ideas," such as burning Christmas trees in front of public buildings—an action that was approved after the rejection of Hubbard`s suggestion that VVAW napalm the national Christmas tree just after Nixon lighted it. Camil "was thinking like a Marine," he says, explaining that Marines were taught to "attack the head of the snake, not the tail." At the time of the Washington march, Camil proposed "taking out" the prominent senators and congressmen who consistently voted in favor of the war. His assassination plan had little support, and he had put it aside as impractical. But now in Kansas City, in an effort to "push people`s buttons" and "get them to forget about the crap" of burning Christmas trees, Camil says he again brought up his assassination plan, dubbed a "domestic Phoenix program," a name derived from an actual assassination program sponsored by the U.S. government, which chiefly targeted Communist civil leaders in South Vietnam.

The meeting descended into chaos, according to several people who were there. VVAW`s Kansas City coordinator Randy Barnes describes "people standing up on the tables yelling and screaming at each other." Someone found bugs planted by the FBI. The group decided to move to a more secure location, but before the meeting reconvened, Camil met with supporters, including many members of the "sergeants rebellion," at a small house. Most were Southerners, ex-Marines and enlisted men (Camil himself had been a Marine sergeant). Also part of this "rump group" were Lemmer and another undercover FBI informant, Karl Becker, who would also play an important role in the government`s indictment of Camil and seven other VVAW members the following year, for supposedly planning a violent assault on the Republican National Convention in Miami—indictments that led to the notorious Gainesville conspiracy trial in the summer of 1973.

No one in VVAW knew yet that Lemmer and Becker were working for the FBI, but Camil recalls that their encouragement of his Phoenix proposal helped push him from using it for shock value to believing it could be achieved. Lemmer, who represented himself to Camil as having been a "CIA assassin type" in the military, was especially effective in rousing Camil`s excitement about the plan. Camil went to the second session prepared to demand a vote on it.

The meeting reconvened at St. Augustine`s Catholic Church, 7801 Paseo Blvd., in Kansas City, and it was again closed—meaning only national officers and regional and state coordinators. Several things about it are still unclear, especially the chronology, but there is no doubt that it was the most intensely angry leadership meeting that had yet taken place. And there is also no doubt, if the files and witnesses are to believed, that Kerry was present for all of it.

Because wives and girlfriends, like ordinary delegates, were locked out, Julia Thorne Kerry, John`s wife, sat outside on the grass—it was a warm, sunny November day—with a bunch of other women that included filmmaker Nancy Miller Saunders, the girlfriend of Arkansas-Louisiana coordinator Don Donner. Saunders says she remembers a lengthy conversation with Julia Thorne Kerry there, as do two other people interviewed: Rusty Lindley and Wayne Beverly, one of the Texas Marines sympathetic to Camil, who was barred from the meeting because he was not a coordinator.

Multiple FBI reports—most of them partly blacked out—show that the session began with Hubbard describing his negotiations in Paris. He said that North Vietnamese negotiator Xuan Tui had advised him that if a VVAW delegation came to Hanoi just before Christmas, the Vietnamese might allow them to take home several POWs. Then another vet named Joe Urgo joined forces with Hubbard. Urgo had been to Hanoi the previous August and claimed to have met with many officials, including leaders of the North Vietnamese Army, with whom he spoke of making tapes for broadcast over Radio Hanoi to get American troops to stop fighting. He also claimed to have made progress in arranging for a VVAW delegation to negotiate the release of several American prisoners. Hubbard and Urgo talked of working together on the latter project and began signing up vets to go to Hanoi. Somewhere during the discussion, Hubbard mentioned that his trip had been paid for by the Communist Party U.S.A.

The FBI files say that during the meeting, Kerry "again tried to have Al Hubbard voted off the executive committee," and failed. Also at some point, the files show, Kerry exploded in a tirade against Hubbard, claiming he had failed to find any military records to confirm Hubbard`s service in either the Air Force or Vietnam.

As the meeting continued, topics became graver. There was discussion of another VVAW caravan to bring food and medicine to the beleaguered black community in Cairo, Ill., which was under violent attack from several white supremacist groups. Earlier VVAW convoys there had been closely monitored by the FBI, especially since VVAW members often brought their own guns along for defense. There was also discussion of a proposal to encourage active-duty troops in Vietnam to extend the normal Christmas holiday truce by refusing to take up arms after the truce ended. Several vets objected to that as putting GIs at risk of being court-martialed.

Seeing an opening, Camil put his Phoenix plan on the table. Although a lot of the discussion is blacked out, there is reference in the documents to Hubbard and Camil being "closely aligned." There is also a passage suggesting that Hubbard proposed a variant of Camil`s Phoenix program, which substituted kidnapping for killing:

"A second proposal, `Phoenix Operation,` . . .was proposed by a national leader, possibly Hubbard. This proposal would have called for a well-trained VVAW group in Washington, D.C., to kidnap a United States senator, representative, or Government official to hold for ransom to pressure for ending of the war."

The documents don`t say whether Kerry`s diatribe against Hubbard began at this point. One document states: "John Kerry . . . reportedly in disagreement with Hubbard over VVAW participating in militant actions; Kerry wants VVAW to stay strictly nonviolent."

Several VVAW members have recounted details of this floor fight in interviews. Musgrave recalls how Hubbard clammed up and let Oliver speak in his defense. Others describe Hubbard cringing and looking close to tears as Kerry relentlessly battered him. Finally, as California-Nevada coordinator Lee Lubinsky recalls, Hubbard pulled down his pants to show a large scar on his back and thigh, offering it as proof that he had been in a plane crash in Vietnam.

Soon afterward, witnesses say, Hubbard fell against a table and dropped to the floor, making a crash so loud it was heard outside the church. Vets helped him to his feet, and he asked to be driven to the airport, saying his stomach ulcers were bleeding and he needed to rush to his doctor in New York. The FBI files say: "Hubbard remained at Kansas City until Saturday afternoon, at which time he claimed illness and said he was returning to New York to enter an unnamed hospital."

After Hubbard left, Camil`s Phoenix proposal was voted on, and turned down—although, according to Camil, many members from Camil`s southern following voted yes. The vote does not show up in the files but could be in a section the FBI blacked out. Then other proposals came up—many of which are listed in the FBI files, including the projected takeover of the Statue of Liberty, which the group approved.

Toward the end of the meeting, the rebellious Detroit delegates outside forced their way in. They accused Oliver of arranging secret hand signals with the Michigan regional coordinator to keep certain issues from being raised. Oliver confessed and offered to resign. The FBI files indicate that Kerry was still in the church at this point because he too was accused of "misconduct," apparently because of his close association with Oliver.

A file document states: "He [Kerry] inferred that he had been accused wrongly of misconduct in office, and therefore, he did not want to have anything more to do with [sic] any official capacity with the VVAW . . . it appeared that he was alienated by the incident involving the Detroit delegation."

After the two resignations, the meeting could not be brought back to order, and so it was adjourned for the night. The so-called Phoenix proposal was never officially raised again.

The files record that on Sunday, Nov. 14, with Oliver out, Camil chaired the morning meeting. According to a file document, Kerry "announced that he had resigned his post, but would continue to work with VVAW on his own terms." One of the regional coordinators, John Lindquist from Milwaukee, says that he heard Kerry read his letter of resignation.

Whether Kerry should have reported the "assassination plot" to authorities is a question some critics have raised. The FBI documents say the proposal "seemed to be only an idea for discussion" rather than an actual conspiracy to kidnap or murder. Another possible explanation comes from Rusty Lindley. "The organization was breaking down so badly at that point that we couldn`t tell if violent ideas were being introduced by infiltrators or genuine vets," he says. Considering that two FBI paid informants, Lemmer and Becker, were involved in the plot, it would seem the FBI has some questions to answer, too.

Jan Barry says that he has some specific questions he`d like put to the FBI—such as why, since the FBI knew about the "assassination plot," it never brought charges against anyone, or why the agency didn`t add it to the indictment the government brought against Camil the following July.

Barry wonders whether the Phoenix proposal may have been an early attempt by the federal government to bring down VVAW, just as it sought to destroy the organization the following year with the Gainesville conspiracy indictments. Defending against those charges nearly bankrupted VVAW, even though all eight defendants were acquitted.

Certainly none of the vets I have spoken to who were with Kerry in Kansas City feel he did anything to be ashamed of, and none harbors resentment against Kerry, not even Hubbard, whose role in the organization was permanently diminished after Kerry literally brought him to his knees.

"John Kerry had his own agenda, and I respect it," Hubbard told me in an interview in 1992, "and I rather appreciate today how he went about that agenda. And there were times when he and I disagreed on things, but overall I have a great deal of respect and admiration for John, and I particularly have a great deal of respect for what he`s doing these days [in the Senate]. I think he`s a guy of integrity."

Kerry still claims that "he has no personal recollection" of the tumultuous Kansas City meeting, though he qualified this with a statement from his spokesman David Wade on March 18 that "if there are valid FBI surveillance reports from credible sources that place some of those disagreements [with Al Hubbard and other VVAW leaders] in Kansas City, we accept that historical footnote in the account of his work to end the difficult and divisive war."

Several people at the Kansas City meeting recently said to me or to mutual friends that they had been told by the Kerry campaign not to speak about those events without permission. Others close to Kerry deny that they were in Kansas City, though the FBI files irrefutably place them there. John Musgrave says he was asked by Kerry`s veterans coordinator to "refresh his memory" after he told the press Kerry was in Kansas City. Not only is Musgrave outraged that "they were trying to make me look like a liar," but he also says "there`s no way Kerry could have forgotten that meeting—there was too much going on."

I recently saw an e-mail exchange between Winterfilm director Bob Fiore and members of his film collective stating that the Kerry campaign wants to keep the Winter Soldier film—which records veterans` atrocities testimony in Detroit—from being distributed again until after the election. Camil and others I interviewed have said that the Kerry campaign told Camil he could not work as a Kerry organizer in Florida. Despite numerous requests made to Kerry`s campaign staff and his family for a month, he said he was too busy to grant an interview for this story.

Many vets I spoke to are angry or disappointed about what they see as Kerry`s retreat from VVAW—not least of all Joe Urgo, who remembers being in that Saturday afternoon meeting with Kerry when he confronted Hubbard. "It was extremely important that people like Kerry—especially officers—spoke out against the war," Urgo says. "He came and shone and added something to all our efforts. I`m saddened that he hasn`t kept to it. It was a tremendous thing for someone like him—with Yale and all that rich background—to step over the line and join working-class guys like me. But then he saw this thing getting out of control, and it was too much for him to handle. He saw it as a liability to his political career, back then, 33 years ago, and I`m afraid he sees it as a liability for him again now.

"But the Republicans are going to keep using his membership in VVAW against him, until he makes a clear statement. He has to clarify everything, not only what happened in Kansas City, but also why his politics changed—why he`s moved more to the middle of the road. That`s what`s being hidden here."

Annie Bailey, wife of VVAW regional coordinator John Lindquist, on the other hand, is bitter about efforts to revisit those frantic, angry days before the war ended. "When Kerry resigned," Bailey recalls, "we always knew that someday he`d come round again and be our ally on veterans` issues, that he`d help us get PTSD and Agent Orange recognized, and help us with the battle we`re still fighting to keep the VA hospitals adequately funded." It angers her, she says, "that we might lose him now just because of all that crap that Scott Camil was talking a long time ago."

McCusker has his own thoughts about the Kansas City meeting. "We`d just gotten back from the killing fields of Vietnam," he says. "What the hell did they expect us to be talking about? . . . It would have been unnatural if someone didn`t come up with the idea of hitting someone . . . .

"The hell with this crap! John doesn`t need to respond to it. I sensed the strength in him when he was standing up to Hubbard. He had the strength to stand up to somebody who wasn`t doing a good job, and he can do it again . . . He just needs to come out and say, `This is what I stand for,` like he used to."

Asked if he was optimistic about that happening, McCusker replied, "I`m just hoping it does."

Gerald Nicosia is the author of "Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans` Movement" (Crown Publishers, 2001, forthcoming in a new edition from Carroll & Graf this August).



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion

Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan
http://www.juancole.com/2004_05_01_juancole_archive.html#108…
Saturday, May 22, 2004

A Shiite International?

There was more heavy fighting in Karbala early on Friday, after which the city fell eerily quiet. By Friday night into early Saturday morning, Mahdi Army militiamen had mysteriously ceased fighting, and the US had withdrawn from sites like Mukhayyam mosque near the shrine of Imam Husain. Meanwhile, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on his followers to continue to fight even if he is killed.

There were big demonstrations Friday throughout the Shiite world, including Lebanon, Bahrain, Iran and Pakistan, against continued US fighting in Karbala, a key holy city for Shiite Muslims.

Geo-strategically, this entire episode is a huge disaster. Some Americans may feel it is unfair of Shiites to blame only the US for the fighting, when it is Muqtada`s militia that is firing from the shrines. But life is unfair. People always mind what foreigners do to the symbols of their native identity more than they mind what their own radicals do.

Al-Qaeda`s declaration of war on the US was a ploy to turn Sunni Muslims, especially hard liners like Wahhabis and Salafis, against America and recruit them as foot soldiers. In 2002 and 2003, the Pentagon replied in part by seeking Shiite allies. These included the Hazaras, who were part of the Northern Alliance that defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan. They also included the Iraqi Shiites, which the Department of Defense wooed as allies against Saddam and the Baathists. In his unwise decision to try to get Muqtada al-Sadr dead or alive and to send GIs into Shiite holy places with heavy firepower, Bush is in the process of turning the Shiite world decisively against the US and perhaps creating new centers of anti-American paramilitary action.

The demonstration in Islamabad, Pakistan, was small, but there were anti-American sermons in Shiite mosques throughout the country. Pakistan`s population is 140 million or so, and I estimate Shiites at 15%. If I`m right, that`s 21 million angry South Asians. Pakistani Shiites are afraid of al-Qaeda and its allies, like the radical Sunni group, Sipah-i Sahabah (Army of the Prophet`s Companions), who assassinate Shiites for sport. They had been a support for Gen. Musharraf`s policy of turning against the Taliban and allying with the US. Now Bush`s attacks on Karbala and Najaf have begun deeply alienating them from the US. Someone give Bush a copy of "How to Make Friends and Influence People," quick!

I have commented on the demonstration, 5000-strong, in Manama, Bahrain, below. It produced a political casualty. The king fired the Interior Minister and declared his opposition to what the Americans are doing in Karbala and Najaf, as well as what the Israelis are doing in Gaza. ` "We share the anger of our people over the oppression and aggression taking place in Palestine and in the holy shrines (in Iraq). People had a right to peaceful protests. We are investigating," the agency quoted the king as saying. ` This is a formal, non-NATO American ally speaking! Bush is even pushing his closest friends into dissociating themselves from him, at least rhetorically.

The biggest demonstration was in Lebanon, called by the Hizbullah, perhaps numbering in the tens of thousands. Lebanon`s population is only 3 or 4 million, about 40% Shiite. I figure ten percent of Lebanese Shiites may have come out for this rally!

The irony for me here is that I often give the Shiites of Lebanon as an example of how radical Shiites can evolve into democratic, moderate ones. The AMAL party was more or less a terrorist organization from an American point of view in the early 1980s, but in the 1990s it became a middle class parliamentary party and gave up its paramilitary. Its rival, Hizbullah, tended to appeal to poor Shiites in the slums or peasant villagers in the South, and it retained 5000 fighters in its paramilitary. It remained militant in order to get the Israelis back out of Lebanon, in which it finally succeeded in 2000 (once Israelis steal your land, they don`t usually give it back). Hizbullah seemed on the way to evolving into a parliamentary party, as well (it hasn`t been involved in international terrorism for many years to my knowledge).

There is some danger of joint US and Israeli policies re-radicalizing Lebanese Shiites, and making the more militant Hizbullah more popular than the sedate AMAL. All you have to do is fire helicopter gunship missiles into civilian crowds in Gaza and then bombard Karbala, and somehow it mysteriously angers a lot of Lebanese Shiites.

In Iran, as well, of course US military action in the holy shrine cities is a gift to the hardliners. The latter have long tried to paint the reformists who want more democracy as traitors in cahoots with America to destroy Shiite Islam and Iranian culture.

I said the other day I thought Bush was pushing Europe to the left with his policies. I think he is at the same time pushing the Shiite world to the radical Right, and I fear my grandchildren will still be reaping the whirlwind that George W. Bush is sowing in the city of Imam Husain. I concluded in early April that Bush had lost Iraq. He has by now lost the entire Muslim world.

posted by Juan at 5/22/2004 07:14:40 AM

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US force `risks catastrophe`
May 23, 2004

The United States risked "catastrophic terrorism" unless it repaired international alliances, expanded trade and encouraged global economic development, a Republican senator said yesterday. Richard Lugar, right, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticised the Bush Administration and Congress for failing to take diplomatic and economic steps to deter terrorism and focusing on military force instead.

Senator Lugar said the September 11 attacks "jarred the United States out of its complacency toward foreign threats".

But he said the "ability and will to exert US leadership outside the confines of military action have been eroded by inattention, budget incrementalism, and an increasing partisanship that afflicts foreign policy decision making".

He said the country must "commit itself to a sustained program of repairing and building alliances, expanding trade, pursuing resolution to regional conflicts, supporting democracy and development worldwide, and controlling weapons of mass destruction."
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If not, he said, "we are likely to experience acts of catastrophic terrorism that would undermine our economy, damage our society, and kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people".

The Indiana senator called foreign policy "the neglected sibling of national security policy".

- Reuters

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`Fahrenheit 9/11` Takes Top Award at Cannes
Michael Moore`s controversial film is the first documentary to win the Palme d`Or since 1956.
From The Associated Press

2:49 PM PDT, May 22, 2004

CANNES, France — American filmmaker Michael Moore`s "Fahrenheit 9/11," a scathing indictment of White House actions after the Sept. 11 attacks, won the top prize Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" was the first documentary to win Cannes` prestigious Palme d`Or since Jacques Cousteau`s and Louis Malle`s "The Silent World" in 1956.

"What have you done? I`m completely overwhelmed by this. Merci," Moore said after getting a standing ovation from the Cannes crowd.

The grand prize, the festival`s second-place honor, went to South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook`s "Old Boy," a blood-soaked thriller about a man out for revenge after years of inexplicable imprisonment.

Moore was momentarily flabbergasted when he took the stage to accept the award, a big difference from his fiery speech against President Bush after winning the best-documentary Academy Award for 2002`s "Bowling for Columbine."

"You have to understand, the last time I was on an awards stage, in Hollywood, all hell broke loose," Moore said.

The best-actress award went to Maggie Cheung for her role in "Clean" as a junkie trying to straighten out her life and regain custody of her young son after her rock-star boyfriend dies of a drug overdose.

Fourteen-year-old Yagira Yuuya was named best actor for the Japanese film "Nobody Knows," in which he plays the eldest of four sibling raised in isolation, who must take charge of the family when their mother leaves.

The directing and writing prizes went to French filmmakers. Tony Gatlif won the directing honor for "Exiles," his road-trip about a couple on a sensual journey from France to Algeria.

Agnes Jaoui and her romantic partner, Jean-Pierre Bacri, won the screenplay award for "Look at Me," their study in self-image centering on an overweight young woman who feels neglected by loved ones. Jaoui and Bacri also co-star.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" won the top award at a festival that sharply divided Cannes moviegoers, who found a solid crop of good movies among the 19 entries in the festival`s main competition but no great ones that rose to front-runner status.

While "Fahrenheit 9/11" was well-received by Cannes audiences, many critics felt it was inferior to Moore`s Academy Award-winning documentary "Bowling for Columbine," which earned him a special prize at Cannes in 2002.

Some critics speculated that if "Fahrenheit 9/11" won the top prize, it would be more for the film`s politics than its cinematic value.

With Moore`s customary blend of humor and horror, "Fahrenheit 9/11" accuses the Bush camp of stealing the 2000 election, overlooking terrorism warnings before Sept. 11 and fanning fears of more attacks to secure Americans` support for the Iraq war.

Moore appears on-screen far less in "Fahrenheit 9/11" than in "Bowling for Columbine" or his other documentaries. The film relies largely on interviews, footage of U.S. soldiers and war victims in Iraq, and archival footage of Bush.

Just back in Cannes after his daughter`s college graduation in the United States, Moore dedicated the award to "my daughter and to all the children in America and Iraq and throughout the world who suffered through our actions."

"Fahrenheit 9/11" made waves in the weeks leading up to Cannes after the Walt Disney Co. refused to let subsidiary Miramax release the film in the United States because of its political content. Miramax bosses Harvey and Bob Weinstein are negotiating to buy back the film and find another distributor, with hopes of landing it in theaters by Fourth of July weekend.

Moore said after the ceremony that he expected right-wing media outlets in the United States to characterize his prize as an award from the French, whose government opposed the U.S.-led war on Iraq. He noted that the nine-person Cannes jury that awarded prizes had only one French member and four Americans, including jury president Quentin Tarantino and actress Kathleen Turner.

Many Americans now realize the French are "good friends of America who tried to do the right thing and tell us this was the wrong road," Moore said. "We owe the people of this country an apology for the way they were debased and treated in our media."

Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul`s "Tropical Malady" -- widely regarded by Cannes audiences as a snoozer for its elongated scenes of a man wandering a jungle alone, with no dialogue -- won the festival`s third-place jury prize.

Another jury prize went to Irma P. Hall for her role as an elderly Southern woman who foils a casino robbery in the Coen brothers` crime comedy "The Ladykillers," starring Tom Hanks as the heist`s ringleader.

Keren Yedaya`s "Or," about a Tel Aviv prostitute in failing health and her teenage daughter, won the Golden Camera award for best film by a first-time director. The U.S.-born Yedaya, who grew up in Israel, gives lectures about the problems of prostitution for government officials and mental-health professionals.

Earlier Saturday, Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene`s "Moolaade," an examination of the ritual of female circumcision that earned rave reviews, won the top prize in a secondary Cannes competition called "Un Certain Regard."

The 12-day festival`s closing film -- "De-Lovely," Kevin Kline`s musical biography of Cole Porter -- screened immediately after the awards. Kline and co-star Ashley Judd then hosted a beach concert featuring Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette, Natalie Cole and other singers from "De-Lovely" performing Porter tunes.

The festival was to wrap up Sunday with encore screenings of award winners and other key movies that played the festival, including a combined, four-hour version of Tarantino`s two "Kill Bill" installments.




Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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A memorial service on Saturday for three soldiers killed in operations in the holy Shiite city of Karbala, one of several cities where forces loyal to a rebel cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, have been battling American forces.
May 23, 2004
INSURGENCY
U.S. Military Says Shiite Rebels Seem to Have Ceded Karbala
By EDWARD WONG

KARBALA, Iraq, Sunday, May 23 — American commanders said early Sunday that insurgents loyal to a rebel cleric appeared to have given up control of central Karbala, where they had been shielding themselves at two shrines.

According to the commanders, there were several strong signs that the armed supporters of Moktada al-Sadr, the maverick Shiite cleric, have abandoned the area and ceded authority to the Americans and their allies after nearly three weeks of urban combat.

A large overnight raid met no resistance coming from a group of buildings where insurgents had been firing at American tanks with rocket-propelled grenades. Civilians were seen returning to homes in central Karbala that they had abandoned during fierce fighting. And in the afternoon on Saturday, tribal sheiks approached American commanders offering to persuade the militia, the Mahdi Army, to lay down its arms and leave the city.

"It looks like they just packed up and went home," Col. Peter Mansoor, commander of the First Brigade of the First Armored Division, said in an operations tent on the city outskirts where he monitored field reports. Referring to Mr. Sadr, Colonel Mansoor said, "I think his days are numbered."

At around 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, in the midst of the raid, three Iraqi civilians walked up to American soldiers and asked why they would attack the buildings. The civilians said the Mahdi Army had dropped their weapons on Friday night and left the area, according to a radio dispatch from an American field commander.Not a shot was fired Friday night at a large convoy of Bradley fighting vehicles driving through the city center — something unheard of since the First Armored Division began its offensive nearly three weeks ago.

At 12:45 a.m. on Sunday, soldiers at the scene of the raid saw 10 Iraqi police cars and three police pickup trucks speeding up to the outskirts of the old city with their lights flashing. The police officers told the soldiers they were doing a patrol. The fact that the police could travel around the old city, if only on the outskirts, indicated that the insurgents were no longer in control, Colonel Mansoor said.

During the raid early Sunday, Iraqis at a nearby teahouse told soldiers that busloads of fighters from Falluja who came to town last week had left Friday. The fighters fled after concluding that they could not stand up to American tanks, these Iraqis said.

An Iraqi reporter for The New York Times in Karbala said he had seen militiamen putting their weapons in bags in recent days and trying to leave the city. Some residents of the city have distributed fliers denouncing Mr. Sadr and the presence of his fighters.

American commanders said they would press the Iraqi police to do patrols in the old city in the next week. Whether and how the police get attacked will determine how much is left of the insurgency, the commanders said.

If the insurgency in Karbala has truly dissipated, then Mr. Sadr`s six-week insurrection has suffered badly. Though the Americans clamped down on the rebellion, Mr. Sadr had managed to maintain his grip on three towns: Karbala; the nearby holy city of Najaf, where he lives; and Kufa, a town adjacent to Najaf where Mr. Sadr preaches.

He might be restricted to Najaf and Kufa, but the Americans are testing those cities, too, though with care.

American officials say they have no intention of sending soldiers into the heart of Najaf, which is centered around the Shrine of Ali, dedicated to the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. They say they fear such an attack could provoke a backlash from Shiite Muslims around the world, and would prefer that senior clerics persuade Mr. Sadr to surrender.

Early Sunday morning, Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite television network, reported that clashes had broken out in some areas of Najaf. Explosions could be heard in the background as a reporter spoke. The Americans sent a large patrol through adjoining Kufa, but no shots were fired, Colonel Mansoor said.

The apparent withdrawal of Mahdi fighters from the central shrine area in Karbala came after nearly three weeks of intense combat in which American officers said more than 120 insurgents were killed. The Americans destroyed large parts of the city`s downtown to flush out the insurgents. In the last week, the Americans had called in an AC-130 Specter gunship to strafe militiamen standing around the shrines with 40-millimeter cannon fire.

Karbala has been the scene of the most intense urban warfare in Iraq since the siege of Falluja ended last month. The Americans failed to pacify Falluja through military force because the revolt there had broad support, and the city became a symbol of resistance to the occupation. By contrast, Mr. Sadr`s militia here has lost much of its backing since it took over Karbala last month, largely because the violence it brought has driven away Shiite pilgrims and wrecked the local economy.

Four American soldiers have been killed and at least 52 wounded in the nearly three-week offensive. It is the highest casualty rate suffered by the First Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment of the First Armored Division since it arrived in Iraq last May.

After being approached by the sheiks on Saturday afternoon, "it was pretty clear to me that we were approaching endgame, and that`s my fervent hope," Colonel Mansoor said. "They were clearly looking for a way out."

At a briefing for unit commanders before the night raid, Lt. Col. Garry R. Bishop, the battalion commander, said: "They`re trying to convince us that the Mahdi Army will be out of the area today. We`ll see. One way or another, they will be."

The Americans also sent a battalion to do a simultaneous raid on a farming compound in Husseiniya, a village nine miles northeast of Karbala. The soldiers found only women, children and some old men.

The raid in downtown Karbala took place at a school and surrounding buildings immediately northeast of the golden-domed Shrine of Hussein and Shrine of Abbas. Before the raid, military analysts said recent intelligence reports indicated that as many as 150 fighters were holed up in the school, many of them from outside Iraq. To the surprise of the soldiers, they found only civilians in the area, who told them the insurgents had left. The Americans ended up detaining 10 men for questioning. "It`s maybe an indication that Moktada`s militia is on its last legs," Colonel Mansoor said. "They don`t want to come out and play."

Fighting over the last week had been edging closer to the shrines, dedicated to two of the most revered Shiite Muslim martyrs. But early Friday morning, American forces withdrew from the Mukhaiyam Mosque, a nearby building they had occupied on May 12 after a pitched battle with insurgents in the area.

The mosque had become a foothold for the Americans in the dense urban landscape of downtown Karbala, and the Army had lost three men just trying to defend it from snipers and mortar teams.

The retreat came at a time when the American military was being forced to defend itself in light of the prison scandal at Abu Ghraib and of an air attack on Wednesday near in the Syrian border in which 41 people were killed. On Friday, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Beirut and Bahrain against the American presence in the Shiite holy areas.

Before withdrawing, the Americans attacked the school northeast of the Shrine of Abbas with tanks and called in an AC-130 to pound the area. The gunship also shot up a building immediately south of the shrine believed to be the headquarters of Hamza al-Tai, the local leader of the Mahdi Army. At least 21 people were killed in the attacks, helping to lay the foundation for the overture by the sheiks and the apparent withdrawal by the militia, officers said.

"The tribal leaders were going to make a public announcement in the media to tell the Mahdi Army to lay down their arms and leave the city," Colonel Bishop said after the meeting with the sheiks on Saturday.

Hundreds of American soldiers with Task Force 1-37 moved into Camp Lima on the city outskirts on the weekend of May 1. Then in the early hours of May 5, the task force began its first big assault, going down Governor`s Street in the Mukhaiyam neighborhood and opening fire on suspected insurgent strongholds. That signaled to the insurgents that the Americans had arrived.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Ramínez Bermúdez, right, said he had been caught four times before being picked up last week by Leon Stroud, center, a border agent.

Nach dem Vorschlag Bushs für eine Amnestie für Immigranten als Wahlkampfhilfe bei den Hispanics machen sich immer mehr Menschen auf, um über die Mexico-USA Grenze in die USA zu gelangen. Dabei sterben immer mehr Menschen in der Wüste von Arizona. Vom Oktober letzten Jahres hat man 61 Tote gefunden. The 154 deaths in the Border Patrol`s Tucson and Yuma sectors last year set a record.
Um so mehr die Kontrollen verstärkt werden, um so mehr Tote wird es geben.



May 23, 2004
Border Desert Proves Deadly for Mexicans
By TIMOTHY EGAN

COVERED WELLS, Ariz., May 20 — At the bottleneck of human smuggling here in the Sonoran Desert, illegal immigrants are dying in record numbers as they try to cross from Mexico into the United States in the wake of a new Bush administration amnesty proposal that is being perceived by some migrants as a magnet to cross.

"The season of death," as Robert C. Bonner, the commissioner in charge of the Border Patrol, calls the hot months, has only just begun, and already 61 people have died in the Arizona border region since last Oct. 1, according to the Mexican Interior Ministry — triple the pace of the previous year.

The Border Patrol, which counts only bodies that it processes, says 43 people have died near the Arizona border since the start of its fiscal year on Oct. 1, more than in any other year in the same period.

Leon Stroud, a Border Patrol agent who is part of a squad that has the dual job of arresting illegal immigrants and trying to save their lives, said he had seen 34 bodies in the last year. In Border Patrol parlance, a dead car and a dead migrant are the same thing — a "10-7" — but Mr. Stroud said he had never gotten used to the loss of life.

"The hardest thing was, I sat with this 15-year-old kid next to the body of his dad," said Mr. Stroud, a Texan who speaks fluent Spanish. "His dad had been a cook. He was too fat to be trying to cross this border. We built a fire and I tried to console him. It was tough."

If the pace keeps up, even with new initiatives to limit border crossings by using unmanned drones and Blackhawk helicopters in the air and beefed-up patrols on the ground, this will be the deadliest year ever to cross the nation`s busiest smuggling corridor. The 154 deaths in the Border Patrol`s Tucson and Yuma sectors last year set a record.

"This is unprecedented," said the Rev. John Fife, a Presbyterian minister in Tucson who is active in border humanitarian efforts. "Ten years ago there were almost no deaths on the southern Arizona border. What they`ve done is created this gantlet of death. It`s Darwinian — only the strongest survive."

For years, deaths of people trying to cross the border usually occurred at night on highways near urban areas, killed by cars. But now, because urban entries in places like San Diego and El Paso have been nearly sealed by fences, technology and agents, illegal immigrants have been forced to try to cross here in southern Arizona, one of the most inhospitable places on earth.

They die from the sun, baking on the prickled floor of the Sonoran Desert, where ground temperatures reach 130 degrees before the first day of summer. They die freezing, higher up in the cold rocks of the Baboquivari Mountains on moonless nights. They die from bandits who prey on them, in cars that break down on them, and from hearts that give out on them at a young age.

The mountainous Sonoran Desert, between Yuma in the west and Nogales in the east, is the top smuggling entry point along the entire 1,951-mile line with Mexico, the Border Patrol says. Through the middle of May, apprehensions of crossers in the desert south of Tucson had jumped 60 percent over the previous year. Nearly 300,000 people were caught trying to enter the United States through the desert border since last Oct. 1.

After a four-year drop, apprehensions — which the Border Patrol uses to measure human smuggling — are up 30 percent over last year along the entire southern border, with 660,390 people detained from Oct. 1 through the end of April, federal officials said.

The crossing here, over a simple barbed-wire fence, is followed by a walk of two or three days, up to 50 miles on ancient trails through a desert wilderness, to reach the nearest road, on the Tohono O`odham Nation Indian Reservation, a wedge of desert the size of Connecticut that is overrun with illegal immigrants, or on adjacent federal park or wildlife land. Most people start off with no more than two gallons of water, weighing almost 17 pounds, in plastic jugs. In recent days, with daytime temperatures over 100 degrees in the desert, a person needed a gallon of water just to survive walking five miles.

The desert is littered with garbage — empty plastic jugs, discarded clothes, toilet paper.

"My feet hurt and I`m thirsty, but I will try again after a rest," said Edmundo Saënz García, 28, who was apprehended on the reservation one morning near the end of his journey. His toes were swollen and blistered. He walked in cowboy boots. After being fingerprinted for security, he will be sent back to Mexico, agents said.

Mr. García said he had heard that the new Bush immigration plan, which would grant work visas to millions of illegal immigrants inside the United States and to others who can prove they have a job, was "amnesty," and he wondered why he was arrested. He said he would try to cross again in a few days.

"It`s like catch-and-release fishing," Mr. Stroud, the Border Patrol agent, said with a shrug after helping Mr. García with his blisters. "One week, I arrested the same guy three times. If I dwell on it, it can be frustrating."

Agents and groups opposed to open borders say the spike in crossings and deaths are the fault of the Bush proposal, which is stalled in Congress and unlikely to be acted on this year. But it has created a stir in Mexico, they say.

"They`ve dangled this carrot, and as a result apprehensions in Arizona are just spiking beyond belief," said T. J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents about 9,000 agents. "The average field agent is just mystified by the administration`s throwing in the towel on this."

Mr. Bonner, who is not related to the border commissioner, said the people were crossing in huge numbers, even at the high risk of dying in the desert, because "they`re trying to get in line for the big lottery we`ve offered them."

With an estimated 8 million to 12 million immigrants in this country illegally — and only a handful of prosecutions of employers who hire them — the southern border is more broken now than at any time in recent history, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a research group opposed to increased immigration.

"We`ve created an incentive to take foolish risks," Mr. Krikorian said. "In effect, we`re saying if you run this gantlet and can get over here, you`re home free."

Bush administration officials say there is only anecdotal evidence, from field agents, that their proposal has caused the spike in crossings. They point to a new $10 million border initiative and indications in recent weeks that apprehensions have leveled off as evidence that they are getting the upper hand on the Arizona border. It is the last uncontrolled part of the line between Mexico and the United States, they said.

"Unfortunately, there have always been deaths on the border," said Mario Villareal, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in Washington.

It was three years ago this month that 14 people died trying to walk cross the desert near this small tribal hamlet, dying of heat-related stress in what the poet Luis Alberto Urrea called "the largest death event in border history." Mr. Urrea is the author of "The Devil`s Highway" (Little, Brown and Company), an account of the crossing and border policy.

He wrote that the Sonoran Desert here "is known as the most terrible place on earth," where people die "of heat, thirst and misadventure."

To curb deaths, the American government has been running an advertising campaign in Mexico, warning people of the horrors.

"The message is, `No más cruces en la frontera,` no more crosses on the border,` " Commissioner Bonner said in unveiling the new plan earlier this month in Texas. He said 80 percent of the deaths in a given year happen between May and August.

The government has also increased staffing of Border Patrol Search Trauma and Rescue Units, called Borstar, which deploys emergency medical technicians like Mr. Stroud, to assist people found in desperate condition in the desert.

The publicity campaign seems to have had little effect, say border agents and illegal immigrants.

Ramínez Bermúdez, 26, walked for four days in 100-degree heat, and said he knew full well what he was getting into. He had been caught four times before his apprehension this week, he said.

Though he has a 25-acre farm in southern Mexico, Mr. Bermúdez said he could earn up to $200 a day picking cherries in California. He was distressed, though, at getting caught and at the failure to meet a coyote, or smuggler, who had agreed to pick him up and members of his group for $1,200 each.

Mr. Stroud has developed a ritual to cope with the increased number of bodies he has seen among the mesquite bushes and barrel cactus of the Sonoran. He has seen children as young as 10, their bodies bloated after decomposing in the heat, and mothers wailing next to them.

"I say a little prayer for every body," he said. "You try not to let it get to you. But every one of these bodies is somebody`s son or daughter, somebody`s mother or father."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Die US-Zeitungen halten sich zurück mit der Meldung. Es sind meist Agentur Meldungen.

May 23, 2004
Cannes Gives Filmmaker Moore Anti - Bush Platform
By REUTERS

Filed at 4:59 a.m. ET

CANNES, France (Reuters) - The Cannes film festival has given Michael Moore the perfect platform to harangue President Bush after awarding the controversial U.S. filmmaker one of world cinema`s top prizes.

Moore, eager to stir the disenfranchised into voting in November`s presidential elections, landed the best film award for ``Fahrenheit 9/11,`` a blistering indictment of Bush`s handling of Iraq and the war on terror.

``Perhaps this film will have a tremendous impact. I hope it will,`` said Moore who said he would be shocked if the documentary did not find a U.S. distributor after being awarded the Palme d`Or.

The Walt Disney company had ordered its Miramax unit not to distribute the politically polarizing documentary in an election year.

Asked how Bush would react to Moore winning such a prestigious award, Moore said: ``Would he even know what this is?``

``I hope nobody tells him that I have won this award while he is eating a pretzel,`` he said in reference to the time Bush choked on a pretzel and fainted while watching an American football game on television.

Moore won an Oscar two years ago for his anti-gun lobby documentary ``Bowling for Columbine`` and electrified the awards ceremony with an emotion-charged attack on Bush.

Cannes offered another perfect propaganda opportunity before the world`s press when he said: ``I want to ensure that those who died in Iraq have not died in vain.``

Moore also took the chance to apologize to France for U.S. jibes about re-naming French Fries ``Freedom Fries`` and mockingly calling them ``Cheese-eating surrender monkeys`` for resisting the war in Iraq.

``The French are our friends,`` Moore said. ``Without the French there might not have been a United States of America. The French helped us in our revolution.

``The statue that graces our harbour in New York city was a gift from the French people to celebrate our liberty.``

Moore kept insisting that his prime aim had been to make a movie that people would enjoy on a Saturday night out. The jury president, cult film director Quentin Tarantino, insisted the prize was not political.

But the critics disagreed, arguing this was a heartfelt attack on the Bush administration that was designed to stir disillusioned Americans into voting in November.

The film certainly packed an emotional punch, switching from shots of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners to a grieving mother reading out the last letter she ever received from her soldier son in Iraq.

The influential trade paper Variety called the deftly edited movie ``a blatant cinematic 2004 campaign pamphlet`` and the Hollywood Reporter agreed, dubbing it ``an election year device.``

Cannes, scorned by arthouse movie buffs as a crass marketplace for cigar-chomping moguls to clinch deals on shiny yachts, has turned political with a vengeance this year and Moore hailed the way this mirrored troubled times.

``Non-fiction is taking itself out of its own ghetto,`` he said after his documentary landed the prize which has in the past been awarded to some of the world`s greatest filmmakers.

Copyright 2004 Reuters Ltd.

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Ich habe der Times Unrecht getan. Sie hat den Bericht in den Kulturteil gesteckt. Dafür schreibt auch Frank Rich die Kolumne.

May 23, 2004
FRANK RICH
Michael Moore`s Candid Camera

But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it`s gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it`s, it`s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him suffer."
— Barbara Bush on "Good Morning America,"
March 18, 2003


A Michael Moore scoop: video of President Bush as he prepares to declare war on March 19, 2003.

SHE needn`t have worried. Her son wasn`t suffering. In one of the several pieces of startling video exhibited for the first time in Michael Moore`s "Fahrenheit 9/11," we catch a candid glimpse of President Bush some 36 hours after his mother`s breakfast TV interview — minutes before he makes his own prime-time TV address to take the nation to war in Iraq. He is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. A makeup woman is doing his face. And Mr. Bush is having a high old time. He darts his eyes about and grins, as if he were playing a peek-a-boo game with someone just off-camera. He could be a teenager goofing with his buds to relieve the passing tedium of a haircut.

"In your wildest dreams you couldn`t imagine Franklin Roosevelt behaving this way 30 seconds before declaring war, with grave decisions and their consequences at stake," said Mr. Moore in an interview before his new documentary`s premiere at Cannes last Monday. "But that may be giving him credit for thinking that the decisions were grave." As we spoke, the consequences of those decisions kept coming. The premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11" took place as news spread of the assassination of a widely admired post-Saddam Iraqi leader, Ezzedine Salim, blown up by a suicide bomber just a hundred yards from the entrance to America`s "safe" headquarters, the Green Zone, in Baghdad.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" will arrive soon enough at your local cineplex — there`s lots of money to be made — so discount much of the squabbling en route. Disney hasn`t succeeded in censoring Mr. Moore so much as in enhancing his stature as a master provocateur and self-promoter. And the White House, which likewise hasn`t a prayer of stopping this film, may yet fan the p.r. flames. "It`s so outrageously false, it`s not even worth comment," was last week`s blustery opening salvo by Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. New York`s Daily News reported that Republican officials might even try to use the Federal Election Commission to shut the film down. That would be the best thing to happen to Michael Moore since Charlton Heston granted him an interview.

Whatever you think of Mr. Moore, there`s no question he`s detonating dynamite here. From a variety of sources — foreign journalists and broadcasters (like Britain`s Channel Four), freelancers and sympathetic American TV workers who slipped him illicit video — he supplies war-time pictures that have been largely shielded from our view. Instead of recycling images of the planes hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11 once again, Mr. Moore can revel in extended new close-ups of the president continuing to read "My Pet Goat" to elementary school students in Florida for nearly seven long minutes after learning of the attack. Just when Abu Ghraib and the savage beheading of Nicholas Berg make us think we`ve seen it all, here is yet another major escalation in the nation-jolting images that have become the battleground for the war about the war.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" is not the movie Moore watchers, fans or foes, were expecting. (If it were, the foes would find it easier to ignore.) When he first announced this project last year after his boorish Oscar-night diatribe against Mr. Bush, he described it as an exposé of the connections between the Bush and bin Laden dynasties. But that story has been so strenuously told elsewhere — most notably in Craig Unger`s best seller, "House of Bush, House of Saud" — that it`s no longer news. Mr. Moore settles for a brisk recap in the first of his film`s two hours. And, predictably, he stirs it into an over-the-top, at times tendentious replay of a Bush hater`s greatest hits: Katherine Harris, the Supreme Court, Harken Energy, AWOL in Alabama, the Carlyle Group, Halliburton, the lazy Crawford vacation of August 2001, the Patriot Act. But then the movie veers off in another direction entirely. Mr. Moore takes the same hairpin turn the country has over the past 14 months and crash-lands into the gripping story that is unfolding in real time right now.

Wasn`t it just weeks ago that we were debating whether we should see the coffins of the American dead and whether Ted Koppel should read their names on "Nightline"? In "Fahrenheit 9/11," we see the actual dying, of American troops and Iraqi civilians alike, with all the ripped flesh and spilled guts that the violence of war entails. (If Steven Spielberg can simulate World War II carnage in "Saving Private Ryan," it`s hard to argue that Mr. Moore should shy away from the reality in a present-day war.) We also see some of the 4,000-plus American casualties: those troops hidden away in clinics at Walter Reed and at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital in Fort Campbell, Ky., where they try to cope with nerve damage and multiple severed limbs. They are not silent. They talk about their pain and their morphine, and they talk about betrayal. "I was a Republican for quite a few years," one soldier says with an almost innocent air of bafflement, "and for some reason they conduct business in a very dishonest way."

Of course, Mr. Moore is being selective in what he chooses to include in his movie; he`s a polemicist, not a journalist. But he implicitly raises the issue that much of what we`ve seen elsewhere during this war, often under the label of "news," has been just as subjectively edited. Perhaps the most damning sequence in "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the one showing American troops as they ridicule hooded detainees in a holding pen near Samara, Iraq, in December 2003. A male soldier touches the erection of a prisoner lying on a stretcher underneath a blanket, an intimation of the sexual humiliations that were happening at Abu Ghraib at that same time. Besides adding further corroboration to Seymour Hersh`s report that the top command has sanctioned a culture of abuse not confined to a single prison or a single company or seven guards, this video raises another question: why didn`t we see any of this on American TV before "60 Minutes II"?

Don Van Natta Jr. of The New York Times reported in March 2003 that we were using hooding and other inhumane techniques at C.I.A. interrogation centers in Afghanistan and elsewhere. CNN reported on Jan. 20, after the Army quietly announced its criminal investigation into prison abuses, that "U.S. soldiers reportedly posed for photographs with partially unclothed Iraqi prisoners." And there the matter stood for months, even though, as we know now, soldiers` relatives with knowledge of these incidents were repeatedly trying to alert Congress and news organizations to the full panorama of the story.

Mr. Moore says he obtained his video from an independent foreign journalist embedded with the Americans. "We`ve had this footage in our possession for two months," he says. "I saw it before any of the Abu Ghraib news broke. I think it`s pretty embarrassing that a guy like me with a high school education and with no training in journalism can do this. What the hell is going on here? It`s pathetic."

We already know that politicians in denial will dismiss the abuse sequence in Mr. Moore`s film as mere partisanship. Someone will surely echo Senator James Inhofe`s Abu Ghraib complaint that "humanitarian do-gooders" looking for human rights violations are maligning "our troops, our heroes" as they continue to fight and die. But Senator Inhofe and his colleagues might ask how much they are honoring soldiers who are overextended, undermanned and bereft of a coherent plan in Iraq. Last weekend The Los Angeles Times reported that for the first time three Army divisions, more than a third of its combat troops, are so depleted of equipment and skills that they are classified "unfit to fight." In contrast to Washington`s neglect, much of "Fahrenheit 9/11" turns out to be a patriotic celebration of the heroic American troops who have been fighting and dying under these and other deplorable conditions since President Bush`s declaration of war.

In particular, the movie`s second hour is carried by the wrenching story of Lila Lipscomb, a flag-waving, self-described "conservative Democrat" from Mr. Moore`s hometown of Flint, Mich., whose son, Sgt. Michael Pedersen, was killed in Iraq. We watch Mrs. Lipscomb, who by her own account "always hated" antiwar protesters, come undone with grief and rage. As her extended family gathers around her in the living room, she clutches her son`s last letter home and reads it aloud, her shaking voice and hand contrasting with his precise handwriting on lined notebook paper. A good son, Sergeant Pedersen thanks his mother for sending "the bible and books and candy," but not before writing of the president: "He got us out here for nothing whatsoever. I am so furious right now, Mama."

By this point, Mr. Moore`s jokes, some of them sub-par retreads of Jon Stewart`s riffs about the coalition of the willing, have vanished from "Fahrenheit 9/11." So, pretty much, has Michael Moore himself. He told me that Harvey Weinstein of Miramax had wanted him to insert more of himself into the film — "you`re the star they`re coming to see" — but for once he exercised self-control, getting out of the way of a story that is bigger than he is. "It doesn`t need me running around with my exclamation points," he said. He can`t resist underlining one moral at the end, but by then the audience, crushed by the needlessness of Mrs. Lipscomb`s loss, is ready to listen. Speaking of America`s volunteer army, Mr. Moore concludes: "They serve so that we don`t have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is, remarkably, their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm`s way unless it is absolutely necessary. Will they ever trust us again?"

"Fahrenheit 9/11" doesn`t push any Vietnam analogies, but you may find one in a montage at the start, in which a number of administration luminaries (Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Powell) in addition to the president are seen being made up for TV appearances. It`s reminiscent of Richard Avedon`s photographic portrait of the Mission Council, the American diplomats and military figures running the war in Saigon in 1971. But at least those subjects were dignified. In Mr. Moore`s candid-camera portraits, a particularly unappetizing spectacle is provided by Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of both the administration`s Iraqi fixation and its doctrine of "preventive" war. We watch him stick his comb in his mouth until it is wet with spit, after which he runs it through his hair. This is not the image we usually see of the deputy defense secretary, who has been ritualistically presented in the press as the most refined of intellectuals — a guy with, as Barbara Bush would have it, a beautiful mind.

Like Mrs. Bush, Mr. Wolfowitz hasn`t let that mind be overly sullied by body bags and such — to the point where he underestimated the number of American deaths in Iraq by more than 200 in public last month. No one would ever accuse Michael Moore of having a beautiful mind. Subtleties and fine distinctions are not his thing. That matters very little, it turns out, when you have a story this ugly and this powerful to tell.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 23, 2004
Talking Deficits

few weeks before the fall election, President Bush is likely to claim a victory, of sorts, over the budget deficit. The good news will be based on October data from the Office of Management and Budget in the executive branch, which, according to widespread estimates, will show red ink of $420 billion to $450 billion at the end of the 2004 fiscal year. When the year started, the budget office had conveniently projected a deficit of $521 billion. Hence, a bookkeeping triumph.

The administration would like to turn the budget deficit into a nonissue in the presidential campaign. But it deserves to be one of the central talking points, even more than it was in 1992, when Ross Perot rightly convinced the nation that deficits were threatening American prosperity.

The Bush deficit is worse than the administration says. And it appears that coming deficits will be worse than previous ones in terms of the impact on Americans` financial security and on national security, for these reasons:

¶ Size. Though the Bush deficit of 2003 was already a record in pure numbers, the administration`s defenders often point out that it amounted to only 3.5 percent of gross domestic product. That doesn`t sound too bad compared with the modern record of 6 percent set by President Ronald Reagan in 1983. But the size of the deficit now is masked by the Social Security Trust Fund surplus. If you believe that the Social Security surplus would be put to better use by being preserved for future retirees, the Bush deficit should really amount to 5 percent of G.D.P.

And it shows no signs of abating. It took 15 years of hard work and good luck before the Reagan deficits were vanquished. Even Mr. Reagan himself, after initially cutting taxes, raised them repeatedly. Mr. Bush shows no such intention, and that is the reason the current red ink he has unleashed will not stop flowing.

According to former Treasury Secretary Paul O`Neill, Vice President Dick Cheney swatted back questions about the tax cuts by saying, "Reagan proved deficits don`t matter." Mr. Reagan`s own actions, and the political careers of many politicians since then, prove otherwise.

¶ Cause. The current deficits are unique in the degree to which they appear to be driven by tax cuts. That is terribly important because it shows that they are in large part a result of deliberate policy decisions, not unforeseen events. Last year, after two rounds of Bush tax cuts, taxes fell to a percentage of the economy not seen, even in the deepest recessions, since 1955. In 2004, they are estimated to come in at just over 16 percent of G.D.P., a level last seen in 1951. Even if the economy recovers fully, the country would have to revert to a 1957-era government to break even. In 1957, the Interstate System was just getting under way, and Medicare did not exist, much less a war on terrorism.

¶ Timing. President Reagan`s deficit binge occurred decades before the baby boomers` retirement. This one is taking place on the eve. To use an analogy, President Bush`s deficits are putting the nation in the position of a couple who take out a long-term mortgage just before retirement.

That`s a travesty, because reducing the buildup of government debt is the key to strengthening Social Security. Social Security payments currently soak up about 4 percent of G.D.P. They are projected to rise to a bit more than 6 percent by the mid-2030`s. Long before that, however, the Bush tax cuts will crimp incoming revenues by over 2 percent of G.D.P.

In other words, if the tax cuts are not made permanent, as Mr. Bush intends, the revenue from those taxes would cover the increased cost of Social Security, without reducing benefits. (Even in fantasy, no one has yet come up with a way to pay for Medicare.) Clearly, we could not have picked a worse demographic moment to be borrowing money on the next generation`s credit.

¶ Foreign Dependence. Over the last few years, an unprecedented 80 percent of the deficit has been financed by foreign governments, institutions and individuals, mainly in the Far East. Over all, 37 percent of United States public debt is in foreign hands, up from 14 percent at the peak of the Reagan deficits in 1983.

A greater reliance on foreign creditors creates further economic instability, as nations like Argentina have found out the hard way. Debt is debt, to be sure, leading ultimately to a smaller economy than would otherwise be the case.

But debt owed to foreigners is more likely to affect the value of the dollar, and foreign capital is more nomadic, leaving the United States vulnerable to the whims of central bankers in Beijing and Tokyo.

But even if a sudden catastrophe never materializes, a slower one is already in the making. It is important that voters talk seriously about deficits in this political season.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 23, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Enter Right, Exit Left
By JOSHUA FOER

NEW HAVEN

Thirty-eight years ago, John Kerry delivered a graduation speech on behalf of his Yale class that was sharply critical of the conflict in Vietnam. In many ways, his words that day set the tone for the radicalism that would define the Yale campus for generations to come.

For my parents` generation, which went to school in the 1960`s and 70`s, college was often a radicalizing experience. For the Yale class of 2004 — which I graduate with tomorrow — it has been the opposite. The world has changed significantly since we entered college four years ago; over that time, our attitudes have changed, too.

On 9/11, we were barely a week into our sophomore year. Because the terrorist attacks were the first national trauma my generation experienced, I believe they had a more profound effect on our still malleable political psyches than they had on our parents and grandparents, who had lived through national traumas before.

What do I base this on? Consider this: One of the most under-reported statistics about the war in Iraq is my generation`s overwhelming support for it — not just in its early stages but well into last year. While the conventional wisdom holds that young Americans tend to be more liberal than older Americans, that wasn`t the case this time. According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll taken in October, a majority of 18- to 29-year-olds thought the war worthwhile, the same percentage as in the population at large. The same survey found that President Bush had a 9 percent higher approval rating among people under 30 than he did among older respondents.

Of my 11 junior-year suite-mates, a racially and geographically diverse group of Democrats, only three opposed the war in Iraq. Across the Yale campus, similar sentiments reigned. During our junior year, when the national debate over Iraq was at its height, one of the most visible student political organizations on campus was the Yale College Students for Democracy, a group of hawkish liberals and neo-conservatives who supported the war. The biggest campus-wide "Support Our Troops" rally was at least as well attended as any antiwar protest.

Certainly the 9/11 attacks left a deep imprint on our political conscience, but my generation was probably predisposed to these more hawkish views long before the planes crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

The class of 2004 grew up at a time when it was easy to have faith in the goodness of our government. Vietnam, Watergate and even Iran-contra were not a part of our direct political memory. For my generation, abuse of power meant sexual indiscretions in the Oval Office — not shifting rationales for war. While President Bush`s claims about weapons of mass destruction and links between Iraq and Al Qaeda may have revived memories of the Gulf of Tonkin for some of our parents, my generation wasn`t inclined toward incredulousness. After all, according to that same poll, 50 percent of those surveyed under 30 said they trusted government to do the right thing; for Americans older than us, that number was 36 percent.

Many of us in the class of 2004 grew up in the 1990`s believing that America was a force for good in the world. We became conscious of international affairs at a time when the American military was intervening to stop genocide in the Balkans, fighting to distribute food to starving people in Somalia, and protecting democracy in Haiti. Even if these ventures weren`t always successful, they were at least apparently selfless. Many of us reached the conclusion that the United States was wrong not when it intervened in the affairs of others, but when it sat on its hands, as it did in the case of Rwanda. It was only natural that we would apply that same logic to Iraq.

But that logic may not hold. As conditions in Iraq have grown more chaotic, many of us who supported the war are re-evaluating our positions. Over the last year, we`ve been forced to relearn the lessons of our parents` generation, and it has been a deeply disillusioning experience. The revelation that our government exaggerated claims about weapons of mass destruction has taught us that you can`t always trust authority. The photos of Abu Ghraib and flag-draped coffins have taught us the cost of our untempered idealism about spreading our values.

According to a poll released last month by the Harvard University Institute of Politics, college students are no longer more supportive of President Bush than the population at large, and their support for the war has dropped sharply from 65 percent a year ago to 49 percent last month. But the most notable change, which suggests just how deeply young people have been affected by recent events, is that the percentage of students who describe themselves as liberal has increased significantly over the last year — from 36 percent to 44 percent.

Do these numbers indicate a profound rethinking of our political orientation or are they just a blip? It`s possible, I guess, that my generation will remain liberal on social issues (like gay marriage) and conservative when it comes to foreign affairs and national security. It`s even possible that we will be the first generation in a long time to be more conservative than our parents. I imagine, though, that we`ll have to wait until our 10th reunion to find out.

Joshua Foer is a senior at Yale.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 23, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
What`s in a Word? Torture
By ADAM HOCHSCHILD

SAN FRANCISCO

As Orwell pointed out most effectively, governments control language as well as people. Since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke, our government, from the highest officials in Washington to Army prison guards in Baghdad, have used every euphemism they can think of to avoid the word that clearly characterizes what some of our soldiers and civilian contractors have been doing: torture.

"What has been charged so far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture," said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "I`m not going to address the `torture` word." And nobody else seems to want to address it either. Rather, we are told, military police officers at Abu Ghraib were encouraged to treat the prisoners so as to create "favorable conditions" for interrogations. What does this mean? Give the prisoners English lessons? New clothes? Come on. In any bureaucracy, orders or clearance to do something beyond the law always comes in code. For those in senior positions, deniability is vital.

Some years ago, I heard a man who had narrowly escaped the death squads in El Salvador explain how deniability worked there. "The military will call a meeting of commanders," he said. "They will say, `You know, this man David X is getting to be a threat to us.` Then the commanders, when they have their meetings with their own officers, they`ll say, `You know, today we heard of this man who`s making a lot of trouble for us.` Then when those officers meet with the sergeants, his name will be floated again. And you can assume David X will soon be dead."

Shortly afterward I interviewed a general who had some of the most notorious Salvadoran death squads under his command. Death squads? Orders for executions? Of course not! He showed me a loose-leaf notebook, carefully listing complaints of human rights abuses with a chart showing how each case had been investigated.

Pentagon officials doubtless have their own versions of that general`s loose-leaf notebook to show to human rights investigators. Obviously, no coded orders, suggestions or hints given to the Abu Ghraib prison guards will appear in them. And, no, these were not orders for deaths — but they were for actions similarly beyond the law. What the paper trail will have, however, are the euphemisms for what was actually done:

• "Sleep management." This apparently benign term — doctors use it in discussing insomnia — disguises a form of torture that has long been popular because it requires no special equipment and leaves no marks on the body. Widely used in the Middle Ages on suspected witches by inquisitors, it was called the tormentum insomniae. Hundreds of years later, in the interrogation rooms of Stalin`s secret police, it was known as the "conveyor belt," because relays of interrogators would question a prisoner, day and night, until he or she signed the desired statement and named enough co-conspirators.

After being kept awake for a hundred hours or so, almost anybody will confess to almost anything, from flying through the night sky on a broomstick to being a capitalist spy. Soviet prisoners of the 1930`s had to sign each page of their interrogation record. In the files that have been released from archives in recent years, you can sometimes see how a prisoner`s signature, clear and firm on the first day, gradually turns into an indecipherable scrawl as the sleepless nights roll by.

•"Water-boarding." This, as we now know, does not involve water skis, but holding prisoners under water for long enough that they think they are drowning. Again, interrogators favor it because after the prisoner has coughed the water out of his lungs, it leaves no identifiable marks. Reports by human rights groups on countries including Brazil, Ethiopia and El Salvador have noted the prevalence of "simulated drowning" or "near drowning."

•"Stress positions." What is a stress position? Mike Xego, a former political prisoner in South Africa, once demonstrated one for me. He bent down and clasped his hands in front of him as if they were handcuffed, and then, using a rolled-up newspaper, showed me how apartheid-era police officers would pin his elbows behind his knees with a stick, forcing him into a permanent crouch. "You`d be passed from one hand to another. Kicked. Tipped over," he explained. "The blood stops moving. You scream and scream and scream until there is no voice."

This begs an obvious question: when the Abu Ghraib detainees were in "stress positions," were they then kicked, tipped over, rolled around like soccer balls? We do not yet know, but chances are that if the guards were told to create "favorable conditions" for interrogation, the prisoners were not lectured politely about the benefits of human rights and the rule of law that the United States is supposedly bringing to Iraq.

Granted, the torture of prisoners under Saddam Hussein was incomparably more widespread and often ended in death. The same is true in dozens of other regimes around the world. But torture is torture. It permanently scars the victim even when there are no visible marks on the body, and it leaves other scars on the lives of those who perform it and on the life of the nation that allowed and encouraged it. Those scars will be with us for a long time.

Adam Hochschild is the author of "King Leopold`s Ghost" and the forthcoming "Bury the Chains," a history of the British antislavery movement.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 23, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Bay of Goats
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

So let me get this straight:

We ransacked the house of the con man whom we paid millions to feed us fake intelligence on W.M.D. that would make the case for ransacking the country that the con man assured us would be a cinch to take over because he wanted to run it.

And now we`re shocked, shocked and awed to discover that a crook is a crook and we have nobody to turn over Iraq to, and the Jordanian embezzler-turned-American puppet-turned-accused Iranian spy is trying to foment even more anger against us and the U.N. officials we`ve crawled back to for help, anger that may lead to civil war.

The party line that Paul Bremer was notified about the raid on Ahmad Chalabi`s house after the fact is absurd. The Iraqi police, who can`t seem to do anything without us, were just proxies. We were going after the very guy who persuaded us to go after Saddam, the con man the naïve neo-cons cast as de Gaulle; the swindler who sold himself to Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz as Spartacus.

One diplomat from the region grimly cited an old Punjabi saying: "It`s very bad when grandma marries a crook, but it is even worse when she divorces the crook."

Mr. Chalabi`s wealthy family was swept out of Iraq in a coup in 1958 and he spent much of his life plotting a coup to take back his homeland, a far-fetched scheme that took on life when he hooked up with Mr. Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Doug Feith, who had their own dream of staging a coup of American foreign policy to do an extreme Middle East makeover.

The hawks dismissed warnings from their own people — such as the Bush Middle East envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni — that the Iraqi National Congress was full of "silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London." As General Zinni told The Times in 2000: "They are pie in the sky. They`re going to lead us to a Bay of Goats, or something like that."

The C.I.A. and State Department, too, grew disgusted with Mr. Chalabi, even though State paid his organization $33 million from 2000 to 2003.

Cheney & Company swooned over Mr. Chalabi because he was telling them what they wanted to hear, that it would be simple to go back and rewrite the Persian Gulf war ending so that it was not bellum interruptus.

The president and his hawks insisted that only a "relatively small number" of "thugs," as Mr. Perle told George Stephanopoulos last month, were keeping the country from peace. Mr. Perle said the solution was "to repose a little bit of confidence in people who share our values and our objectives . . . people like Ahmad Chalabi." The neo-cons still think he can be Churchill.

On Thursday, an Iraqi judge, Hussain Muathin, also lamented the actions of "a small number of thugs." But he was announcing warrants for the arrest of thugs around Mr. Perle`s own George Washington, Chalabi henchmen suspected of kidnapping, torture and theft. Didn`t we sack Saddam to stop that stuff?

Now we`re using Saddam`s old generals to restore order — reversing the de-Baathification approach that Mr. Chalabi championed — while Mr. Chalabi snakes around like a bus-and-truck Tony Soprano, garnering less trust than Saddam in polls of Iraqis.

A half-dozen dunderheads who thought they knew everything assumed they could control Mr. Chalabi and use him as the instrument of their utopian fantasies. But one week after getting cut off from the $335,000-a-month Pentagon allowance arranged by his neo-con buddies, he glibly accepts the street cred that goes with bashing America. And he still won`t give us all of Saddam`s secret files, which he confiscated and is using to discredit his enemies.

Going from Spartacus to Moses, he proclaims to America, "Let my people go" — even as he plays footsie with the country that once denounced the U.S. as the Great Satan.

On Friday at Louisiana State University, President Bush told graduates: "On the job and elsewhere in life, choose your friends carefully. The company you keep has a way of rubbing off on you — and that can be a good thing, or a bad thing. In my job, I got to pick just about everybody I work with. I`ve been happy with my choices — although I wish someone had warned me about all of Dick Cheney`s wild partying."

Mr. Bush thought he was kidding, but too bad he didn`t get that warning before Dick Cheney took the world on such a wild ride.

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Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Es ist schon erstaunlich diese Aussagen wurden Anfang April gemacht, aber bis jetzt wird von der Bush-Gang alles abgestritten.


washingtonpost.com

Prison Visits By General Reported In Hearing
Alleged Presence of Sanchez Cited by Lawyer

By Scott Higham, Joe Stephens and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 23, 2004; Page A01

A military lawyer for a soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib abuse case stated that a captain at the prison said the highest-ranking U.S. military officer in Iraq was present during some "interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse," according to a recording of a military hearing obtained by The Washington Post.

The lawyer, Capt. Robert Shuck, said he was told that Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and other senior military officers were aware of what was taking place on Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib. Shuck is assigned to defend Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II of the 372nd Military Police Company. During an April 2 hearing that was open to the public, Shuck said the company commander, Capt. Donald J. Reese, was prepared to testify in exchange for immunity. The military prosecutor questioned Shuck about what Reese would say under oath.

"Are you saying that Captain Reese is going to testify that General Sanchez was there and saw this going on?" asked Capt. John McCabe, the military prosecutor.

"That`s what he told me," Shuck said. "I am an officer of the court, sir, and I would not lie. I have got two children at home. I`m not going to risk my career."

Shuck also said a sergeant at the prison, First Sgt. Brian G. Lipinski, was prepared to testify that intelligence officers told him the abuse of detainees on the cellblock was "the right thing to do." Earlier this month, Lipinski declined to comment on the case.

So far, clear evidence has not emerged that high-level officers condoned or promoted the abusive practices. Officers at the prison have blamed the abuse on a few rogue, low-level military police officers from the 372nd, a company of U.S. Army Reservists based in Cresaptown, Md. The general in charge of the prisons in Iraq at the time has said that military intelligence officers took control of Abu Ghraib and gave the MPs "ideas."

A Defense Department spokesman yesterday referred questions about Sanchez to U.S. military officials in the Middle East, warning that statements by defense lawyers or their clients should be treated with "appropriate caution." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the senior military spokesman in Iraq, said Sanchez was unavailable for comment last night but would "enjoy the opportunity" to respond later.

At the April hearing, Shuck also said Reese would testify that Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, who supervised the military intelligence operation at Abu Ghraib, was "involved in intensive interrogations of detainees, condoned some of the activities and stressed that that was standard procedure." The hearing was held at Camp Victory in Baghdad. The Post obtained a copy of the audiotape this past week, and it was transcribed yesterday.

In the transcript, Shuck said Reese was disturbed by the military intelligence techniques.

"He noted that there were some strange doings by the [military intelligence]," Shuck said. "He said, `What`s all this nudity about, this posturing, positioning, withholding food and water? Where`s the Geneva Conventions being followed."
`Not a Secret`

Shuck noted that the abusive tactics used in Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib were not a secret.

"All of that was being questioned by the chain of command and denied, general officer level on down," Shuck said. "Present during some of these happenings, it has come to my knowledge that Lt. Gen. Sanchez was even present at the prison during some of these interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse by those duty [non-commissioned officers]."

Reese, 39, a reservist from Pennsylvania who works as a window-blind salesman in civilian life, did not testify that day because he had invoked the military version of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Reese, who did not respond to an e-mail sent to him in Iraq yesterday, has not been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony. He did provide a sworn statement to military investigators early in the case, but he did not say that Sanchez was aware of the abuses.

Gary Myers, the civilian attorney for Frederick, said he is asking the military to add investigators to his legal team so he can track down Reese and other witnesses, several of whom have been reassigned to military posts throughout Iraq. Myers said he will also request that immunity be granted to a number of military personnel who he said have firsthand knowledge of what took place in Tier 1A.

"We intend to seek immunity for a myriad of officers who are unwilling to participate in the search for the truth without protecting themselves," Myers said yesterday. "We are definitely interested in talking to Captain Reese."

Attorney Paul Bergrin, who represents another of the charged MPs, Sgt. Javal S. Davis, said the soldiers were simply following the lead of military intelligence officers.

"There are no ifs, ands or buts," Bergrin said. "They did order it. They were told consistently, `Soften them up; loosen them up. Look what`s happening in the field. Soldiers are dying in droves. We need more intelligence . . . `

"Nobody put it in writing; no one`s going to be stupid enough for that. My client went to Sergeant Frederick and questioned him: `Should we be following these orders?` And Sergeant Frederick said, `Absolutely. We`re saving American lives. That`s what we wear the uniform for.` "

The hearing at Camp Victory took place several weeks before the story broke into public view with the airing of abuse photographs on April 28 on CBS`s "60 Minutes II." Chain-of-command responsibility has now become a key unanswered question in the scandal.

"All we have now is the government reacting after the fact with a bunch of pictures and want to whitewash this and accuse six enlisted soldiers of misconduct and yet hide the fact of what was condoned at the time," Shuck said during the hearing.
Responsibility and Accountability

Sanchez told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that he was "horrified at the abusive behavior" at Abu Ghraib.

"We must fully investigate and fix responsibility, as well as accountability," for the abuses, Sanchez testified. "I am fully committed to thorough and impartial investigations that examine the role, commissions and omissions of the entire chain of command -- and that includes me. As a senior commander in Iraq, I accept responsibility for what happened at Abu Ghraib, and I accept as a solemn obligation the responsibility to ensure that it does not happen again."

Sanchez visited the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade`s operation, which encompassed Tier 1A at Abu Ghraib, at least three times in October, according to Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who was in charge of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq as commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade. That month, the serious abuses documented in published photographs -- naked detainees shackled together, a guard posing with a prisoner on a dog leash -- began.

In an interview yesterday, Karpinski said the number of visits by a commanding general struck her as "unusual," especially because Sanchez had not visited several of the 15 other U.S. detention facilities in Iraq.

Karpinski has said that she is being used as a scapegoat for the command failures at Abu Ghraib.

The general, a reservist from South Carolina, said she was not present during Sanchez`s visits because her brigade had surrendered authority over that part of the prison to intelligence officers. She said she was alerted as a courtesy while the three-star general was planning to travel to the prison. Karpinski added that Sanchez might have visited without her knowledge after the intelligence officers were given formal authority over the entire prison on Nov. 19.

"He has divisions all over Iraq, and he has time to visit Abu Ghraib three times in a month?" Karpinski asked yesterday. "Why was he going out there so often? Did he know that something was going on?"

Sgt. Samuel Provance, a military intelligence soldier who worked at Abu Ghraib, told The Post that enormous resources began to pour into the interrogation operation in October and November. Provance said new personnel -- including some from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- came in suddenly to beef up interrogations.

Karpinski said the resources arrived after Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then commander of the U.S. military prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo, visited Abu Ghraib between Aug. 31 and Sept. 9. She said Miller told her he wanted to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib`s operation because the intelligence gathering there was not producing the desired results. Miller has said he never used that phrase.

"I think General Miller`s visit gave them ideas, inspired them, gave them plans, told them what they were succeeding with in Gitmo," Karpinski said. She added that intelligence officers were "under great pressure to get more actionable intelligence from those interrogations."

Karpinski said she believes that intelligence officers were central to the abuses because the MPs arrived in mid-October at the prison, just weeks before serious abuses began. The general also said she believes officers in the military intelligence chain of command knew what was going on, and that Sanchez later tried to shift the blame to her unit, in January, after an MP reported the abuse and provided photos to military investigators.

"I didn`t know then what [Sanchez] probably knew, which was that this was something clearly in the MI, maybe that he endorsed, and he was already starting a campaign to stay out of the fray and blame the 800th," Karpinski said. "I think the MI people were in this all the way. I think they were up to their ears in it. . . . I don`t believe that the MPs, two weeks onto the job, would have been such willing participants, even with instructions, unless someone had told them it was all okay."
`Rules of Engagement`

On Wednesday, Pentagon officials testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that a female Army officer identified only as "Captain Woods" drafted a set of interrogation "rules of engagement" used in Iraq. Those rules had been posted at Abu Ghraib by October, and became public during hearings into the abuses at the prison.

The list shows two sets of procedures -- those approved for all detainees and those requiring special authorization by Sanchez. Among the items requiring approval from Sanchez were techniques such as "sensory deprivation," "stress positions," "dietary manipulation," forced changes in sleep patterns, isolated confinement and the use of dogs.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said at a May 12 hearing that some of those techniques went "far beyond the Geneva Conventions." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld countered that they all had been approved by Pentagon lawyers.

Wood was the head of the military intelligence unit that controlled the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib. On Friday, the New York Times reported that Wood`s unit developed aggressive rules and procedures while it was stationed in Afghanistan and imported them to Iraq.

During the hearing on Wednesday, Sanchez noted that the military has initiated seven courts-martial against those involved, and more charges may be brought.

"The Army Criminal Investigation Division investigation is not final, and the investigation of military intelligence procedures by Major General [George D.] Fay is also ongoing," Sanchez testified.

Sanchez said he issued policies in September that required soldiers to conduct all interrogations in a "lawful and humane manner with command oversight." In October, he said he distributed a memo titled "Proper Treatment of Iraqi People During Combat Operations." He said he reissued the memo on Jan. 16 after learning about the abuse allegations, and later issued policies emphasizing the need to treat all Iraqis with dignity.

Correspondent Scott Wilson in Baghdad and staff researcher Margot Williams contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Im Endeffekt wird Israel das Opfer der jetzigen Politik sein. Denn wenn die USA sich entscheiden müßen zwischen Öl und Israel, kann ich mir vorstellen, wie diese Entscheidung aussehen wird. Wird die USA die Rolle als Vermittler zwischen den Arabern und Israel irgedwie nochmal ausfüllen können? Solange Bush da ist, sicherlich nicht.


washingtonpost.com

A Foreign Policy, Falling Apart

By Robert G. Kaiser

Sunday, May 23, 2004; Page B01

We have come to a delicate moment in an absorbing drama. The actors seem unsure of their roles. The audience is becoming restless with the confusion on stage. But the scriptwriters keep trying to convince the crowd that the ending they imagined can still, somehow, come to pass.

The authors stick to their plotline even as its plausibility melts away, and why not? For months the audience kept applauding; many of the reviewers were admiring, while many others kept still.

No more. Senior military officers, government officials, diplomats and others working in Iraq, commentators, experts and analysts have all joined a chorus of doubters that is large and growing. And the applause -- in this case, public approval as measured in polls -- is fading.

Already, some of the authors` friends are grabbing them by their rhetorical lapels. "Failures are multiplying," wrote George Will, the conservative columnist, yet "no one seems accountable."

The original script included parts for American soldiers and diplomats, Iraqis, Arabs and Europeans, but many declined to play along or refused to perform as directed. No matter -- the authors promised to "stay the course." A quick look back at the list of promises made and then abandoned demonstrates how little the play now conforms to the original scenario. And by the way, just what is that "course" we are staying on?

Americans are hopeless romantics -- we`re always looking for the triumph of the good guys and happiness ever after. But any happy endings in Iraq remain so remote that they are invisible from here. Today no one seems able to come up with a realistic definition of what "success" might be. Instead the Bush administration has entrusted the future of the entire enterprise to an Algerian diplomat named Lakhdar Brahimi, whom we expect to assemble an Iraqi government in the next week or two -- an Algerian magic trick.

Many in the new chorus of doubters have enumerated the ways in which the success promised by the Bush administration both before and after the war has eluded us.

We have not made a "a crucial advance in the campaign against terror," the words President Bush used when he declared victory in "Operation Iraqi Freedom" on May 1, 2003. Instead we have stimulated new hatred of the United States in precisely the regions from which future terrorist threats are most likely to arise, while alienating our traditional allies. By embracing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon`s plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza, we abandoned the "honest broker" role that U.S. governments tried to play for four decades in the Middle East, and we confirmed the conspiratorial suspicions of every anti-American Arab. Our credibility has been battered.

We set out to put fear into the hearts of our enemies by demonstrating the efficacy of a new doctrine of preemptive war. Instead, we have shown the timeless nature of hubris. Last week we announced the transfer of 3,600 troops of the overstrained U.S. Army away from the border of what might be the world`s most dangerous country, North Korea. They will be sent to help with the war in Iraq, for which we now acknowledge we had inadequate resources.

Contrary to the Bush administration`s stated and implied promises -- "we will be greeted as liberators" was the vice president`s famous version -- we did not achieve a relatively low-cost triumph in Iraq. Instead we have a crisis of still-growing dimensions. Our occupation policy has changed as often as the color of Madonna`s hair. Ominously, as became clear with last week`s assassination of Iraqi Governing Council president Izzedin Salim, we cannot even protect the Iraqis who have agreed to work with us.

The war has damaged the good name of the United States in every corner of the globe, has cost unanticipated scores of billions (all of it borrowed) and now threatens long-term damage to our Army and National Guard. War has already disfigured the 3,500 American families whose sons and daughters have been killed or seriously wounded in Iraq, and countless Iraqi families as well.

The United States gets itself into this kind of trouble when it turns away from that most fundamental of American values, pragmatism. The Bush administration`s initial reaction to the first attacks on U.S. soil since the War of 1812 was highly pragmatic. It identified the source of the attack and went after it forcefully, with the country`s and the world`s enthusiastic support.

But even before the war in Afghanistan was won, pragmatism yielded to ideology, and Bush asked the Pentagon to prepare for "preemptive" war against Iraq. There was no traditional casus belli, no classical justification for war.

The war in Iraq was justified with two arguments that now appear dubious at best. The first was the idea that Iraq was an appropriate and important target in the new war against terror, when the United States had no evidence tying Saddam Hussein to any recent terrorism apart from the rewards he paid to the families of suicide bombers in Israel and other Palestinian "martyrs." The second was that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction threatened the United States, its allies and the entire Middle East region, but of course, those weapons have never been found.

It will take years to sort out all that went wrong in Iraq, but in a general way, an explanation is already available. The Bush administration was on notice months before 9/11 about the risks and requirements of deploying our forces for military action abroad, and it defied the warnings. They were contained in a most pragmatic memorandum from Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to President Bush. Rumsfeld wrote the memo in March 2001, at the very beginning of the new administration. Bob Woodward`s 2002 book, "Bush At War," quotes briefly from it. The entire document, which Woodward provided, is haunting reading. Excerpts:

� "In fashioning a clear statement of the underpinning for the action, avoid arguments of convenience. They can be useful at the outset to gain support, but they will be deadly later."

� "There should be clear, well-considered and well-understood goals as to the purpose of the engagement and what would constitute success . . ."

� "The military capabilities needed to achieve the agreed goals must be available . . . "

� "Before committing to an engagement, consider the implications of the decision for the U.S. in other parts of the world . . . . Think through the precedent that a proposed action, or inaction, would establish."

� "Finally -- honesty: U.S. leadership must be brutally honest with itself, the Congress, the public and coalition partners. Do not make the effort sound even marginally easier or less costly than it could become. Preserving U.S. credibility requires that we promise less, or no more, than we are sure we can deliver. It is a great deal easier to get into something than to get out of it!"

In other words, Rumsfeld laid out the standards for a serious, pragmatic strategy. The only obviously missing element in his memo was a recognition that military actions inevitably have political components that also require careful planning and shrewd execution.

But when it came time to wage war against Iraq, Rumsfeld ignored his own guidelines. He developed no real strategy for what to do after ousting Saddam Hussein. As James Fallows has reported in the Atlantic Monthly, Rumsfeld actually banned Defense Department officials from participating in CIA- and State Department-led meetings on postwar Iraq. When those meetings produced extensive recommendations, which included warnings about nearly every pitfall we have since fallen into, the Pentagon simply ignored them. We went to war with no political plan for ending it.

As George Will and others have argued, administration policy has been "neoconservative," rather than hard-headed and just plain conservative. A neoconservative believes that certain things must happen, Will wrote, whereas rational conservatives would only say that those things can happen. In his recent column on these subjects, Will pleaded for more reliance on empirical evidence -- in other words, on pragmatism: "This administration needs a dose of conservatism without the prefix."

One prominent member of the empirical school on Iraq is retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni. From 1997 to 2000, Zinni was the commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, the job held by Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks in the recent war, and by Army Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Early in this administration, Zinni was Bush`s envoy for the Middle East peace process. As a consultant to the CIA, he retained his access to top secret intelligence until shortly before the Iraq war began.

For reasons he feels have been confirmed by events over the last 14 months, Zinni opposed the war in Iraq. He said the United States was successfully containing Saddam Hussein. Speaking to the Center for Defense Information on May 14, Zinni laid out America`s "ten crucial mistakes" in Iraq. Four are particularly noteworthy:

� "The strategy was flawed. I couldn`t believe what I was hearing about the benefits of this strategic move -- that the road to Jerusalem [i.e., to an Israeli-Palestinian peace] led through Baghdad, when just the opposite is true . . . [Or] the idea that we will walk in and be met with open arms . . . The idea that strategically we will reform, reshape and change the Middle East by this action -- we`ve changed it all right! All those that believed this [war] was going to be the catalyst for some kind of positive change . . . didn`t understand the region, the culture, the situation and the issues."

� "We had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support. . . . The books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence was not there . . . . The rationale that we faced an imminent threat, or a serious threat, was ridiculous."

� "We underestimated the task. And I think those of us that knew that region, former commanders in chief . . . beginning with General Schwarzkopf, have said you don`t understand what you`re getting into [in Iraq] . . . . I can`t understand why there was an underestimation when you look at a country that has never known democracy, that has been in the condition it`s been in, that has the natural fault lines that it has, and the issues it has. And to look at the task of reconstructing this country, not only reconstructing it, but the idea of creating Jeffersonian democracy almost overnight, is almost ridiculous, in concept . . ."

� "We failed . . . to internationalize the effort." The first President Bush, Zinni said, set an admirable standard by insisting on a U.N. resolution and a broad international coalition before launching war against Iraq in Kuwait in 1991. "Why would we believe that we would not get [similar international support] this time?. . . . And what was the rush to war?"

Last week, the administration remained bogged down in its Iraq swamp, not yet ready -- as it surely will have to be in the days or weeks ahead -- to confront what threatens to be a terminal crisis for George W. Bush. Tinkering won`t fix the problem; the administration is going to have to alter its course. This may require embracing the pragmatism that has often saved us from our worst mistakes in the past.

The events of the last few weeks recall the trauma of February and March in 1968, when Americans were absorbing the impact of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Tet was a brilliant military campaign that won no lasting military benefit for the Vietnamese communists who executed it, but which humiliated an ignorant, over-confident America and destroyed political support for the war in the United States.

Dean Acheson and Clark Clifford, two principal architects of "containment" -- the basis of American foreign policy toward Soviet and Chinese communists from Truman to Johnson and beyond -- told their friend and president, Lyndon B. Johnson, that the jig was up. The costs of war in Vietnam were too high to justify its continuation.

Soon afterward Johnson announced he would not seek reelection, and he asked the Vietnamese communists to negotiate peace. Exploiting antiwar sentiment, Richard M. Nixon won the presidency in 1968. His vanity and that of his principal aide, Henry A. Kissinger, prevented an early end to the war. They insisted on a "decent interval" before acknowledging defeat in Vietnam. It took seven more years, and tens of thousands of American and Vietnamese lives, to bring the war to an end.

Acheson, Clifford and Johnson -- and ultimately, Nixon and Kissinger -- accepted the idea that losing Vietnam would not be a disaster. In retrospect, we can say they were right. Today we cannot know the consequences of any of the choices we may make in Iraq. We can only hope that the end won`t be so long in coming this time.

Author`s e-mail:

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Robert Kaiser is associate editor and senior correspondent of The Post.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Morgen in seiner wöchentlichen Radioansprache will Bush einen neuen Irakplan vorlegen.

washingtonpost.com

President Plans Drive To Rescue Iraq Policy
Speeches, U.N. Action Will Focus on Future

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 23, 2004; Page A01

President Bush will launch an ambitious campaign tomorrow night to shift attention from recent setbacks that have eroded domestic and international support for U.S. policy in Iraq, particularly the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the escalating violence, and focus instead on the future of post-occupation Iraq.

The president will open a tightly orchestrated public relations effort in a speech at the Army War College outlining U.S. plans for the critical five weeks before the limited transfer of political power June 30. The White House then intends to circulate this week a draft U.N. resolution on post-occupation Iraq, wrap up negotiations with Iraqis on an interim government and begin shoring up the coalition to ensure that other foreign forces also stay after June 30, U.S. officials said.

"There`s a sense that this week is our chance to create some movement in a different direction. We`ll start talking about the future, not the past, by focusing on the U.N. resolution and [U.N. envoy Lakhdar] Brahimi`s transition process. Sure there`ll still be plenty of arguments, but it will be about the future, and that`s a healthy change," said a senior State Department official who would speak only on condition of anonymity.

The diplomatic campaign is a response to serious reversals over the past two months and to growing turmoil. Last week alone, the U.S.-appointed president of the Iraqi Governing Council was assassinated and a cabinet official was almost killed in a suicide bombing; in a disputed episode, more than 40 people were killed by U.S. troops at what Iraqis said was a wedding party; and 16 arrest warrants were issued for aides or associates of Ahmed Chalabi, a longtime Pentagon favorite to help lead postwar Iraq, on charges related to financial issues, leading him to sever ties with the U.S.-led coalition.

The road ahead could get bumpier. France and Germany are urging that any new U.N. resolution stipulate a cutoff date for U.S. and foreign forces in Iraq. And negotiations by the U.N. and U.S. envoys in charge of identifying a new president, prime minister, two vice presidents and more than two dozen cabinet ministers have been complicated by a Kurdish threat not to participate unless a Kurd gets one of the two top positions.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) criticized Bush`s plans for Iraq`s future as imprecise. "I am very hopeful that the president and his administration will articulate precisely what is going to happen as much as they can, day by day, as opposed to a generalization," the Associated Press quoted Lugar as saying yesterday at Tufts University.

In the first of at least six presidential speeches on Iraq before June 30, Bush will particularly try to counter growing criticism that Washington has lowered the goal posts for its year-long occupation, U.S. officials said. Critics and Iraq experts have charged that the administration has backed down from its original pledge to create a strong new democracy that would be a catalyst for a broad political transformation in the Middle East and is instead settling on an exit strategy that will leave a fragile government unable to protect itself.

"He will talk about the importance of not lowering our sights and sticking to our goals of a free, peaceful, democratic Iraq, of adhering to our commitment to the June 30 transfer of sovereignty, and of an election in a January time frame," said a White House official who insisted on anonymity.

Bush will also explain the U.S. security and political roles after June 30 until Iraq winds up the second of the three phases -- with the first democratic elections next January -- in the transition to a permanent government by the end of 2005, U.S. officials said. "He`ll talk about the importance of Iraqis taking more and more responsibility for security in their own country and about our efforts to train up a professional army and security force," said the White House official.

After the Bush speech, the administration will circulate the text of a new U.N. resolution pledging to transfer "full sovereignty" to Iraq, compromise language addressing Iraqi and European requests that the United States not retain any powers after June 30, U.S. officials said. To get around French and German demands, the United States may offer to give Iraq the authority to decide whether it wants foreign forces to continue to provide security, the officials said.

The general U.S. hope is that both Iraqis and key U.N. members will view the language on the top political and security issues as a signal of Washington`s commitment to cede control as soon as possible. The draft resolution, which is not expected to be put up for a vote until after the new Iraqi government is announced, will also underscore that the use of Iraq`s resources, most notably oil, will be determined by Iraqis, U.S. officials said.

Before the Memorial Day weekend, the White House hopes Brahimi and U.S. presidential envoy to Iraq Robert D. Blackwill will put the most critical final piece in play by announcing the new interim government, although this will depend on wrapping up complicated negotiations among Iraq`s ethnic and religious factions. The joint U.N.-U.S. team thought it had a tentative slate for the top four jobs until Kurdish leaders balked at settling for the vice presidency, forcing further talks, U.S. officials said.

To turn the tide, the Bush administration also hopes to generate movement on the two other most pressing issues in the volatile Middle East -- the Palestinian-Israeli crisis and the U.S. democracy initiative for the greater Middle East.

"The only way out of this hole is to keep our promises: to punish the people responsible for Abu Ghraib, to really turn over authority and full sovereignty to Iraqis, and to help the Palestinians take advantage of the opportunity offered by Israel [to turn over the Gaza strip] and to support reform," said the senior State Department official.

To shore up the coalition, Bush will also begin hosting leaders of countries that have troops in Iraq. The United States is intent on stopping contributing nations from pulling out after the June 30 handover, because some nations have mandates to stay in Iraq only until the U.S.-led occupation ends. Spain and Honduras have withdrawn troops, partly in response to the escalating violence.

Bush will host Salvadoran President Francisco Flores on Thursday and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Friday, the White House announced last week. Among European nations, Denmark has been stalwart in its support for the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq -- a stark contrast to France, Germany and Russia, which opposed the war to topple Saddam Hussein.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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HE NATION
Bush Slide in Polls Could Tip Congress to Democrats
Republican majorities seemed safe, but rising unease on Iraq and the economy is rubbing off.
By Janet Hook
Times Staff Writer

May 23, 2004

WASHINGTON — With President Bush`s political strength eroding, Democrats face improved electoral prospects this fall in the House and Senate — political terrain that not long ago seemed firmly in the GOP`s grip.

Recent polls indicate that problems in Iraq and continuing lack of confidence in the economy are not only hurting Bush but undercutting voters` assessment of Republicans in Congress.

For Democrats, the challenge remains to translate that general discontent into specific victories. But the party`s chances of winning control of the Senate have significantly improved in recent months, because of both the unexpected strength of Democratic candidates in several Bush strongholds and retirements by GOP incumbents. And the bid by the Democrats to take over the House, though still a long shot, would gain momentum next week if they won an open seat in South Dakota — a surprisingly likely prospect in a heavily Republican state. That would be the Democrats` second victory in a special House election this year.

Republicans are clearly more nervous about the fight for Capitol Hill than they were a year ago. Back then, confident GOP leaders ambitiously aspired to expanding their narrow control of the House and Senate to establish a durable majority that would dominate national politics for years to come.

"The psychology has changed from one of [achieving] a permanent victory to maintaining the status quo," said Michael Franc, a Republican who is a vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington.

Many Republicans also are heaving a collective sigh of relief that Election Day is not right around the corner.

"To panic or feel elation six months before the election is an exercise in self-flagellation," said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

"This is just the beginning of the summer," said Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.). "But if we get to Labor Day and we have these numbers in the polls, we have a big problem."

The congressional races have been overshadowed by the presidential campaign, but their stakes are high for Bush because they will determine whether he faces a hostile Congress if he wins a second term. To help try to make it a friendly one, First Lady Laura Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been campaigning for congressional candidates.

In the House, where 218 seats constitute a majority, there currently are 228 Republicans, 205 Democrats, one independent who routinely votes with the Democrats and the one vacant seat. In the Senate, there are 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and one independent who usually sides with the Democrats.

Even with those slender margins, many Democrats a year ago doubted they could recapture either chamber.

In the House, new district lines drawn after the 2000 census made safe seats even safer and reduced the potentially competitive ones to a few dozen. Then, with an eye on this year`s election, Texas legislators redrew House districts in the state to give Republicans the potential to gain as many as six seats there. In the Senate, the fight also began with a tilt against the Democrats because they had to defend 19 seats up for election, compared with the GOP`s 16. The outlook became grimmer as five Democratic senators from the South — a region Republicans have come to dominate — decided not to seek reelection.

But the recent breaks have gone to the Democrats.

Last month, Republican Rep. Jack Quinn of New York announced he would retire, opening a House seat that Democrats have a good shot at winning. And a Democrat won a special election in Kentucky, taking over a GOP-held seat.

In South Dakota`s June 1 special election, Democrat Stephanie Herseth has been leading Republican Larry Diedrich in the polls. The vote will fill the seat vacated when Republican Rep. William J. Janklow was convicted of second-degree manslaughter after running a stop sign and killing a motorcyclist.

More broadly, Democrats were encouraged by recent polls showing their party had gained an edge over the GOP when people were asked how they would vote in congressional elections.

A Time/CNN poll found that 53% said they would vote for a Democratic candidate for Congress in their district, compared with 40% who said they would back the Republican. A survey for the Associated Press reported that that 50% wanted Democrats to win control of Congress, compared with 41% favoring the Republicans.

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, said such results probably reflected weakening support for Bush rather than a solid indication of voting intentions. But they also were a reminder that "no president gets turned out of office without taking some of his brethren in Congress with him," Kohut said.

Republican strategists say such broad measures of public opinion are too generic to predict the outcomes in specific House races, which often are determined by local concerns. Other GOP leaders, however, worry that if these polls presage a major political swing that lasts into the fall, House seats not now competitive will become so.

"If that really is the mood of the country … we`ll have races that turn from monkeys into gorillas," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.), former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Contests in the South will be key in the battle for the Senate. Democrats were dealt a blow when party incumbents in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina decided to retire. But so far, Republicans have staked out a clear advantage only in Georgia.

Limiting their losses to one seat in the South would be a major victory for the Democrats.

Meanwhile, Democrats hope to score pickups in Colorado, Illinois and Oklahoma — seats opened by GOP retirements. The Democratic candidate in Illinois is favored to win there, and the party has fielded strong contenders in the other two states.

Alaska, a GOP bastion, also has turned into a tight race. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski faces a primary challenge from the right and, if she survives that vote, tough Democratic opposition from Tony Knowles, a popular former governor.

Jennifer E. Duffy, an analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said that in her estimation, such developments have reduced GOP chances of keeping control of the Senate to about 60%. Earlier this year, she had rated that prospect at 90%.

"We are in an extremely volatile environment," said Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "There has been a major failure to manage the occupation in Iraq, which opens up people`s minds to the question of whether there has been competent management on a bunch of other issues."

A benefit for Republicans is that many of the most competitive Senate races are in states where Bush is favored, which should boost GOP turnout. And Republican strategists argue that Senate campaigns are less likely than House contests to turn on national trends.

"These races are going to be won or lost at the state level," said Dan Allen, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Still, the rapid swing of the political pendulum looms as a wild card. Less than six months ago, shortly after U.S. troops captured former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the Gallup poll found Bush`s approval rating was over 60%; now it is down to 46%. Back then, more than half of those surveyed were satisfied with the direction of the country; now, almost two-thirds are dissatisfied. "It`s an object lesson in how quickly things can change in this environment," said GOP pollster Whit Ayres, "and how event-driven they are."


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Power Outage
The U.S. is falling far behind its rivals in developing alternative energy sources
By Paul Roberts
Paul Roberts writes about the energy industry for Harper`s Magazine and other national publications. He is the author of "The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World."

May 23, 2004

SEATTLE — For anyone trying to imagine where America will be getting its energy in two decades, news that Ford`s new line of hybrid vehicles will feature a key component of Toyota`s hybrid technology was depressing.

Not that Japanese automotive technology is anything to sniff at. When it comes to making gas-electric hybrids that actually sell, Toyota and Honda are the market leaders — meaning Ford will probably have its hybrid on the market much faster than if it developed a complete hybrid system in-house. But that`s the rub.

By outsourcing some of its technology needs to Toyota, Ford has demonstrated yet again how the United States, ostensibly the most technologically advanced nation in history, is losing a key opportunity not only to shape the next energy economy, but perhaps to effectively compete in that economy as well. And given the troubled state of our oil-based energy system, with its growing political, environmental and supply issues, the failure to be an aggressive player in the new energy economy could pose serious long-term problems — especially for countries as energy-hungry as the United States.

It hasn`t always been this way. For nearly a century, U.S. innovations dominated not just the energy business but related businesses, especially automobiles.

Back several decades, when the Arab embargo and the price spikes of the 1970s made the oil economy appear obsolescent, Americans dominated the search for alternatives, such as solar and wind power, in the hopes of cutting U.S. oil imports.

Government agencies lavished funding on research into solar technologies. Congress granted tax breaks to citizens and companies that bought solar equipment, and it required utilities to buy any excess electricity generated by solar systems or wind farms. America seemed on the verge of an energy revolution. Industry too was on board. Exxon, Arco and Mobil invested heavily in solar technology — not to put it out of business, as some conspiracy theorists believe, or because they thought that solar was intrinsically better than oil, but simply for insurance: If solar did become cost-competitive, Big Oil hoped to control that market as well.

By the mid-1980s, however, the U.S. solar boom had gone bust. Oil prices had fallen dramatically, removing a key incentive for non-oil technologies. Costs for alternatives, such as solar, were still too high to compete with traditional energy sources, such as oil or coal. But the deeper problem was simply that government support had vanished. Even as the Reagan administration moved aggressively to rejuvenate American oil, gas and coal production, providing tax breaks and subsidies worth billions of dollars, the White House was openly hostile to alternative energy. The administration cut R&D funding, and in a grand, symbolic gesture ripped out the solar panels that had been installed on the White House roof by Reagan`s Democratic predecessor, Jimmy Carter.

Yet even as America rediscovered fossil fuels, quite another strategy was unfolding elsewhere: Both Germany and Japan began aggressively pushing research in solar, wind and other alternatives. Just as important, both countries have moved to build new markets for alternative technologies — for instance, by subsidizing homeowner purchases of solar panels or helping farmers who want to install wind turbines. By creating more demand, these programs have increased the number of solar cells or wind turbines being manufactured, which is driving down the unit costs — ideally, to the point where alternatives can compete directly with conventional energy.

The results are encouraging. Joachim Luther, director of Germany`s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, a leading solar research center in the world, is upbeat. He says that if current trends in research continue, by as early as 2008 solar energy could be competing, without government subsidies, against coal or gas in sunny regions, such as the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the American Southwest. To be sure, solar will never replace fossil fuels outright. Solar panels take up a lot of space, and their manufacture has its own environmental downsides. Yet solar is growing fast — at 21% a year, or about as fast as cellphones in their early years — and with continued government support and targeted research, this technology could make up a significant portion of the energy mix in the future, thus helping to reduce some of the environmental, political and economic liabilities of our current fossil fuel-dominated system.

So where is the U.S. in all this? On the sidelines. Not only have Germany and Japan far outstripped the United States in solar power (last year alone, Japan installed nearly five times as much new solar capacity as America did), but the leading manufacturers of solar technology are companies such as Sharp, Kyocera and Sanyo. In short, even as the solar market appears ready to take off — and provide not just cleaner energy but a new source of jobs and tax revenues — the United States is, relatively speaking, nowhere to be seen.

What`s behind America`s sluggishness? Certainly, it`s not a lack of know-how. At facilities such as the U.S. Energy Department`s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., for instance, researchers push the limits on solar technology. But what`s missing is a political commitment from Washington to give alternatives the same priority as oil, gas and coal.

Not only must we push alternatives such as solar or wind, but new technologies as well. For if the history of technology has taught us anything, it`s that solutions don`t always come from an expected quarter or in a familiar form. And in the energy economy of the future — which will not only have to supply more energy to more people but do so with fewer resources and fewer emissions — more innovation, not less, is what we`ll need.

Sadly, such a push isn`t likely under the current administration. President Bush`s national energy strategy has promoted traditional energy production even more aggressively than Reagan`s did, and has been even more dismissive of alternatives and conservation. At an international conference on development in 2002, the United States joined with such oil-producing countries as Saudi Arabia to defeat a resolution that would have committed all nations to boost renewable energy`s share of the global market to 15% by 2010. U.S. officials insisted, with some justification, that such a goal was unrealistic.

But it`s also true that many U.S. energy companies (some happened to be major contributors to the president`s election campaign) had no interest in a U.S. policy that supported anything but traditional energy systems.

Sadly, such an attitude at the top not only makes it hard to expand America`s presence in alternative energy, it actually erodes what small success we`ve achieved. The American wind industry, for instance, was until recently growing at 30% a year. Helped by a small federal subsidy, U.S. wind farms were nearly cost-competitive with coal-fired power and even cheaper than power plants burning natural gas.

Granted, U.S. wind farms were forced to use turbines imported from Europe, where the wind business is a major source of high-wage jobs that could easily be American. Nonetheless, the fact remained that a form of alternative energy was finally gaining a presence in the U.S. energy market. Unfortunately, Congress last fall failed to renew the small government subsidy for wind power. U.S. lawmakers have promised to push for the subsidy later this year, but without a clear signal from the White House, the fate of the program is not clear.

In the meantime, many planned U.S. wind projects are on hold. Experts expect relatively little development in the U.S. wind market this year — even as European wind farmers and European wind-turbine makers brace for another banner year. When it comes to Americans and alternative energy, success, not failure, seems to be our biggest fear.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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TECHNOLOGY
Success Chipped Away at Silicon Valley`s Might
Its business model found new homes as potent forces caused the glory days to fade.
By Joel Kotkin
Joel Kotkin, a contributing editor to Opinion, is a senior fellow with the Davenport Institute for Public Policy at Pepperdine University. He is finishing a history of cities for Modern Library.

May 23, 2004

The recent announcement of a $2.7-billion stock offering by search-engine giant Google is a much-needed boost to the Silicon Valley`s struggling psyche.

After nearly four years of bankruptcies, the loss of more than 200,000 jobs and the slaughter of countless dreams of avarice, can the Google moment revive the valley`s economy and restore its near-mythic standing in the high-tech world?

The initial public offering, or IPO, will create another tiny cadre of young multimillionaires, but it will not make it any easier for Silicon Valley to withstand a growing number of competitors, foreign and domestic.

This isn`t to say that the valley`s lease on high-tech preeminence will expire, or that it will become the 21st century`s equivalent of the Rust Belt. The region`s residual technological prowess and financial resources are simply far too great. What seems more likely is a slow, continual downsizing of its traditionally outsized role in the world`s high-tech marketplace.

"Silicon Valley used to be the center of the galaxy in technology when there were fewer planets," says John Sien, a former high-level executive at Hewlett-Packard. "We controlled most of everything. Now that galaxy is distributed."

Sien contends that the valley is no longer at the core of the technology industry but has become more of a hub. The valley will continue to incubate new technological trends, serve as a media clearinghouse for the industry and be a prime source of funding for promising companies.

In short, its new role will be similar to what Wall Street does in finance and Hollywood in entertainment.

Yet it will not reclaim its former dominance in manufacturing and research and development. The bulk of new employment and many leading high-tech companies will be in such diverse locales as Arizona, the Great Plains, India and China.

The valley`s current competitive crisis grew largely out of its success.

Since the 1970s, the area between the San Francisco Peninsula and its southern suburbs has enjoyed rapid income and population growth. These developments had two unanticipated effects.

First, the transformation of a mostly rural area into a premier industrial region stimulated planners, entrepreneurs and investors to target high-technology development.

Thirty years ago, economic development officials went after manufacturing giants such as General Motors. Today, they seek ways to synthesize the "elixir" that transformed the Silicon Valley into gold.

The valley did much to promote the high-tech declustering now haunting it. The telecommunications technology and software developed there allowed for the growth of jobs and key marketing functions elsewhere. As a result, Silicon Valley has become the virtual home of many companies.

Valley companies also exported their innovative business culture. Silicon Valley-based attorneys, accountants and consultants spread the high-tech model — critical technologies, plans for valley-style industrial parks, venture-capital financing — around the world.

In the United States, there are valley clones operating in Greater Washington, Atlanta and Orlando, Fla., and in such smaller communities as Madison, Wis., and Fargo and Sioux Falls, N.D. More impressive is the development of technology hotbeds in labor-rich China and in India, which alone possesses roughly one in three of the world`s software engineers.

The rapid dispersion of the Silicon Valley model, says Phil Mahoney, a principal in the valley`s largest commercial real estate firm, means that even in a broad tech recovery, as much as one-third of the region`s industrial space will remain unused.

"When a company here grows by four, one will be here, one will be in Austin and two in Mumbai [Bombay]," he says.

The second unanticipated effect of the valley`s success centers on the deteriorating quality of life there. As incomes and population increased, the area became more crowded and expensive.

Twenty years ago, the Santa Clara Valley was a relatively affordable, classic suburbia. Today, even small houses cost nearly $1 million, placing the area out of bounds for newcomers, particularly younger families in their 30s.

The consequences of high housing prices and traffic congestion have become less tolerable since the late 1990s. Surveys of graduating engineering students from Iowa, a longtime source of valley talent, reveal a shift in residency preference to more affordable places such as Minneapolis, Denver and Kansas City, Mo.

Sacramento — where roughly three in 10 new residents are from the Bay Area — as well as Des Moines, Las Vegas, Reno and Phoenix increasingly appeal to knowledge workers, notably young couples with children.

The valley`s working-class residents shouldered the hardest blows.

In the 1970s and `80s, large employers — Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Lockheed Missile and Space — offered high-wage jobs and good benefits to tens of thousands. These workers varied widely in skill level.

At the same time, smaller supplier firms, many in basic manufacturing, employed — albeit at somewhat lower wages — a large portion of the growing Latino and Asian immigrant population.

The dot-com boom of the 1990s dealt a lethal blow to this highly diverse economy, largely at the expense of manufacturing workers. But only when the bubble crashed in 2000, says Leslie Parks, San Jose`s former economic director, did cities and investors finally feel the pain.

As public funds and speculative capital dried up, ambitious billion-dollar plans to transform downtown San Jose from a glorified Modesto by the Bay into the "capital of Silicon Valley" cratered.

The political climate made matters worse. Once a bastion of pro-business moderate Republicans, the region was now dominated by left-leaning Democrats.

Just as the tech market began to sag, new regulatory initiatives were imposed on business. Strict development controls, pushed by powerful environmental interests, stymied developer attempts to increase needed housing, which explains why the recent downturn did not dampen housing costs.

The convergence of politics, high living costs and a weak tech market transformed the valley from one of the nation`s most prodigious job producers into one that, over the last four years, suffered the highest rate of job loss of any major metropolitan region in the country.

These losses — far higher in percentage terms than many other tech-oriented regions — were not restricted to manufacturing but included finance, business and information services.

The powerful, secular trends that set in motion the decline of Silicon Valley appear to be slowing, although the region did lose an additional 23,000 jobs last year.

Companies such as Google and emerging industries including biotechnology and nanotechnology may fail to reignite the region`s former broad-based growth. Taken together, the valley`s three current corporate stars — EBay, Yahoo and Google — employ only about 5,000, hardly enough to offset the mammoth job loses of the last decade.

Even a wildly successful Google offering may do little more than provide a shot in the arm to the luxury home market, says Mahoney, the commercial real estate agent.

Yet the news is not all bad. Google`s success, so reminiscent of the valley`s glory days, does burnish the valley`s reputation as a peerless center for innovation.

And in the coming decade, though most tech companies and entrepreneurs may find the valley a difficult place to do business, many may still want to maintain a presence there.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Sunday, May 23, 2004
War News for May 23, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi police captain killed in ambush near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqis killed by mortar fire near Basra.

Bring ‘em on: Dean of Diyala University escapes assassination attempt near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Fourteen Iraqis killed in continued fighting near Najaf.

Bring ‘em on: Sixteen Iraqis killed in heavy fighting near Kufa.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi policeman killed, two wounded by bomb ambush near Basra.

US Army MPs raid Iraqi police station near Fallujah.

Iran sends formal warning to US over actions in Iraq.

Rummy bans camera phones from US Army installations in Iraq. “Quoting a Pentagon source, the paper said the US Defence Department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones.”

Spin control. “President Bush will launch an ambitious campaign Monday night to shift attention from recent setbacks that have eroded domestic and international support for U.S. policy in Iraq, particularly the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the escalating violence, and focus instead on the future of post-occupation Iraq. The president will open a tightly orchestrated public relations effort in a speech at the Army War College outlining U.S. plans for the next critical five weeks before the June 30 transfer of political power. The White House then intends this week to circulate a draft United Nations resolution on post-occupation Iraq, wrap up negotiations with Iraqis on an interim government and begin shoring up the coalition to ensure that other foreign forces also stay after June 30, U.S. officials said.”

Sen. Hagel sounds off. “Hagel, who also sits on the Intelligence Committee, says that Bush ‘may be more isolated than any president in recent memory’ and therefore susceptible to faulty advice. Much of that advice, Hagel says, has come from Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and former Pentagon official Richard Perle. But the problem, in Hagel`s view, was compounded by the president`s lack of foreign-policy experience. ‘I think you`ve got a president who is not schooled, educated, experienced in foreign policy in any way, versus his father,’ Hagel says. ‘I think he was philosophically, intellectually more in tune with the neoconservatives`approach to `let`s go get them, and we`ll worry about it later.’”

Sen. Lugar sounds off. “’Unless the United States commits itself to a sustained program of repairing and building alliances, expanding trade, pursuing resolutions to regional conflicts, supporting democracy and development worldwide, and controlling weapons of mass destruction, we are likely to experience acts of catastrophic terrorism that would undermine our economy, damage our society, and kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people,’ Lugar will say in the commencement speech. Lugar, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Commission, has critiqued the Bush administration for lack of planning for the Iraq war and aftermath. But the commencement speech is his sharpest criticism to date. ‘It`s a powerful indictment of the approach the United States has taken in the last 3 1/2 years,’ said Jay Farrar, vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ‘It shows the administration has fumbled the ball.’ Farrar said Lugar`s speech ‘says what a lot of people have been thinking over the last couple of years: The approach we`ve taken is not only the wrong approach, it`s morally bankrupt and has set the United States back so much further than we were at the beginning of this administration.’”

General Zinni sounds off. Long but very insightful transcript of a presentation given to the Center for Defense Information by General Zinni.

Lieutenant AWOL’s “tax relief” for troops. “An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 military members fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan last year received combat-zone tax exclusions that had a surprising effect: lowered family incomes. Some families saw a net loss in tax benefits of more than $4,000 because wartime tax exclusions disqualified them for more valuable tax breaks, including the Earned Income Tax Credit...A Defense Department proposal to address the problem this spring failed to clear the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Treasury officials said it would lower tax revenues and therefore opposed it.”

The Brat Pack. “When Ledeen`s group showed up at the palace -- with their North Face camping gear, Abercrombie & Fitch camouflage and digital cameras -- they were quite the spectacle. For some, they represented everything that was right with the CPA: They were young, energetic and idealistic. For others, they represented everything that was wrong with the CPA: They were young, inexperienced, and regarded as ideologues. Several had impressive paper credentials, but in the wrong fields. Greco was fluent in English, Italian and Spanish; Burns had been a policy analyst focused on family and health care; and Ledeen had co-founded a cooking school. But none had ever worked in the Middle East, none spoke Arabic, and few could tell a balance sheet from an accounts receivable statement. Other staffers quickly nicknamed the newcomers ‘The Brat Pack.’ ‘They had come over because of one reason or another, and they were put in positions of authority that they had no clue about,’ remembered Army Reserve Sgt. Thomas D. Wirges, 38, who had been working on rehabilitating the Baghdad Stock Exchange.
Some also grumbled about the new staffers` political ties. Retired U.S. Army Col. Charles Krohn said many in the CPA regard the occupation ‘as a political event,’ always looking for a way to make the president look good.” It’s interesting to note that these young ideologues were all recruited from the Heritage Foundation. No wonder the CPA has made such a mess out of reconstruction in Iraq.

Commentary

Analysis: “We have not made a ‘a crucial advance in the campaign against terror,’ the words President Bush used when he declared victory in "Operation Iraqi Freedom" on May 1, 2003. Instead we have stimulated new hatred of the United States in precisely the regions from which future terrorist threats are most likely to arise, while alienating our traditional allies. By embracing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon`s plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza, we abandoned the "honest broker" role that U.S. governments tried to play for four decades in the Middle East, and we confirmed the conspiratorial suspicions of every anti-American Arab. Our credibility has been battered.”

Analysis: “The occupation of Iraq has affirmed the worst fears of the Islamic world, reinforcing distaste for America and what it represents, and spawning wild conspiracy theories about the motives of the West. Many Muslims now see the American intervention as a devastating betrayal, starkly reflected by the Red Cross`s recent conclusion that 70 to 90 percent of all Iraqis who were ‘deprived of their liberty’ -- by the world champion of democracy – ‘were arrested by mistake.’ Others in the region react with fury to the symbolism of a naked Arab male on a concrete floor tethered to a female American soldier looking down with disinterested arrogance on her prisoner at Abu Ghraib.”

Analysis: “We are not yet at a point where we might have to withdraw the Army from Iraq in order to save it, but we are getting close. Just as Vietnam destroyed the draftee Army, Iraq could undermine the all-volunteer Army. No wonder the Army War College says the Army is near its breaking point and retired Army Lt. Gen. William E. Odom argues that, for the sake of our security, we should remove our forces from Iraq as quickly as possible. To remedy the situation, the administration needs to add two active-duty divisions as soon as possible. Delay will place the Army and the country in danger.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Massachusetts Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Florida soldier wounded in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



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Sunday Herald - 23 May 2004
The Loser?
Presidents whose public approval ratings drop below 50% rarely retake the White House. That is the losing club George W Bush will now find himself in … but only if John Kerry can seize the initiative
From Ros Davidson in Los Angeles

IN a sign of the times, President George W Bush is not fundraising for re-election this weekend. Nor is he attending his twin daughters’ college graduations – which the White House claims is about preserving their privacy.

Bush is prepping for a rare prime-time speech tomorrow, on Iraq. It’s a contrast with Friday, when the Commander in Chief unsuccessfully tried to balance his usual style with a defence of his administration.

“Choose your friends carefully,” the folksy President told students at Louisiana State University. His secret in life? “Listen to your mother.” He also warned of the hatred of America’s enemies and said he remains committed to his policies in Iraq.

In another sign of the election’s volatility, a row of lecturers and professors refused to stand even as others rose and applauded him – notable given that this was the Deep South, where Democrats usually lose. After a 15-minute speech, Bush rushed to a supporter’s home where donors paid £14,000 a head for sea bass and salad with George.

It’s the cognitive dissonance of an American election, all hoopla and money, and world-changing events. First Lady Laura Bush cracked jokes with TV host Jay Leno on Wednesday about her weightlifting – “I’m quite buff” – and her intimidating mother-in-law.

Meanwhile vice-president Dick Cheney played attack dog and tried to divert attention from Iraq. Campaigning for fellow Republicans in Texas, he slammed Bush’s opponent John Kerry as “indecisive” and told his audience, pointedly, that it will be Americans who decide November’s election.

The US’s politics are routinely isolated from all but domestic issues. This election year is in uncharted waters, as the cliché goes, because of Iraq, national security, and job losses.

Bush’s ratings are below 50%. In the last half century, that’s a depth only seen by incumbents who failed to retake the White House: Bush’s father George Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.

“He is in dangerous territory now,” says pollster John Zogby. So unpredictable is the race, some have suggested a landslide for Senator Kerry. That is not as yet likely for a Democrat from Massachusetts, home to the Kennedys and gay marriage.

But as every political pro knows, six months is a very long time in electioneering. Even so, as Bush’s popularity is dropping, Kerry’s is not rising as quickly as it might. The election is just not galvanising America – though it rarely, if ever, does so before autumn. The two men are still in a dead heat when potential voters are asked to compare them.

More people are undecided. In November, the outcome could be dependent on how many Americans are too disenchanted to vote, warns Daniel Schorr, National Public Radio’s senior news analyst.

Already, slightly more than 50% of Americans do not bother – the highest rate in the developed world. And current events are so off-putting that that proportion could increase.

In an extraordinary trial balloon, Kerry’s campaign has suggested he might buy time by waiting before formally accepting his party’s nomination, a ritual that is traditionally the high point of each party’s convention in the summer.

Such a move, unprecedented in US political history, would diminish Bush’s financial advantage. Once a candidate is nominated, he is limited to the £50 million in public financing allocated to each major candidate.

Kerry’s situation, especially as a Democrat, is unusual. He is the first to forego public funding during the primaries, the first segment of America’s presidential elections which means his spending is unlimited. Bush made the same choice this year, as he had in 2000 when he ran against Democrat Al Gore. At this point in the race Gore was almost broke and had to coast until the convention.

Democrats meet in Boston in late July. The Republican convention is a month later in New York. If Kerry were to accept the nomination as expected, he would have to stretch his public funding a month longer than would Bush, a disadvantage his opponent would presumably hammer home with an advertising blitz during August.

But Kerry is raising money twice as fast, a trend that may or may not continue. Democrats chose an early date for their convention, assuming that Kerry would need cash early.

Some Democrats even suggested that delegates could vote online; or party leaders could reconvene to nominate Kerry on September 1 – not coincidentally in the middle of the Republicans’ event – and steal the limelight. A resolution would have to be approved by the convention delegates, elected during the primaries.

But when the idea was leaked to Associated Press on Friday night, experts suggested that such a move might suck the life out of the convention. Time to rally the troops.

“Only John Kerry could be for a nominating convention but be against the nomination,” says Ken Mehlman, Bush’s campaign manager. “This is just the latest example of John Kerry’s belief that the rules are for other people, not for him.”

The Bush campaign is trying to paint Kerry as an elite New Englander who waffles on issues and is out of touch with most of the US. Remarkably, Kerry raised $1m dollars a day during April, according to figures released late last week.

He has thus managed to smash the conventional wisdom that he would be wiped out by the Bush-Cheney money machine. “The issue was, could Kerry raise the money he needed to get his message out and campaign aggressively through the summer? He’s done that,” Anthony Corrado, an analyst and former Democratic campaigner, told The Washington Post. Democrats are united, for the most part, in trying to oust Bush. In fact, many say this is the most important election in more than a generation.

Kerry has one million volunteers, according to fundraising letters sent to supporters. And yesterday, supporters were to hold 2000 “house parties” across the country to raise enough for a “miracle in May”: more cash than in April.

Bush, whose fundraising abilities are legendary, still has the advantage. At the end of April, he had almost two and a half times as much cash on hand as Kerry. But he has also been spending a record amount . During March and early April, Bush spent almost £30m on advertising that apparently failed to bolster his ratings.

The White House is facing blistering criticism on Iraq and an increasingly worried and disoriented party. In an embarrassing election-year setback, a handful of Republicans broke rank late last week on Bush’s proposed £1.38 trillion budget.

Rather than face defeat in the closely divided Senate, Republican leaders withdrew the initiative and will reintroduce it later. That came shortly after Bush went to Capitol Hill, an appeasing gesture by a President, to rally support.

Government spending has increased under Bush, a source of deep displeasure to fiscal conservatives. Much of the cost of the war in Iraq is not in the annual budget.

In a recent column, the influential conservative Robert Novak noted that one fifth of registered Republicans told a recent poll that they were not committed to Bush – a fact that could spell defeat in a closely contested election.


Copyright © 2004 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088

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The Rise and Fall of Chalabi: Bush`s Mr. Wrong
Ahmad Chalabi may go down as one of the great con men of history. But his powerful American friends are on the defensive now, and Chalabi himself is under attack.

Karim Ben Khelifa for Newsweek / Karim Ben Khelifa

Ahmad Chalabi`s home in Baghdad after a raid by U.S. troops and Iraqi police

By Evan Thomas and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5040831/
May 31 issue - For the hard-liners at the Defense Department, the raid came as a surprise. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his senior deputies, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, got the news from the media. When Iraqi police, guarded by American GIs, burst into the home and offices of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, looking for evidence of kidnapping, embezzlement, torture and theft, the men who run the Pentagon were left asking some uncomfortable questions. "Who signed off on this raid?" wondered one very high-ranking official. "What were U.S. soldiers doing there?" asked another, according to a source who was present in the room.

Until at least very recently, Chalabi had been the darling of these top Pentagon officials. How could it be that the men who run the most powerful military in the world could not know that their own troops were about to run a raid on a man once regarded as the hope of free Iraq? Just last January, Chalabi had been seated behind First Lady Laura Bush at the State of the Union Message. Now, according to intelligence officials, he is under investigation by the United States for leaking damaging secrets to the government of Iran.

A civil war simmered in Iraq last week, not between Sunnis and Shiites, but between American government officials. On the one side are the neoconservatives inside the Pentagon and the Bush administration who backed Chalabi as a freedom fighter; on the other are the spooks and diplomats who have long distrusted the former Iraqi exile with a taste for well-cut suits. The neocons, who once swaggered, seem to be slipping, losing confidence and clout. It is telling that the ground commanders in Baghdad who participated in the raid on Chalabi headquarters did not bother to inform their chain-of-command higher-ups at the Pentagon. (The raid was apparently OK`d by the American proconsul in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, probably with tacit approval of White House officials.) Embarrassed by horrific images from Abu Ghraib, a growing number of uniformed soldiers are blaming their political bosses in Washington—Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith—for whatever goes wrong in Iraq.

Americans may be beginning to wonder: is anyone in charge over there? For an administration that prides itself on clarity of leadership, the Bushies seem to be lost in the Mesopotamian sandstorm. Everyone and no one was responsible for the prisoner-abuse scandal; the deadline for turning over the country to a new government is five weeks away, and the outcome is highly uncertain. Chalabi, who was supposed to be Our Man in Baghdad, is now whipping up anti-American sentiment. It wasn`t long ago that Chalabi was touted as a great democrat, a friend of Israel, an Arab who "thought like us." He was going to help Americans reshape the troubled Middle East in our own image. But just as Chalabi once seemed to personify the utopian dreams of the true believers—remember those bouquets that would greet the troops?—his fall from grace suggests a more depressing turn in the Iraq reality show.

Chalabi should not be a scapegoat for all that ails the American occupation of Iraq. When it served their own ideological agenda, his neocon sponsors engaged in a willing suspension of disbelief. The ideologues at the Defense Department were warned by doubters at the State Department and CIA that Chalabi was peddling suspect goods. Even so, the Bushies were bamboozled by a Machiavellian con man for the ages. Chalabi (who vigorously denies wrongdoing and has donned a martyr`s robes) has survived a fraud conviction, betrayals and scandals before. He may yet emerge on top. His story would be darkly entertaining, even funny after the fashion of a late John le Carre novel, if the consequences were not so serious.

Chalabi, 59, is a Savile Row Shiite who has spent much more time in London than in Baghdad. His career as a banker has been a trail of lawsuits and investigations (and one conviction for fraud, in absentia by a military court, in Jordan; Chalabi says he was framed by Saddam Hussein). Along the way, Chalabi has worked as an American spy and enjoyed the life of bon vivant —and friend to the great. Though he plotted for years to overthrow Saddam, he was not taken seriously by the regime. NBC`s Tom Brokaw recalled a conversation with a friend of the then Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz on a trip to Baghdad in the summer of 2002. "You guys can have Chalabi!" the Saddam flunky told the American newsman. "You can keep feeding him all the prime rib and expensive Scotch. He doesn`t know anyone here. He hasn`t been to Iraq in 25 years."

But Saddam`s henchmen underestimated Chalabi`s wiles and staying power. He may be a dandy, but he is also a nervy risk taker. If he reinvents himself as an Iraqi patriot, his moral shortcomings may even be overlooked by history. Who remembers that in his day, Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America, was regarded as a crook? Engaging scoundrels can be effective, if they don`t get killed by the enemies they make (or fool) along the way.

Chalabi has not always charmed his patrons. His first run as a CIA asset in the early- and mid-` 90s was a disaster. Chalabi`s attempts to foment an insurrection were aborted in a fiasco still known around the agency as the "Bay of Goats." His case officers didn`t trust him. "There was a lot of hanky-panky with the accounting: triple billing, things that weren`t mentioned, things inflated... It was a nightmare," says a former U.S. intelligence official who worked with Chalabi. "His primary focus was to drag us into a war that [President] Clinton didn`t want to fight."

Chalabi had more luck with a group of Republican hard-liners who formed a kind of government-in-exile in the 1990s. So-called neoconservatives like Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, the veteran bureaucratic infighter known in the Reagan administration as the "Prince of Darkness," were drawn to Chalabi`s ideas. Several, like Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, a then obscure Washington lawyer who had once worked for Perle at the Pentagon—and now serves—as under secretary of Defense for policy—began talking about a speech Chalabi gave to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs in June 1997. In that speech,Chalabi promised that Saddam could be overthrown on the cheap if the United States dared back a guerrilla force led by Chalabi. (Feith told NEWSWEEK that he found Chalabi`s vision of post-Saddam Iraq to be "quite moving.") A side benefit, Chalabi suggested in his conversations with the neocons, would be an Arab country friendly to Israel. Soon Chalabi was dining from time to time with Perle, a fellow epicure.

But Chalabi was broke, or nearly so. In 1998 he and his friends skillfully lobbied Congress to provide funding for his organization, the Iraqi National Congress. The Iraq Liberation Act passed with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans. It was seen as an easy vote, giving the appearance of taking a stand against Saddam without actually having to do much.

Clinton had no intention of going to war with Iraq. Bush might not have either, but for 9/11. Before the terrorists struck, Bush administration policy toward Iraq consisted mostly of a futile attempt by Secretary of State Colin Powell to fiddle with sanctions against Iraq before the United Nations dropped them altogether. But the neocons in the Bush cabinet, led by Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, were ready to march on Baghdad before the World Trade Center stopped smoldering. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld were all itching to show off American strength. The rest of the government and the American people needed some persuading. Ever the opportunist, Chalabi came along to tell the war hawks just what they wanted to hear—and to provide the sort of frightening "evidence" that could galvanize the nation into action.

Chalabi is an expert manipulator who knows how to work the press as well as congressmen, lobbyists and think-tankers. He began coming up with Iraqi defectors who told reporters stories of Saddam`s allying with terrorists and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. After lurid stories appeared in the press (and softened up bureaucratic skepticism in the government), Chalabi would pass on the defectors to American intelligence agencies. Thus, in December 2001, Chalabi produced a defector who told The New York Times that he had seen biological- and nuclear-weapons labs hidden around Baghdad, including one underneath a hospital. The defector later became a source for the Defense Intelligence Agency. To Vanity Fair, Chalabi peddled another defector, a supposed former general in the Iraqi secret police, who told of terrorists-in-training practicing to hijack passenger aircraft at a secret base near Baghdad. (The defector, Abu Zeinab, was dismissed by the CIA as a "bullsh----er," according to an intelligence source; newly coached by the INC, he went back to the CIA and was again rejected.)

When American spooks proved resistant, Chalabi cozied up to their counterparts in foreign intelligence services. To the Germans, Chalabi provided a source code named "Curveball" (appropriately, as it turned out), who told of Saddam`s building mobile bioweapons labs. Another defector sent to the DIA by Chalabi supported Curveball`s tale. DIA labeled this defector a "fabricator" and attached a warning notice to his report, but the notice was so highly restricted that other intelligence officials never saw it. Both defectors` reports—apparently pure fiction—worked their way into official pronouncements and became part of the Bush administration`s building case for war. Months later, when Colin Powell was feeling burned for having dramatically presented "facts" to the United Nations Security Council that turned out to be shaky at best, the secretary of State privately, but bitterly, blamed Chalabi.

Powell also faults the neocons in the Bush administration who swallowed Chalabi`s phony stories and pushed them into speeches by the president and vice president. With his clever sense for bureaucratic gamesmanship, Chalabi fed the neocons` hunger for raw intelligence. If the CIA and other spy services weren`t going to come up with the goods on Saddam, then Chalabi would. He found a receptive audience in the office of the vice president and at the Pentagon. I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the veep`s chief of staff, and Wolfowitz were eagerly looking for links between Saddam and Al Qaeda. With his media friends, Chalabi hyped a story, often cited by the neocons, about a secret meeting in Prague between Muhammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, and a high-level Iraqi intelligence officer. (After months of investigation, the CIA and FBI determined that the meeting had never taken place.)

Much of Chalabi`s dubious intelligence was funneled to the DIA through top Pentagon civilians. Under Secretary Feith himself signed a long and detailed summary of the intelligence linking Saddam to terrorists and WMD. The Feith memo, stamped secret, submitted to Congress and leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine last summer, reads like a conspiracy theorist`s greatest hits. Interviewed last week by NEWSWEEK, Feith was a little defensive about his relationship with Chalabi. "The press stories would have him as my brother. I met him a few times. He was very smart, very articulate," Feith said. Feith allowed he has always been drawn to the stories of exiles who come back to save their countries. But he rejected the idea that he had been Chalabi`s tool or dupe.

Over at the State Department and CIA, career bureaucrats viewed Chalabi with a jaundiced eye. State Department auditors found that Chalabi had not always kept the most meticulous records of the funds flowing into the Iraqi National Congress. Diplomats suspected Chalabi was using taxpayers` money to fund his own war-propaganda campaign, which was barred by law. In the summer of 2002, the State Department moved to cut off Chalabi`s funding, but he was rescued by his friends at the Pentagon. That fall the Defense Department began picking up the check using secret intelligence funds. All told, Chalabi`s INC has been paid about $33 million by State and some $6 million by the DIA. (Not all of Chalabi`s intelligence operation was dodgy; last week, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers told Congress that some of the information turned over by the INC had saved the lives of American soldiers.)

With his eye on Saddam`s soon-to-be-empty throne, Chalabi took an active interest in planning for postwar Iraq. In retrospect, his involvement was unfortunate. At best, it contributed to government paralysis and fed a standoff between the ever-feuding State and Defense departments. Chalabi`s closest ally, Richard Perle, vigorously denied to NEWSWEEK that the neocons wanted to "install" Chalabi as the new head of Iraq. "No one installed by the United States could survive," said Perle. But the neocons did want to help train and equip Iraqi exiles loyal to Chalabi who could be airlifted into Iraq and take over as a security force (or as Chalabi`s private army, depending on your point of view).

The State Department stood against this plan. A team of diplomats and Arab experts worked up a 15-volume Future of Iraq project that Defense Department officials dismissed as overly academic and "nonoperational." At Feith`s office in the Pentagon, charged with postwar reconstruction, the Future of Iraq documents were consigned to the dustbin. When various Iraqi-exile groups met outside London in the fall of 2002 to try to compromise on a post-Saddam government, the outcome was the mild anarchy of dueling press conferences to announce vague and uncertain plans.

Doomed by bureaucratic infighting and a notable lack of enthusiasm among the community of potential freedom fighters, the plan to build an Iraqi-exile force fizzled. Something like 100 Iraqi men showed up to be trained as soldiers at a camp in Hungary. Nonetheless, Chalabi and his INC entourage were airlifted into southern Iraq by the Pentagon shortly after the American invasion in April 2003.

As soon as Saddam`s statue was toppled, Chalabi moved into Baghdad to become, in effect, the new nation`s first warlord. He set up office in the Baghdad Hunting Club, a comfortable, vaguely colonial-sounding establishment in a posh neighborhood, and then moved his operation into an edifice with outlandish pagoda-style turrets and vast corridors, known as "the Chinese House." Through associates, he took over the old Finance Ministry and later his clan set up one-stop shopping for foreign companies that wanted to do business in the new Iraq.

Chalabi was not universally endorsed in the upper echelons of the Bush administration. True, when President Bush went to the United Nations last September to proclaim a free Iraq, the man sitting in Iraq`s seat at the General Assembly was Ahmad Chalabi. But when Chalabi was first flown into Iraq by the Defense Department, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice was visibly startled when reporters gave her the news that Chalabi was on the ground and had rounded up a 700-man local army. Even Rumsfeld was less than a totally committed Chalabi partisan. "Why do people keep saying that Chalabi is my candidate?" Rumsfeld would wonder aloud at meetings of the Defense Advisory Board, according to Perle, who was a member. But a quick and sure Chalabi takeover offered Rumsfeld the one thing above all he wanted: a fast way to get American troops out of Iraq. No fan of "nation-building," Rumsfeld wanted a new Iraqi government that could take over and run the place.
It is not clear what role Chalabi played in the Bush administration`s decision to suddenly and totally "de-Baathify" Iraq, including the decision (now regretted) to disband the Iraqi Army. A senior Defense Department official deeply involved in the decision to purge Saddam`s Baath Party members says that Chalabi was not consulted. Nonetheless, when the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council was formed by Bremer that spring, it was Chalabi who took over the so-called De-Baathification Commission.

Chalabi set about his business with a vengeance. He acquired (he claims with American encouragement) vast stores of Baath Party records, including memberships and records of payments made and services rendered. With those tools, U.S. investigators now believe, Chalabi`s outfit was able to extort and blackmail to get his way. By threatening to expose old ties to Saddam, Chalabi could be very persuasive with Iraq`s new rulers and get rid of the ones he didn`t like. (Chalabi and his lawyers specifically deny the blackmail charge.)

A certain amount of corruption is to be expected when new governments arise out of old dictatorships. But, according to Iraqi investigators who raided Chalabi`s house and headquarters last week, Chalabi`s empire pushed the boundaries of brazenness. Today his extensive network of cousins and nephews runs almost every major bank. The minister of Finance, Kamel Gailani, is regarded as a weak Chalabi crony. "He was put in that position as a button for Chalabi," says a Coalition Provisional Authority official who works in the financial sector.

Judging from the allegations made last week in Baghdad, Chalabi has run the INC the way Tony Soprano runs the Bada Bing. Chalabi`s INC associates have been accused of using their connections at the Ministry of Finance and the major banks to commit fraud and embezzlement, according to charges that led to the raid on Chalabi`s headquarters. Chalabi`s men have also been accused of extortion and kidnapping by the Iraqi Central Criminal Court, which was set up by the U.S.-run CPA. Aides to Chalabi, who has not been personally charged with any crimes but is said to be a target of the investigation, claim that the criminal probe is an American plot to smear him.

The head of the CPA—Ambassador Bremer—is known to have tired of Chalabi`s shenanigans and his increasingly anti-American statements. The U.N. envoy to Baghdad, Lakhdar Brahimi, is reportedly fed up with Chalabi as well. Chalabi has been running his own investigation into the United Nations` old Oil-for-Food program. By identifying Iraqi businessmen and political figures who were siphoning off money from the humanitarian program—not to mention certain European and U.N. officials who may have had their hands in the till—Chalabi could resort to playing a blackmail game.

According to U.S. officials, Chalabi tried to quash the corruption investigation against him by some crude enticements. His nephew, Salem Chalabi, has been accused of offering, through an intermediary, one of the main Iraqi investigative magistrates a seat on the tribunal that will try Saddam Hussein. Last week the magistrate told NEWSWEEK that he had received such an offer, but declined to say from whom. Salem has denied making any such offer, and Chalabi and his associates all insist they will be cleared of any wrongdoing.

But Chalabi has clearly lost his get-out-of-jail-free card. American intelligence is particularly concerned with Chalabi`s former top intelligence chief, Aras Habib, who seems to have disappeared from Iraq. Habib has murky ties to Iranian intelligence; the FBI, NEWSWEEK has learned, is investigating whether Chalabi and his aide passed classified information to the Iranian government, as well as who in the U.S. government might have leaked it. A few American spooks even speculate that Habib has been working for Tehran all along—to the point of spreading disinformation about Saddam`s WMD stockpiles to help lure the Americans into toppling Saddam, Iran`s bitter enemy in a long and losing war during the 1980s. The theory seems very far-fetched—why would Tehran want America to occupy its neighbor Iraq? But in the back-stabbing, "Spy vs. Spy" world of Baghdad, all conspiracy theories have their day.

Chalabi`s defenders among the neocons are clearly weakened. Perle, his strongest advocate, had to drop off the Pentagon`s Defense Advisory Board because of various business interests. Feith had been under attack; his resignation or firing is routinely (though inaccurately) rumored in the press. Even Wolfowitz, the cockiest of the neocons, did something very unusual last week: he admitted, in congressional testimony, an error (overestimating Iraqi patience with foreign occupation).

Though Bremer was picked for his Baghdad job by Rumsfeld, he has fallen out with the Pentagon and now speaks more regularly to Rice and her staff at the White House. The uniformed military is in almost open revolt against its civilian masters in the offices of Wolfowitz and Feith. The troops resent the Bush administration hard-liners as dangerously ideological.

Their animus has been inflamed in recent weeks by the prisoner-abuse scandal. From the Joint Chiefs of Staff on down through the ranks, soldiers blame the politicians for making a hash of the war on terror. By throwing aside the protections of the Geneva Conventions, the true believers at Defense, the White House Counsel`s Office and the Justice Department may have put American soldiers at risk in future wars. The evidence mounts that the ideologues were at least cavalier about the laws that protect captured soldiers. NEWSWEEK has uncovered a Jan. 9, 2002, memo written by two Justice Department lawyers, John Yoo and Robert Delahunty, which argued that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to any Taliban or Qaeda fighters flown to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because Afghanistan was a "failed state" whose militia had no standing under international treaties.

The prisoner-abuse scandal, not the fall of Ahmad Chalabi, seemed to be animating the crowds in Baghdad. The list of top-this outrages grows: prisoners anally penetrated by phosphorus-tipped nightsticks, prisoners fondled by female guards, prisoners fed from toilets, prisoners ridden like dogs and prisoners forced to eat pork and drink liquor. Only a small crowd gathered outside U.S. headquarters in the Green Zone to protest the treatment of Chalabi. That didn`t stop Chalabi from sounding like a cross between Moses and Mahatma Gandhi. "Let my people go," he declared. "Let my people be free! It is time for the Iraqi people to run their own affairs." The Iraqis may run Chalabi to prison or out of the country. Right now, his poll rating in Iraq stands somewhere below Saddam Hussein`s. On the other hand, Chalabi has a way of resurfacing and reinventing himself. Why not as the man who took America for a ride and freed his country?

—With Michael Hirsh, Michael Isikoff and John Barry in Washington, Rod Nordland, Melinda Liu and Babak Dehghanpisheh in Baghdad, and Christopher Dickey in Paris

[Joerver]

________________

_________________Kommentar von der Verwandtschaft

[Joerver]

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 23. Mai 2004, 15:46
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,301107,00.h…

Nation in der Krise

Das ist nicht Amerika

Von Georg Diez

Gebt uns unser Land zurück: Wie die Welt des Glamour zum Widerstand gegen George W. Bush rüstet.

Daß die Demokratie ein Theater ist, das kann man so oder so deuten. Die einen werden Dir sagen, daß die Demokratie aus dem Theater kommt, und sie werden von Athen reden und von Aischylos; die anderen werden Dir sagen, daß die Demokratie zum Theater verkommen ist, und sie werden von Parlamenten reden, von Kommissionen und der Bundesversammlung; und schließlich wird es ein paar geben, die werden Dir sagen, daß die Demokratie ein Schauspiel ist wie das Leben, manchmal häßlich, manchmal schön, und das einzige, was wir sicher haben, sind die demokratischen Formen und Mechanismen. Demokratie, werden sie Dir sagen, ist ein Verfahren und ein Prozeß.

Und wie bei jedem Prozeß, so ist auch bei diesem der Ausgang offen. Da saßen sie also mal wieder alle, auf den Bänken hinter den Tischen, die aus schwerem braunen Holz gemacht waren, die Generäle Abizaid und Sanchez etwa oder der stolze Myers mit seinem hoch aufragenden Kopf oder Wolfowitz, der stets ein wenig über dem Mikrophon kauert, oder der Schaurige selbst, Donald Rumsfeld, der immer mal wieder die Finger seiner rechten Hand hebt und mit Daumen und Zeigefinger eine Zangenbewegung macht, als wolle er ein Insekt zerquetschen, dabei will er ja nur mit seinen Argumenten ein Stück jener Wahrheit aus der Welt herausschneiden, die seine ist, das heißt die amerikanische, das heißt die gültige.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntags-
zeitung

Ausgabe vom 23.05.2004

www.faz.net

"Sir, please, Sir", platzte es aus einem der Senatoren heraus, die den Männern aus der Regierung und aus dem Militär gegenüber saßen, die sie nach den Folterfotos befragten; das war einer der wenigen emotionalen Momente, in denen man merkte, wie hoch der Preis dafür ist, daß man die Wahrheit nur Stück für Stück bekommt in diesem beeindruckenden Schauspiel, bei dem die Welt, die über CNN zugeschaltet war, Amerika dabei zusehen konnte, wie es mit sich selbst ringt.

Es war einer jener Schauprozesse der anderen Art, wie sie die Amerikaner so lieben, ein klassischer Moment der amerikanischen Demokratie, die letztlich im Einzelfall immer auch das Grundsätzliche mitverhandelt - und über das Verbotene, Kriminelle, Unmoralische zu ihrem wahren Wesen zurückfinden will. Es ist ein wiederkehrendes Muster, das das amerikanische Denken durchzieht, dieser Kampf um das Wesen Amerikas, da macht es letztlich keinen großen Unterschied, ob sich die Senatorin Hillary Clinton an die Versammelten wendet und fragt, mit welchem Auftrag General Miller von Guantánamo nach Abu Ghraib gekommen sei; oder ob Tom Cruise sich als Rechtsanwalt vor Jack Nicholson aufbaut und den Alten, der dort kauert wie ein Frosch in Angriffslaune, so lange zwickt, bis es aus dem schließlich herausbricht: Javerdammtnochmal, er habe angeordnet, daß der Soldat mit dem Code Red behandelt werden sollte, sein Pech, daß der daran gestorben sei, "aber wissen Sie eigentlich, Sie Wurm, wie es dort draußen ist, den Kommunisten Auge in Auge gegenüber, jemand wie Sie kann doch Amerikas Freiheit gar nicht verteidigen". Der Film heißt "Eine Frage der Ehre", und Jack Nicholson, der zufällig den Kommandanten des US-Stützpunktes von Guantánamo spielt, muß am Ende ins Gefängnis.

Das Gute hat wieder gesiegt, Hollywood sei Dank - Hollywood, das auch in diesen Tagen seine Macht als demokratischer Kontrollfaktor demonstrieren und dafür sorgen will, daß es am 2. November bei der Präsidentenwahl ein Happy-End geben wird. Da ist zuerst und vor allem Roland Emmerichs Kyoto-Schocker "The Day After Tomorrow", der in den Vereinigten Staaten schon vor der Premiere zum Politikum geworden ist; da ist Cameron Diaz, die im Elektrowagen durch Los Angeles fährt, und da ist Ben Affleck, der sich hochglanzrelevant mit John Kerry befreundet und auch mit dessen Tochter; da sind die Anzeigen, auf denen die Schauspieler Al Pacino, Martin Sheen, Kristin Davis, Samuel L. Jackson oder Richard Dreyfuss stolz in die Kamera blicken und sagen: "I am not an American".

Immer mit dem Zusatz, daß man kein Amerikaner ist, der "Politik mit Patriotismus verwechselt" oder der es hinnimmt, wenn die Regierung weiß, welche Bücher er liest, wie neben dem Porträt des Schriftstellers Kurt Vonnegut zu lesen ist. Kleiner steht dann darunter, daß Vonnegut ein Amerikaner ist, der daran glaubt, jeden Gedanken ohne Angst formulieren zu dürfen. Und die Countrysängerin Natalie Maines von den Dixie Chicks schreibt, sie sei eine Amerikanerin, die ihr Land liebe, weil sie frei sei, die Entscheidungen der Regierung zu kritisieren. Die Reaktion des Justizministeriums auf die Anzeigenkampagne kam prompt: "Absolut empörend!"


Das ist das Klima in diesem Land, das sich nicht seit dem 11. September 2001 so sehr verändert hat, sondern seit dem 20. Januar 2001; seit jenem Tag, als der kleine Bush das Amt seines Vaters übernahm, mit den Leuten seines Vaters, um den Job seines Vaters zu Ende zu bringen: Saddam zu verjagen, viel Geld mit Öl zu verdienen, eine gute Zeit zu haben? Nein, Amerika so zu verändern, daß es den neokonservativen Wertvorstellungen entspricht, und die Welt so zu verändern, daß sie dem entspricht, was sich die Neokonservativen unter Amerika vorstellen. Amerika war der Einsatz, und Amerika ist die Beute.

Die Sache, um die es geht, ist fundamental für das Selbstverständnis des Landes, das machen die Anzeigen mit den Schauspielerporträts klar, die von der American Civil Liberties Union geschaltet werden, das macht auch die Auseinandersetzung um die Folterfotos aus dem Irak klar. Es geht im Kern darum: Was ist Amerika? Das Wort ist zu einem Kampfbegriff geworden, nicht nur nach außen im Konflikt mit der muslimischen Welt, sondern auch nach innen in der über 200 Jahre alten Auseinandersetzung darüber, was Freiheit bedeutet und was der Preis dafür ist. Wenn Susan Sontag im "New York Times Magazine" feststellt, "the photographs are us", dann bedeutet das nichts anderes - Amerika hat sich verloren, und langsam wacht die liberale Elite auf.

Die Opposition trägt natürlich das Datum des Kriegsbeginns im Irak; aber die Dringlichkeit und auch der Optimismus nehmen zu, je näher das Wahldatum des 2. November rückt. Jetzt sprechen nicht mehr nur ein paar europäische Intellektuelle von einem Staatsstreich, mit dem sich der kleine Bush erst die Wahl und dann das Land genommen hat, sondern auch Kolumnisten wie Paul Krugman von der "New York Times"; jetzt wird nicht nur in abgezirkelten Zeitschriften wie der "New York Review of Books" diskutiert, daß die Wahrheit, die die Folter ans Licht bringt, vor allem eine Wahrheit ist, die etwas über den Folterer aussagt und wenig mit den erpreßten Geständnissen zu tun hat; jetzt schreibt Seymour M. Hersh nicht nur Woche für Woche über die Folterverstrickungen bis in die höchsten Ränge, jetzt sitzt dieser Aufdecker vom "New Yorker" bei Wolf Blitzer in dessen CNN-Studio, während die Schuld in immer neuen Wellen kommt und oben drauf immer Hersh, eine Art Schuldboje seit mehr als 30 Jahren, seit My Lai und Vietnam, seit schon einmal die Bilder nicht weggehen wollten und das Land nicht mehr wußte, was es war und was es sein sollte.

Jetzt endlich findet die Opposition ihren Weg in den Mainstream, und mehr und mehr führt sie dieser Weg in jene Welt des Glanzes und des Glamours, die die Extremform und das Widersprüchlichste sind, was Amerika hervorgebracht hat: Wenn man will, die höchste Feier der Freiheit des Individuums. Das, wofür Amerika in der Welt geliebt wird und verachtet.

Was wir in diesen Tagen in den USA erleben, ist die Geburt des Widerstandes aus dem Geist des Glamours - sinnfällig und merkwürdig zugleich, wenn man bedenkt, daß die Bilder, die den Folterskandal vorantreiben, Produkt dieses Denkens in Ikonen und Posen sind und selbst in den Kreislauf der großen Bilderverarbeitungsmaschine des globalen Unbewußten eingespeist werden. Ein Beispiel dieses politisierten Glamours ist die Zeitschrift "Vanity Fair", die sonst gern eine Homestory über Brad Pitt und eine Genozid-Reportage aus Ruanda kombiniert; in der Mai-Ausgabe nun haben sie in vier dicken Zeilen über dem Titel die längste Geschichte angekündigt, die sie hier je gedruckt haben: "Der Weg in den Krieg", der "ultimative Insiderbericht" darüber, wie Bush und seine Camorra manipulierten, logen und einschüchterten, um den Krieg zu bekommen, den sie wollten. Und Chefredakteur Graydon Carter schließt sein Editorial mit der Aufforderung, gegen Bush zu stimmen.

Überraschen mag dieser Glamourama-Aktivismus vor allem jene, die nicht realisieren, daß diese Mischung aus Oberflächlichkeit und Relevanz nur eine Kultur herzustellen vermag, die die Relevanz der Oberflächlichkeit kennt. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, Andy Warhol, das sind nur ein paar Veteranen dieses anderen Amerikas; MCA, Ad-Rock und Mike D sind zu dritt die Beastie Boys und ein paar von denen, die dieses Erbe weitertreiben. Im Juni erscheint die lang erwartete neue CD des Glam-Rap-Trios, "To the 5 Burroughs", eine New-York-Hommage und Ehrenrettung vor den falschen Profiteuren von 9/11, die sie extra ein paar Monate vorgezogen haben, damit sie noch während des US-Wahlkampfes zum Einsatz kommen kann. Und schon jetzt kursiert ihr Song "In a World Gone Mad" im Internet. "You build more bombs as you get more bold", heißt es da, "as your mid-life crisis war unfolds" - sie sind damit Teil einer Künstlerkoalition gegen Bush.

Da gibt es den Schriftsteller Jeffrey Eugenides, der sich schämt für sein Land, da gibt es den Dramatiker Tony Kushner, der Barbara Bush mit drei toten irakischen Kindern plaudern läßt, da gibt es die CDs "Rock Against Bush" und "More Rock Against Bush" mit den Foo Fighters und No Doubt, da gibt es aufwändige Abendessen, auf denen die üblichen Verdächtigen viele tausend Dollar für John Kerry spenden, Steven Spielberg etwa, Barbra Streisand und Oliver Stone, aber auch Leonardo DiCaprio, Lucy Liu, Ben Stiller, Tom Ford und Brad Pitt. Da gibt es natürlich Michael Moore und seinen Film "Fahrenheit 9/11", über den Godard gerade gesagt hat, Moore sei "halbintelligent" und helfe Bush auf seine Weise. Und da gibt es den komischen Schriftsteller Dave Eggers, der für die Internetzeitschrift "salon.com" einen Fortsetzungsroman schreibt, der nur von der Politik handelt und von den Wahlkämpfern in der kalifornischen Provinz bis zum Präsidenten alle in Spott badet. Die amerikanische Kunst wird politischer, und sie wird das in dem Maß, wie der Rest der Welt vom Glauben abfällt.

"This is not America", das war einmal ein Song von David Bowie, und es war eine Anklage gegen das, was aus dem amerikanischen Traum geworden ist. Auf der Welt mag im Moment eine Mehrheit der Meinung sein, daß es sich dabei eher um einen Albtraum handelt; die Opposition gegen Bush will dafür sorgen, daß sie wenigstens im Land wieder stolz sagen können: I am an American.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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Noam Chomsky Interview

BBC 05/20/04

"BBC" If George Bush were to be judged by the standards of the Nuremberg Tribunals, he`d be hanged. So too, mind you, would every single American President since the end of the second world war, including Jimmy Carter.
The suggestion comes from perhaps the most feted liberal intellectual in the world - the American linguist Noam Chomsky. His latest attack on the way his country behaves in the world is called Hegemony or Survival, America`s Quest for Global Dominance.

Jeremy Paxman met him at the British Museum, where they talked in the Assyrian Galleries. He asked him whether he was suggesting there was nothing new in the so-called Bush Doctrine.

SOURCE FILEhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/media/video/40175000/rm/_40175639_chom…

NOAM CHOMSKY:
Well, it depends. It is recognised to be revolutionary. Henry Kissinger for example described it as a revolutionary new doctrine which tears to shreds the Westphalian System, the 17th century system of International Order and of course the UN Charter. But nevertheless, and has been very widely criticised within the foreign policy elite. But on narrow ground the doctrine is not really new, it`s extreme.

JEREMY PAXMAN:
What was the United States supposed to do after 9/11? It had been the victim of a grotesque, intentional attack, what was it supposed to do but try...?

NOAM CHOMSKY:
Why pick 9/11? Why not pick 1993. Actually the fact that the terrorist act succeeded in September 11th did not alter the risk analysis. In 1993, similar groups, US trained Jihadi`s came very close to blowing up the World Trade Center, with better planning, they probably would have killed tens of thousands of people. Since then it was known that this is very likely. In fact right through the 90`s there was technical literature predicting it, and we know what to do. What you do is police work. Police work is the way to stop terrorist acts and it succeeded.

JEREMY PAXMAN:
But you are suggesting the United States in that sense is the author of Its own Nemesis.

NOAM CHOMSKY:
Well, first of all this is not my opinion. It`s the opinion of just about every specialist on terrorism. Take a look, say at Jason Burke`s recent book on Al-Qaeda which is just the best book there is. What he points out is, he runs through the record of how each act of violence has increased recruitment financing mobilisation, what he says is, I`m quoting him, that each act of violence is a small victory for Bin Laden.

JEREMY PAXMAN:
But why do you imagine George Bush behaves like this?

NOAM CHOMSKY:
Because I don`t think they care that much about terror, in fact we know that. Take say the invasion of Iraq, it was predicted by just about every specialist by intelligence agencies that the invasion of Iraq would increase the threat of Al-Qaeda style terror which is exactly what happened. The point is that...

JEREMY PAXMAN:
Then why would he do it?

NOAM CHOMSKY:
Because invading Iraq has value in Itself, I mean establishing...

JEREMY PAXMAN:
Well what value?

NOAM CHOMSKY:
What value? Establishing the first secure military base in a dependant client state at the heart of the energy producing region of the world.

JEREMY PAXMAN:
Don`t you even think that the people of Iraq are better off having got rid of a dictator?

NOAM CHOMSKY:
That, they got rid of two brutal regimes, one that we are supposed to talk about, the other one we are not suppose to talk about. The two brutal regimes were Saddam Hussein`s and the US-British sanctions, which were devastating society, had killed hundreds of thousands of people, were forcing people to be reliant on Saddam Hussein. Now the sanctions could obviously have been turned to weapons rather than destroying society without an invasion. If that had happened it is not at all impossible that the people of Iraq would have sent Saddam Hussein the same way to the same fate as other monsters supported by the US and Britain. Ceausescu, Suharto, Duvalier, Marcos, there`s a long list of them. In fact the people, the westerners who know Iraq best were predicting this all along.

JEREMY PAXMAN:
You seem to be suggesting or implying, perhaps I`m being unfair to you, but you seem to be implying there is some equivalence between democratically elected heads of state like George Bush or Prime Ministers like Tony Blair and regimes in places like Iraq.

NOAM CHOMSKY:
The term moral equivalence is an interesting one, it was invented I think by Jeane Kirkpatrick as a method of trying to prevent criticism of foreign policy and state decisions. It has a meaning less notion, there is no moral equivalence what so ever.

JEREMY PAXMAN:
Is it a good thing if it is preferable for an individual to live in a liberal democracy, is there benefit to be gained by spreading the values of that democracy however you can?

NOAM CHOMSKY:
That reminds me of the question that Ghandi was once asked about western civilisation, what did he think of it. He said yeah, it would be a good idea. In fact it would be a good idea to spread the values of liberal democracy, but that I would be a good idea to spread the values of liberal democracy. But that`s not what the US and Britain are trying to do, it`s not what they`ve done in the past, I mean take a look at the regions under their domination. They don`t spread liberal democracy. What they spread is dependence and subordination. Furthermore its well- known there is a large part of the reason for the reason the great opposition to the US policy within the Middle East. In fact this was known in the 1950`s.

JEREMY PAXMAN:
But there is a whole slur of countries in eastern Europe right now that would say we are better off now than we were when we were living under the Soviet Empire. As a consequence of how the west behaved.

NOAM CHOMSKY:
Well, and there is a lot of countries in US domains, like Central America, the Caribbean who wish that they could be free of American domination. We don`t pay much attention to what happens there but they do. In the 1980s when the current incumbents were in their Reganite phase. Hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered in Central America. The US carried out a massive terrorist attack against Nicaragua, mainly as a war on the church. They assassinated an Archbishop and murdered six leading Jesuit intellectuals. This is in El Salvador. It was a monstrous period. What did they impose? Was it liberal democracies? No.

JEREMY PAXMAN:
You`ve mentioned on two or three occasions this relationship between the United States and Britain. Do you understand why Tony Blair behaved as he did over Afghanistan and Iraq?

NOAM CHOMSKY:
Well, if you look at the British diplomatic history, back in the 1940s, Britain had to make a decision. Britain had been the major world power, the United States though by far the richest country in the world was not a major actor in the global scene, except regionally. By the Second World War it was obvious the US was going to be the dominant power, everyone knew that. Britain had to make a choice. Was it going to be part of what would ultimately be a Europe that might move towards independence, or would it be what the Foreign Office called a junior partner to the United States? Well it essentially made that choice to be a junior partner to the United States. US, the leaders have no illusions about this. So during the Cuban missile crisis for example, you look at the declassified record, they treated Britain with total contempt. Harold McMillan wasn`t even informed of what was going on and Britain`s existence was at stake. It was dangerous. One high official, probably Dean Atchers and he`s not identified, described Britain as in his words "Our lieutenant, the fashionable word is partner". Well the British would like to hear the fashionable word, but the masters use the actual word. Those are choices Britain has to make. I mean why Blair decided, I couldn`t say.

JEREMY PAXMAN:
Noam Chomsky, thank you.

Copyright: BBC. Video

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Professor Denounced for POW Memo for Bush


Sunday May 23, 2004 4:31 AM

By TERENCE CHEA

Associated Press Writer

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - Some graduating University of California law students used their commencement Saturday to denounce a professor who helped the Bush administration develop a legal framework that critics say led to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

About one-quarter of the 270 graduates of Berkeley`s Boalt School of Law donned red armbands over their black robes in a silent protest of a legal memo law professor John Yoo co-wrote when he served in the U.S. Justice Department`s Office of Legal Counsel.

Outside the ceremony, they also passed out fliers denouncing Yoo for ``aiding and abetting war crimes.`` Yoo said beforehand he didn`t plan to attend the graduation.

``I respect freedom of thought, but I think he should abide by some basic moral standard,`` said Andrea Ruiz, 35, one of the armband-wearing students. ``Respect for human persons is at the core of what the law is about.``

The Jan. 9, 2002, memo, first reported by Newsweek magazine Monday, laid out the legal reasons why the United States didn`t have to comply with international treaties governing prisoner rights. It argued that the normal laws of armed conflict didn`t apply to al-Qaida and Taliban militia prisoners because they didn`t belong to a state.

Yoo, who worked for the Justice Department between 2001 and 2003, wouldn`t comment on the memo or his government work, but said the students have a right to express their opinions.

``I`m happy to listen to their viewpoints. Beyond that I`m not going to change what I think,`` Yoo, 36, said during a telephone interview Friday.

A petition signed by nearly 200 law students and alumni since Thursday alleges that Yoo`s memo ``contributed directly to the reprehensible violation of human rights in Iraq and elsewhere.``

``We`re embarrassed that he`s at our institution,`` said law student Abby Reyes, who launched the petition. ``We came to law school in order to uphold the rule of law, not to learn ways to wiggle our way out of compliance with it.``

The student petition urges Yoo to repudiate the memo, declare his opposition to torture and encourage the Bush administration to comply with the Geneva Conventions that protect the rights of prisoners of war. Otherwise, he should resign, the petition says.

Yoo said he had no plans to resign.

``To the extent that the petition goes beyond expressing views, I worry that it`s an unfortunate effort to interfere with academic freedom,`` he said.

Interim Dean Robert C. Berring Jr. said the law school had no plans to discipline Yoo.

``The image of Berkeley is the very progressive image,`` Berring said, ``but I think you`d find at Berkeley a pretty wide range of opinions. Professor Yoo is certainly not the only conservative on campus or at the law school.``

During a May 13 appearance on ``The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,`` Yoo said he thought the pictures of prisoners being abused at the Baghdad prison showed clear violations of the Geneva Conventions.

``So the question is not whether the Geneva Conventions apply or really whether they`re violated or not but how we`re going to remedy the situation, and the military is undertaking that,`` he said, adding that violators should be punished and tried.




Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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PHOTOS SHOW BUSH WEARING HOOD WHILE PLANNING WAR

Senators Demand Explanation

A series of shocking new photos released today show President George W. Bush wearing a hood while planning the invasion of Iraq in January of 2003.

In the photos, Mr. Bush can be seen wearing a hood while Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar examine a large map of the Middle East.

Experts who have studied the photos believe that wearing such a hood would make it difficult if not impossible for the president to know what was going on around him or even where he was.

In perhaps the most shocking revelation, additional photos indicate that Mr. Bush`s wearing of a hood might not have been an isolated incident but may in fact have been standard operating procedure for him beginning shortly after his inauguration in January of 2001 and continuing well into the middle of last week.

In the U.S. Senate, outraged senators demanded a “full explanation” for why the president of the United States was wearing a hood during such crucial meetings and what person or persons were responsible for placing the hood over Mr. Bush’s head.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that a full investigation was underway but that all evidence pointed to Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, whose Baghdad home was ransacked for the ninth time in two days.

In a related story, the White House acknowledged that a video exists of President Bush’s commencement address to Louisiana State University showing “shocking abuse” of the English language.

**** BOROWITZ IN CLEVELAND MAY 28 ****

Andy Borowitz performs at The City Club of Cleveland Friday May 28 at 12 noon. For more info go to www.cityclub.org.

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washingtonpost.com

U.S. Troops in a Sustained Battle Against Shiite Militias
Push into Kufa Part of Continued Campaign Against Sadr

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 23, 2004; 4:55 PM

BAGHDAD, May 23 -- The battle for the holy Shiite cities of southern Iraq that has occupied U.S. soldiers for weeks appears to have moved from a broad engagement across several fronts to a sustained battle for a single elusive objective -- the rebellious cleric at the heart of the insurrection.

For seven weeks, U.S. forces have killed off scores of militants loyal to Moqtada Sadr, the Shiite cleric wanted by U.S. officials on murder charges who has fomented an anti-American insurrection across a region once receptive to the occupation. But they have left Sadr largely alone, fearing a deadly strike against him could make him a martyr in a religious culture that worships them.

But the U.S. military`s first push into the town of Kufa, where Sadr preaches each Friday, and a strike on a convoy carrying his top aide over the weekend suggests U.S. commanders have set aside those fears. U.S. military officers involved in the operations say the Kufa assault, which began before dawn Sunday and continued into the night, is the latest phase of a campaign that has squeezed Sadr`s forces out of Kut, Diwaniya, and, over the weekend, the holy city of Karbala.

"We`re closing in," said Maj. David Gercken, a spokesman for the 1st Armored Division, who declined to characterize the operation as a hunt for Sadr. "We`re keeping the pressure on. But it`s gradual."

U.S. military officials have five weeks to tame a broad anti-occupation insurgency before an interim Iraqi government assumes limited political authority. The Sadr rebellion has become among the most pressing security concerns for U.S. officials, and corralling its spread at a time of high anti-occupation feelings is now a top priority.

The resistance rose first in the Sunni Triangle, a region north and west of Baghdad once devoted to Saddam Hussein. Earlier this month, Marine commanders withdrew from Fallujah, a hotbed of anti-American feeling, after a month-long siege against the insurgents inside. They turned over security responsibilities to a group of former Baathist military officers, who once served in Hussein`s army.

The move angered Iraq`s majority Shiite population, which suffered under Hussein`s Sunni-led government, while failing to end attacks against U.S. troops. Two Marines were killed Sunday when their convoy was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades.

U.S. officials have ruled out such a deal to win Sadr`s withdrawal from Najaf and the demobilization of his thousands-strong militia known as the Mahdi Army. Sadr, the 31-year-old son of a revered Shiite cleric assassinated by Hussein`s government, is wanted in connection with the April 2003 murder of a moderate rival Shiite cleric, Abdel-Majid Khoei. Khoei had just returned to Iraq from exile in Great Britain when he was stabbed to death in Najaf, allegedly by Sadr`s followers.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, referred Saturday to Sadr`s followers as "street thugs" and U.S. civilian officials have ruled out direct negotiations to end the standoff. Divisions within the Shiite political and religious communities over Sadr, who enjoys little support outside his militia, have also worked against forming a local Shiite security force to control Najaf.

Instead, U.S. officials have counted on a group of mainstream Shiite leaders to talk down the young firebrand with little support outside his own militia. But those negotiations have produced only division in Iraq`s majority Shiite population, and U.S. officials have expressed little hope in recent days for their eventual success.

"If there is progress to be made, we are open-minded, given that those two conditions are met -- Moqtada al Sadr faces justice and his illegal militia disbanded and disarmed," Kimmitt told reporters. "But in the interim, we will continue to use our own methods for getting Moqtada`s militia off the streets."

The sudden withdrawal over the weekend of Sadr`s forces after weeks of street fighting -- and scores of casualties -- has both encouraged and mystified military officers after weeks of deadly street-to-street fighting. But the long-term results are difficult to judge.

The anti-occupation insurgents, numbering in the hundreds, abandoned their refuge near Karbala`s sacred Shines of Abbas and Hussein. Whether they have been defeated after sustaining heavy casualties over the past two weeks, as some U.S. military officers believe, remains unknown. In a time-tested guerrilla tactic, they have vanished.

The streets of Karbala remained relatively calm for the second consecutive day on Sunday after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from a strategic mosque in the city center. Sadr militia forces were nowhere to be seen in their redoubts around the shrines of Abbas and Hussein, two gold-domed mosques that are among Shiism`s holiest shrines.

Bulgarian forces, part of the U.S.-led coalition, manning checkpoints near downtown said store owners reopened and cleaned debris built up over the weeks of clashes between U.S. forces and Shiite rebels. Some schools also reopened.

U.S. officials were cautious about the relative tranquility and were reluctant to say the battle for Karbala was over.

"The bad guys may have left, they may have gone to ground, we don`t know," said a U.S. officer whose troops were returning to Baghdad after reinforcing units stationed on the outskirts of Karbala.

The pullback of troops from Task Force 1-36, a unit of the 1st Armored Division, followed the cancellation of a U.S. push into Karbala set for last Friday. Instead of entering Karbala, as planned, U.S. troops that had taken up positions in a strategic mosque in the center of town withdrew.

"There was no cease-fire, no deal made in Karbala. We do not and will not make deals with militias or criminals," Gercken said.

Iraqi police began to patrol the market area around shrines, where some of the heaviest recent fighting took place, U.S. officials said. U.S. patrols, meanwhile, continued to probe Karbala in nighttime operations and fan out into the countryside looking for arms depots. The searches yielded neither guerrilla suspects nor weapons.

Sadr loyalists continued to warn their U.S. adversaries of the danger of pursuing their leader into the cities of Najaf and Karbala, and appealed to Shiite believers to defend them.

"The holy cities are of great concern to Shiites and Muslims," said Mohammed Taqi Modarresi, a cleric and Sadr ally in Karbala. He said Sadr is looking for a peaceful exit from the crisis, but not one that includes surrender.

"It was possible to solve it all peacefully, but the other side refuses," he said.

Despite the calls for Shiites to rise up, Karbala residents seem less concerned about damage to religious sites than eager for Sadr to give up now that U.S. troops have left the city center. Like Najaf, the town depends on religious pilgrims, mostly from Shiite Iran, as a major source of income.

"We don`t want the Americans here, and they are in their base. It is time also for the others to get out and leave us alone," said Karim Haidar, an egg salesman in Karbala.

"Both forces have caused damage and both must stop," said Hussein Abbas, a cistern manufacturer.

At the same time, Sadr forces in Najaf, farther south, and neighboring Kufa where Sadr delivers his regular Friday sermon, showed increasing audacity in attacks over the weekend. But there are signs in the developing U.S. offensive that Sadr, as much as his armed followers, may be the troops` intended target regardless of the fallout.

Since announcing the arrest warrant against him, U.S. military officials have continued to allowed Sadr to travel between Najaf and Kufa to deliver his regular Friday sermon. But last Friday, U.S. troops fired on a convoy of cars that resembled Sadr`s hours after he had called on Iraqis to rise up against the occupation during his sermon.

Then overnight Saturday U.S. troops, for the first time, drove deep into Kufa in tanks backed by attack helicopters. U.S. soldiers remained there Sunday, raiding a mosque and killing more than a dozen insurgents.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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May 24, 2004
Afghan Deaths Linked to Unit at Iraq Prison
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID ROHDE

WASHINGTON, May 23 — A military intelligence unit that oversaw interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was also in charge of questioning at a detention center in Afghanistan where two prisoners died in December 2002 in incidents that are being investigated as homicides.

For both of the Afghan prisoners, who died in a center known as the Bagram Collection Point, the cause of death listed on certificates signed by American pathologists included blunt force injuries to their legs. Interrogations at the center were supervised by Company A, 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, which moved on early in 2003 to Iraq, where some of its members were assigned to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib. Its service in Afghanistan was known, but its work at Bagram at the time of the deaths has now emerged in interviews with former prisoners, military officials and from documents.

Two men arrested with one of the prisoners who died in the Bagram Detention Center that month said in southeastern Afghanistan on Sunday that they were tortured and sexually humiliated by their American jailers; they said they were held in isolation cells, black hoods were placed over their heads, and their hands at times were chained to the ceiling. "The 10 days that we had was a very bad time," said Zakim Shah, a 20-year-old farmer and a father of two who said he felt he would not survive at times. "We are very lucky."

The account provided by the two men was consistent with those of other former Afghan prisoners, including those interviewed by The New York Times and cited in reports by human rights officials.

In interviews, the two men and other former prisoners who were held at the center in Afghanistan at that time have described an environment similar in some ways to that of Abu Ghraib, whose outlines have been depicted in photographs and testimony. At both places, prisoners were hooded, stripped naked and mocked sexually by female captors, according to a variety of accounts.

In Iraq, at least three members of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion who had been assigned to the joint interrogation center at Abu Ghraib have been quietly disciplined for conduct involving the abuse of a female Iraqi prisoner there, an Army spokesman said.

At least one officer, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, served in supervisory positions at the interrogation units both at the Bagram Collection Point from July 2002 to December 2003 and then again at the joint center at Abu Ghraib, according to Army officials. That center was established in the fall of 2003. In Congressional testimony last week, a senior Army lawyer, Col. Marc Warren, praised Captain Wood as an officer who took initiative in Iraq at a time when American commanders had yet to spell out rules for interrogation. But he also singled out Captain Wood and her unit as having brought to Iraq interrogation procedures developed during their service in Afghanistan. No one is known to have accused Captain Wood of any wrongdoing in connection with the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the deaths of prisoners there or in Afghanistan.

A spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps, in Fort Bragg, N.C., identified Captain Wood as having been sent to Afghanistan in July 2002 as Company A`s interrogation platoon leader, and having later assumed the duties of "operations officer in charge of the Bagram Collection Point." In a written statement sent Friday, that spokesman, Lt. Col. Billy Buckner, said Captain Wood had been assigned to the 519th Battalion at Abu Ghraib. But other Army officers have described her as having served as the officer in charge of the interrogation center there, under Lt. Col. Steve Jordan, a reservist who served as its director.

In an interview on Sunday, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who oversaw Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq but has since been admonished and suspended from command, described Captain Wood as an impressive and well-spoken expert on interrogations who oversaw the center. Colonel Buckner said that Captain Wood`s commanding officer in Iraq, Lt. Col. Robert Whalen, was not available for comment. To date, seven enlisted personnel from a military police unit have been the only soldiers charged with crimes in connection with the abuses at Abu Ghraib. But an Army report completed in March identified Colonel Jordan as among four people who may have been among those "directly or indirectly" responsible for the misconduct.

Within days after the deaths of the two prisoners in Afghanistan in December 2002, both were ruled homicides by American military doctors in Afghanistan. But in a public statement at the time, the military described at least one death as the result of natural causes.

The deaths of two prisoners at the Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan in December 2002 are believed to be among nine being investigated by the Army as possible homicides linked to interrogation practices in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least two other deaths being investigated occurred in Abu Ghraib, senior military officers have said, but it is not clear whether those prisoners were under the authority of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center.

The two former Afghan prisoners who were interviewed in Afghanistan on Sunday said they believed that their acquaintance, a young man named Dilawar whose death is considered a possible homicide, received the same harsh treatment that they did. Both prisoners were later sent to the American-run detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but were released with letters from the Army saying they did nothing wrong.

The two men said that at Bagram they were forced to strip naked in the presence of female soldiers when receiving prison clothes, undergoing medical exams and taking showers. They said female soldiers were never present when they were naked in Guantánamo Bay.

Both men said appearing naked in front of women was deeply humiliating for Afghan men, who live in a conservative Islamic culture. "The other things don`t matter," Parkhudin said, referring to the kicking and sleep deprivation. "But we are angry about this."

Since 2002, about 350 prisoners have been held at any given time at American-run detention centers in Afghanistan. The Bagram Collection Point, at Bagram Air Base, just north of Kabul, is the main American detention center, and is visited by officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross. No outside inspectors visit roughly 20 smaller American bases around Afghanistan where prisoners are also held.

The two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in December 2002 are identified on death certificates only as Dilawar and "Ullah, Habib." Friends and family members have identified Dilawar as a 22-year-old farmer and part-time taxi driver. The second prisoner who died has been identified by family members as Mullah Habibullah, about 30 years old and a brother of a former Taliban commander.

The Dec. 13 death certificate for Dilawar says he died as a result of "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease." The document was signed by Lt. Col. Elizabeth A. Rouse of the Air Force, a military pathologist, and listed as its finding that the "mode of death" was "homicide," rather than "natural," "accident" and "suicide."

At the time, American military officials said Dilawar had died of a heart attack and had coronary artery disease. The fact that the military characterized his death a "homicide" was not publicly known until his family showed a reporter from The New York Times his death certificate in late February 2003. Family members, who do not speak English, were unable to understand the certificate.

According to military documents, Dilawar was found dead in his isolation cell on Dec. 10, his fifth day of captivity. The military later disclosed that the death in Bagram of Mullah Habibullah, which occurred on Dec. 3, 2002, had also been deemed a homicide by an Army pathologist. He too was found collapsed in a cell on the second floor of the center.

The two men interviewed on Sunday in Turiuba, a village in Khost Province in southeastern Afghanistan, said they had been held in isolation cells on the second floor of the Bagram center for the first 10 days.

Mr. Shah, the 20-year-old farmer, and Parkhudin, a 26-year-old farmer and former soldier, said they were later transferred from Bagram to the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay. Their first 10 days in Bagram were by far the most harrowing of their 15 months in American custody, they said.

Guards shouted at them or kicked them whenever they tried to sleep, the two men said. The only time they were allowed to move freely was during trips to eat or go to the bathroom, they said. If they tried to speak to a prisoner in an adjoining cell, guards beat them, they said.

"They were punching me and kicking me when I talked to the other prisoners," said Parkhudin, who like many Afghans has only one name. Mr. Shah said soldiers never struck him when he tried to sit, but they constantly shouted at him to keep him awake. "We were standing for the whole 10 days," said the young farmer, who said he grew so exhausted at one point that he vomited. "When we were trying to sit they would tell us `Hands up!` `Stand up!` " Parkhudin said his hands were chained to the ceiling for 8 of the 10 days. Mr. Shah said his hands were chained for only 4 hours in total over the 10 days. Parkhudin said he believed American interrogators treated him worse because they thought he was a Taliban commander.

A third detainee who was in the Bagram center at the time, Abdul Jabar, a 35-year-old taxi driver from the same area as Dilawar, said he saw him being led downstairs to the bathroom hooded. In a March 2003 interview with The New York Times, he said the young man "was struggling a lot."

He added, "He was scared because he could not get enough oxygen."

Sixteen months later, military investigations into both deaths have not been completed. Military officials have said that it has proved difficult to track the personnel who were on duty in the Bagram Detention Center at the time.

"It`s complicated because forces have rotated outside of Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager, a United States military spokesman in Afghanistan, said Saturday. "Our United States Army Criminal Investigative Division is having to follow those people to the various places they`ve gone in order to interview them and complete an actual criminal investigation into those allegations."

Douglas Jehl reported from Washington for this article, and David Rohde from Khost, Afghanistan.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 24, 2004
U.S. Nearing Deal on Way to Track Foreign Visitors
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JOHN MARKOFF

WASHINGTON, May 22 — The Department of Homeland Security is on the verge of awarding the biggest contract in its young history for an elaborate system that could cost as much as $15 billion and employ a network of databases to track visitors to the United States long before they arrive.

The contract, which will probably be awarded in coming days to one of three final bidders, is already generating considerable interest as federal officials try to improve significantly their ability to monitor those who enter at more than 300 border-crossing checkpoints by land, sea and air, where they are going and whether they pose a terrorist threat.

But with that interest have come questions — both logistical and philosophical — from Congressional investigators and outside experts. Will a company based outside the United States, in Bermuda, get the megacontract? How much will it end up costing? What about the privacy concerns of foreign visitors? And most critical, for all the high-end concepts and higher expectations, can the system really work?

Interviews with government officials, experts and the three companies vying for the contract — Accenture, Computer Sciences and Lockheed Martin — reveal new details and potential complications about a project that all agree is daunting in its complexity, cost and national security importance.

The program, known as US-Visit and rooted partly in a Pentagon concept developed after the terrorist attacks of 2001, seeks to supplant the nation`s physical borders with what officials call virtual borders. Such borders employ networks of computer databases and biometric sensors for identification at sites abroad where people seek visas to the United States.

With a virtual border in place, the actual border guard will become the last point of defense, rather than the first, because each visitor will have already been screened using a global web of databases.

Visitors arriving at checkpoints, including those at the Mexican and Canadian borders, will face "real-time identification" — instantaneous authentication to confirm that they are who they say they are. American officials will, at least in theory, be able to track them inside the United States and determine if they leave the country on time.

Officials say they will be able, for instance, to determine whether a visitor who overstays a visa has come in contact with the police, but privacy advocates say they worry that the new system could give the federal government far broader power to monitor the whereabouts of visitors by tapping into credit card information or similar databases. The system would tie together about 20 federal databases with information on the more than 300 million foreign visitors each year.

The bidders agree that the Department of Homeland Security has given them unusually wide latitude in determining the best strategy for securing American borders without unduly encumbering tourism and commerce.

Whoever wins the contract will be asked to develop a standard for identifying visitors using a variety of possible tools — from photographs and fingerprints, already used at some airports on a limited basis since January, to techniques like iris scanning, facial recognition and radio-frequency chips for reading passports or identifying vehicles.

"Each of these technologies have strengths and weaknesses," Paul Cofoni, president of Computer Sciences` federal sector, said of the biometric alternatives. "I don`t know that any one will be used exclusively."

Virtual borders is a high-concept plan, building on ideas that have been tried since the terrorist attacks of 2001.

But homeland security officials say making the system work on a practical level is integral to protecting the United States from terrorist attacks in the decades to come. "This is hugely important for the security of our country and for the wise use of our limited resources," Asa Hutchinson, under secretary for border security, said in an interview. "We`re talking here about a comprehensive approach to border security."

But the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded in a report in September that "the program is a very risky endeavor," given its enormous scope and complexity. "The missed entry of one person who poses a threat to the United States could have severe consequences," the report said.

An update issued by the accounting office earlier this month found that while homeland security officials had made some headway in meeting investigators` concerns about management and oversight problems, the progress "has been slow." The update said major questions remained about the project`s cost and viability. "I don`t think there`s any less concern today," Randolph Hite, who wrote the reports, said in an interview.

"This program is going to get more and more complex as time goes on, and you can`t count on human heroes bailing you out to ensure that the system works," Mr. Hite said. With the program to be phased in over a decade, he said, "the question you have to ask is: What value are we getting for these initial increments, and is it worth it?"

Indeed, the costs are enormous, and Congressional investigators said they did not believe officials had a clear handle on the financing. The bid request set a maximum of $10 billion, but the accounting office found that some of the cost estimates were outdated and the final price tag — when financing from agencies like the State Department is considered — could reach $15 billion by 2014.

The idea of virtual borders originated in 2002 with a group of researchers at the National Defense University`s Center for Technology and National Security Policy. The group, led by Hans Binnendijk, the center`s director, was trying to find new ways to secure the nation`s shipping containers.

"We got interested in this soon after 9/11 as a fairly obvious problem," he said.

The group wrote an article discussing the need to inspect cargo long before it arrived in United States harbors. They then briefed a range of government agencies.

The virtual border is similar to the idea of an air traffic control center, officials note. In this case, the system would allow homeland security officials to monitor travel on a national level, shifting resources and responding as necessary.

The air traffic control analogy is significant in part because Computer Sciences and Lockheed Martin have traditionally been the nation`s two largest contractors for the Federal Aviation Agency in the development and maintenance of the nation`s air traffic control system.

The air traffic control parallel worries some executives. More than $500 million and 15 years were squandered on the effort to modernize the nation`s aging air traffic system beginning in the late 1980`s and a prime contractor was I.B.M.`s Federal Systems Division, now part of Lockheed Martin.

Another problem the system faces is the potential inability to get access to all needed data from foreign countries and from the United States` own intelligence community. Experts agree that no matter how good the technology, the system will rely on timely and accurate information about the histories and profiles of those entering the country to detect possible terrorists. It will have no direct impact on illegal immigrants.

The system will lead to a broad interconnection of federal databases, ranging from intelligence to law enforcement as well as routine commercial data.

Officials say they will work to ensure that the privacy of foreigners is protected and that the system will not be used to profile travelers, but civil libertarians say they are nonetheless alarmed that databases could be used to monitor both foreign visitors and American citizens, and they have already challenged it in court.

Yet another issue irking some lawmakers is the fact that Accenture is incorporated in Bermuda.

"I don`t want to see the Department of Homeland Security outsourcing its business to a Bermudan company," said Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who has pushed to close a loophole allowing foreign bidders on federal contracts.

Federal officials say they are satisfied that Accenture, which has about 25,000 employees in the United States and less than a dozen in Bermuda, meets the definition of a United States company and is eligible for the contract.

Accenture, for its part, sees the issue as irrelevant.

Jim McAvoy, an Accenture spokesman, said, "The real question is: Should the federal government be forced to select an inferior bid because the bidder is incorporated in the U.S.?"

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 24, 2004
FIGHTING FOR FLORIDA
Reassurance for Florida Voters Made Wary by Chaos of 2000
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

SAWDUST, Fla., May 20 — The party had barely begun when Shirley Green Knight arrived with her optical-scan voting machine, lugging it out of a pickup truck and stationing it between the D.J. and the food tent. The sight was no longer strange to the people of Gadsden County, where Ms. Knight, the elections supervisor since 2001, attends most communal gatherings with the machine and a gently pleading message: Your vote will count this time, so please, please come out.

Gadsden County, a quiet stretch of tomato fields and piney woodlands hard against the Georgia border, had the highest rate of disqualified ballots in Florida in 2000: 12 percent of those cast in the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Almost 2,000 county residents voted in vain that year, and cynicism still courses through the heavily Democratic county of 45,000, as regular as summer rain.

"All my life I have never seen the TV stations declare a winner, then change their minds," said Greg Johnson, a fourth grade teacher in Quincy who still wonders if his ballot landed in the scrap heap. "The Supreme Court decided that election, not us. I like politics, but people in power can get away with stuff and I`m just not sure this time."

As Election Day 2004 draws near in a battleground state whose 27 electoral votes could prove crucial to the victor once again, a movement is rising in poor black communities to register and to educate, reassure and entreat. A top goal is to change the mindset of people like Mr. Johnson, who still harbor deep suspicions about everything from the accuracy of voting equipment to how polling places are chosen and what role Gov. Jeb Bush, the president`s brother, will play in Florida`s outcome.

"It`s no longer as simple as saying, `You`re of age, you`re a citizen, you`re duly eligible to vote,` " said Andrew D. Gillum, an organizer with the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way in Tallahassee, where he is a city commissioner. "Instead we`re having to convince a lot of people who are thinking, `Why bother, it won`t matter anyway.` "

People for the American Way is training volunteers to fan across the state`s northern swath, registering and reinvigorating black voters from Jacksonville to Pensacola. Its African American Ministers Leadership Council is recruiting church members for "Jericho walks," nonpartisan door-to-door efforts not only to register black voters, but also to quell their fears of disenfranchisement and to dispel myths that have circulated since 2000.

The Southern Florida A.F.L.-C.I.O. and other labor unions are also concentrating on black neighborhoods with mailings and registration drives, pushing the concept of early voting for people who work long hours and might otherwise skip it. And black politicians are working to build excitement about the election in their communities, with many tapping into many black Floridians` dislike of Governor Bush.

Despite the lingering suspicion among blacks, intentional disenfranchisement was never proved, and blatant voter intimidation now seems to have been far more limited than first reported. In Gadsden County, as in Palm Beach and Duval, the root problem was a confusing, badly designed ballot — not a butterfly, as Palm Beach`s winged disaster was called, but a "caterpillar ballot" that spread the presidential candidates among two columns, so that many voters mistakenly marked two names.

Gadsden is the only majority-black county in Florida and one of the poorest, with high unemployment and illiteracy rates and, in 2000, an outmoded voting system that had been in place for decades. Its demographics are similar to parts of Duval, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and other counties that had high rates of ballot spoilage: an investigation by The Miami Herald and USA Today found that 83 of the 100 precincts with the largest numbers of discarded ballots were majority black.

Anger, shame and fear roiled those precincts afterward, fueled by reports of police roadblocks near black polling places, poll workers turning black voters away and the mysterious disappearance of registered black voters from the rolls. As the extent of Gadsden`s problem was discovered, television cameras descended, conspiracy theories brewed, and Gadsden County became an object of national ridicule that haunts it still.

"My friends out of town say, `You all are the reason we have Bush in office,` " said Rutha Black of Quincy, who attended the party where Ms. Knight, the elections supervisor, set up shop on Thursday, celebrating the day the Emancipation Proclamation was formally read in Florida in 1865.

Blacks in Gadsden said their electoral distrust was compounded by a sense that whites, who have dominated local politics for most of the last century despite being the minority, do not make decisions in their best interest. Ms. Knight lobbied the mostly white county commission to add more polling places when she took office, since some residents had to drive 20 miles to reach theirs. But the commission resisted until a black candidate unseated a white member and swung the vote.

Representative Kendrick B. Meek, a Miami Democrat who is chairman of Senator John Kerry`s presidential campaign in Florida, said that reassuring black voters was also a top priority for the campaign, as is educating them about how to use the new voting equipment. Most counties now use either touch-screen or optical-scan voting with precinct-level tallying, which they say leaves far less room for error.

Statewide turnout among registered blacks soared to 72 percent in November 2000, by some estimates an increase of nearly 50 percent over 1996. An intensive field operation by labor, advocacy groups and black lawmakers like Mr. Meek helped, as did the fact that Jeb Bush had just ended affirmative action in state education. But in 2002, when Governor Bush faced re-election, black turnout plummeted to 43 percent. He defeated the Democratic candidate, Bill McBride, in a landslide, after the Democratic Party wrongly assumed residual anger from 2000 would mobilize the faithful by itself.

Republicans, who are also courting black voters in some parts of Florida, say the Democrats and their supporters are recklessly rekindling bad feelings that were based on mostly false allegations. They say rumors of black voter intimidation in 2000 remain grossly exaggerated: a Florida Highway Patrol investigation of an unauthorized police checkpoint near a precinct in a black neighborhood outside Tallahassee, for example, found no evidence that it delayed or prevented blacks from voting.

"There is a tendency to exploit our community on the assumption that they won`t go find out the facts for themselves," said Andre Cadogan, chairman of the newly formed Black Republican Caucus of Palm Beach County. "One would have to wonder, is it just to inflame a community and distract them from going out there and voting on the issues?"

The real problems in 2000, people like Mr. Cadogan say — and several investigations have echoed — were faulty equipment and voter error, issues that elected officials and advocacy groups have been addressing, with varying energy and success, ever since. In the 2002 primary, Miami-Dade and Broward counties experienced widespread problems with new touch-screen voting machines, partly because of poorly trained poll workers.

On the other hand, only a few glitches marred this year`s Democratic presidential primary in most Florida counties, an improvement due largely to diligent elections supervisors like Ms. Knight, who replaced someone who had held the office for 20 years. Retraining poll workers, sending out sample ballots and toting her demonstration voting machine to church fellowship halls, town carnivals, high school classrooms and anywhere she can appeal to large groups has paid off: Gadsden had a 40 percent turnout in its municipal elections last year — the highest in its history — and 58 percent in the 2002 general election, much higher than the state average.

Ms. Knight, Gadsden`s first black elections supervisor, counted only 14 "overvotes," in which more than one candidate was marked for the same office, in 2002, and only 2 in the March primary. She is aiming for a 70 percent turnout and a zero error rate in November.

"Every population has gotten the feel of that machine," said Ed Dixon, a Gadsden County commissioner. "Sometimes it`s awkward when Shirley shows up at these events, but people say, `If she`s taking it way out here then there must not be anything to hide.` "

Yet suspicion about the new machinery is one problem groups like Mr. Gillum`s People for the American Way are encountering as they canvass black neighborhoods, especially in rural North Florida counties where black voter outreach has often been nonexistent. Many, he said, also deeply distrust Florida`s process of removing felons, who lose their voting rights when convicted, from the rolls. Each county gets lists of potential felons from a central database, and is supposed to determine whether the information is accurate.

But in 2000, the counties mistakenly purged an unknown number of legitimate voters from the rolls because of faulty data.

Ms. Knight said she would go out of her way to check the list of over 200 potential felons her office received from the state, even if it meant knocking on doors herself. But toward dark on Thursday, as the D.J. reminded partyers to register between dance hits, she finally put her clipboard down, smoothed her red, white and blue scarf and found a plate of food.

"What a day," she sighed, and eased herself off duty for a while.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 24, 2004
Morgue Records Show 5, 500 Iraqis Killed
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 3:53 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- More than 5,500 Iraqis died violently in just Baghdad and three provinces in the first 12 months of the occupation, an Associated Press survey found. The toll from both criminal and political violence ran dramatically higher than violent deaths before the war, according to statistics from morgues.

There are no reliable figures for places like Fallujah and Najaf that have seen surges in fighting since early April.

Indeed, there is no precise count for Iraq as a whole on how many people have been killed, nor is there a breakdown of deaths caused by the different sorts of attacks. The U.S. military, the occupation authority and Iraqi government agencies say they don`t have the ability to track civilian deaths.

But the AP survey of morgues in Baghdad and the provinces of Karbala, Kirkuk and Tikrit found 5,558 violent deaths recorded from May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations, to April 30. Officials at morgues for three more of Iraq`s 18 provinces either didn`t have numbers or declined to release them.

The AP`s survey was not a comprehensive compilation of the nationwide death toll, but was a sampling intended to assess the levels of violence. Figures for violent deaths in the months before the war showed a far lower rate.

That doesn`t mean Iraq is a more dangerous place than during Saddam Hussein`s regime. At least 300,000 people were murdered by security forces and buried in mass graves during the dictator`s 23-year rule, U.S. officials say, and human rights workers put the number closer to 500,000.

``We cannot compare the situation now with how it was before,`` Nouri Jaber al-Nouri, inspector general of the Interior Ministry, said recently. ``Iraqis used to fear everything. ... But now, despite all that is happening, we feel safe.``

Still, the morgue figures, which exclude trauma deaths from accidents like car wrecks and falls, highlight the insecurity Iraqis feel from the high level of criminal and political violence, and underline the challenges that coalition and Iraqi forces face in trying to bring peace.

In Baghdad, a city of about 5.6 million, 4,279 people were recorded killed in the 12 months through April 30, according to figures provided by Kais Hassan, director of statistics at Baghdad`s Medicolegal Institute, which administers the city`s morgues.

``Before the war, there was a strong government, strong security. There were a lot of police on the streets and there were no illegal weapons,`` he said during an AP reporter`s visit to the morgue. ``Now there are few controls. There is crime, revenge killings, so much violence.``

The figure does not include most people killed in big terrorist bombings, Hassan said. The cause of death in such cases is obvious so bodies are usually not taken to the morgue, but given directly to victims` families.

Also, the bodies of killed fighters from groups like the al-Mahdi Army are rarely taken to morgues.

Morgue records do not document the circumstances surrounding the 4,279 deaths -- whether killed by insurgents, occupation forces, criminals or others. The records list only the cause of a death, such as gunshot or explosion, Hassan said.

It is the police`s responsibility to determine why a person dies. But al-Nouri, the official at the Interior Ministry, which oversees police, said the agency lacks the resources to investigate all killings or keep track of causes of death.

U.S. forces have records for the numbers of claims for compensation from Iraqis for personal injury, deaths of family members, or for property damage caused by U.S. military action in ``non-combat`` situations. Some $3 million has been paid to about 5,000 claimants, American officials said last month. About 8,000 claims had been rejected and 3,000 were pending, they said.

The officials declined to provide a breakdown of the figures to show how many claims were for deaths. They also said a single incident involving U.S. forces could lead to multiple compensation claims.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military`s deputy director of operations, said U.S. forces do not have the capacity to track Iraqi civilian casualties. To highlight the complexity of the task, he pointed to the March 17 bombing of the Mount Lebanon Hotel in Baghdad where a U.S.-announced death toll dropped from an initial 27 to 17 and later to just seven.

``There are always discrepancies any time you have a situation as chaotic as the aftermath of a bombing,`` he said.

The death toll recorded by the Baghdad morgue was an average of 357 violent deaths each month from May through April. That contrasts with an average of 14 a month for 2002, Hassan`s documents showed.

The toll translates into an annual homicide rate of about 76 killings for every 100,000 people.

By comparison, Bogota, Colombia, reported 39 homicides per 100,000 people in 2002, while New York City had about 7.5 per 100,000 last year. Iraq`s neighbor Jordan, a country with a population a little less than Baghdad`s, recorded about 2.4 homicides per 100,000 in 2003.

Other Iraqi morgues visited by AP reporters also reported big increases in violent deaths.

In Karbala, a province of 1.5 million people 60 miles south of Baghdad, 663 people were killed from May through April, or an average of 55 a month, said Ali Alardawi, deputy administrator of Alhuien Hospital, which runs the morgue in the provincial capital, Karbala. That compares with an average of one violent death a month in 2002, he said.

Tikrit, a province of 650,000 people 90 miles north of Baghdad, recorded 205 people killed from May through April, or an average of 17 a month, said Najat Khorshid Sa`id, statistics director at the morgue in the provincial capital, Tikrit, which was Saddam`s hometown. He said no one died from violence in 2002.

In Kirkuk, a northern province of 1.5 million people, 401 people were killed from May through April, or an average of 34 a month, said Fadhillah Ahmed Rasheed, head of the morgue in the provincial capital, Kirkuk. The province averaged three violent deaths a month in 2002, he said.

Officials at the main morgue in Najaf city, the capital of southern Najaf province, said they didn`t have casualty figures. Officials in Baqouba, the capital of northwest Diyala province, and Ramadi, the capital of western Anbar province, declined to release their numbers.

In Fallujah, where U.S. Marines launched an offensive against Sunni militants on April 4, the city`s hospital director, Rafie al-Issawi, reported 731 people killed during the month. However, the Iraqi health minister, Khudayer Abbas, had called Issawi`s numbers highly exaggerated.

The human rights organization Amnesty International, based in London, estimated in March that more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed ``as a direct result of military intervention in Iraq, either during the war or during the subsequent occupation.``

``This figure is an estimate as the authorities are unwilling or unable to catalogue killings,`` the group said in a statement.

There are no precise estimates for deaths during last year`s invasion.

The Associated Press conducted a major investigation of wartime civilian casualties, documenting the deaths of 3,240 civilians from March 20 to April 20, 2003. That investigation, conducted last May and June, was based on a survey of about half of Iraq`s hospitals, and counted only those deaths for which hospitals had good documentation. The report concluded the real number of civilian deaths was sure to be much higher.

The deaths of foreign soldiers in Iraq are documented.

As of May 17, 783 U.S. military personnel had died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq last year, according to the Department of Defense. Of those, 571 died as a result of hostile action and 212 died of non-hostile causes.

The Pentagon says 645 of the deaths have occurred since May 1, 2003 -- 462 as a result of hostile action and 183 from non-hostile causes, such as accidents or illness.

The British military has reported 58 deaths; Italy, 20; Spain, eight; Bulgaria, six; Ukraine, five; Thailand, two; Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia and Poland, one each.

The Brookings Institution counts 84 non-Iraqi civilian deaths since the occupation began through May 14, a figure that includes non-military employees of the U.S. government.

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Associated Press reporters Gassid Jabbar in Karbala, Zeki Hamad in Tikrit and Yahya Barzanji in Kirkuk contributed to this story.

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On the Net:

Brookings Institution`s Iraq Index: www.brookings.edu/iraqindex

U.S. Department of Defense: http://www.dod.gov

Amnesty International: http://www.amnesty.org

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

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May 24, 2004
The Greening of John McCain

Six or seven years ago, when he was a conventionally conservative senator from a reliably Republican Western state, John McCain could never have expected to find himself where he is now, all alone in the political catbird seat. One day he`s touted as a possible running mate for John Kerry. The next he`s assaulted by his own party with the kind of sputtering outrage that makes the target look good and the attacker look silly. House Speaker Dennis Hastert was so flustered by Mr. McCain`s criticism of President Bush`s wartime tax cuts that he accused the Arizona senator, a former prisoner of war, of knowing nothing about the meaning of sacrifice. All of which must amuse (when it does not pain) a man who relishes irony, political combat and the maverick`s role.

What`s going on with Mr. McCain doesn`t mean much for the Democrats; the senator seems to mean it when he says he`ll support Mr. Bush, that he won`t leave the Republican Party and that he doesn`t want to be anybody`s vice president. What`s important is that over the last few years, Mr. McCain has morphed into a different kind of Republican — one who`s true to the party`s most basic values, but with an appeal that transcends the current red-state-blue-state national standoff.

This transformation started with his feisty challenge to George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential primaries, when he drew more support from independents than he did from rank-and-file Republicans, and accelerated when he started veering from the party line on a range of issues. Most notable has been his break with the White House on energy and the environment. Once a reliable oil-and-gas man, he seemed genuinely shaken by evidence of the effects of global warming, and has since teamed up with Democrats like Joseph Lieberman to fight for greater fuel efficiency, cleaner power plants and other environmentally useful objectives.

Environmentalism was, of course, a Republican issue first. Mr. McCain has simply rediscovered an old party value. The same thing is true of his longstanding fiscal conservatism. Here again he finds himself at odds with the White House and people like Mr. Hastert, who seem fixated on tax cuts however disastrous their budgetary consequences. Currently, he is part of a lonely band of four Republican moderates in the Senate — the others are Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island — who have bravely blocked passage of a budget that fails to balance huge tax cuts with either spending reductions or other revenue increases.

Until Newt Gingrich and his Contract With America gang of rebellious reactionaries roared into town after the 1994 midterm elections, there were quite a few Republicans in Washington like John McCain who thought highly of balanced budgets. There was actually one in the White House, also named Bush, who raised taxes in a necessary if politically painful attempt to bring the deficit under control.

But the McCains of this world are increasingly rare birds, and therein lies the strongest reason why he should resist the siren call of presidential politics and remain where he is and who he is. The gradual disappearance of moderates from the Republican landscape has helped neither the party nor the country. Mr. McCain`s voice is more than a voice of bipartisan good sense. In time, it could lead the Republican Party back to where it once was and where it ought to be now.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 24, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Did Somebody Say War?
By BOB HERBERT

President Bush fell off his bike and hurt himself during a 17-mile excursion at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Saturday. Nothing serious. A few cuts and bruises. He was wearing a bike helmet and a mouth guard, and he was able to climb back on his bike and finish his ride.

A little later he left the ranch and went to Austin for a graduation party for his daughter Jenna. And then it was on to New Haven, where daughter Barbara will graduate today from Yale. Except for the bicycle mishap, it sounded like a very pleasant weekend.

Meanwhile, there`s a war on. Yet another U.S. soldier was killed near Falluja yesterday. You remember Falluja. That`s the rebellious city that the Marines gave up on and turned over to the control of officers from the very same Baathist army that we invaded Iraq to defeat.

It`s impossible to think about Iraq without stumbling over these kinds of absurdities. How do you get a logical foothold on a war that was nurtured from the beginning on absurd premises? You can`t. Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11. The invasion of Iraq was not part of the war on terror. We had no business launching this war. Now we`re left with the tragic absurdity of a clueless president riding his bicycle in Texas while Americans in Iraq are going up in flames.

How bad is the current situation? Gen. Anthony Zinni, the retired Marine Corps general who headed the U.S. Central Command (which covers much of the Middle East and Central Asia) from 1997 to 2000, was utterly dismissive about the administration`s "stay the course" strategy in Iraq. "The course is headed over Niagara Falls," he said in an interview with "60 Minutes," adding, "It should be evident to everybody that they`ve screwed up."

When the weapons of mass destruction rationale went by the boards, the administration and its apologists tried to justify the war by asserting that the U.S. could use bullets and bombs to seed Iraq with an American-style democracy that would then spread like the flowers of spring throughout the Middle East.

Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, addressed that point last week in a report titled, "The `Post Conflict` Lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan."

"At this point," the report said, "the U.S. lacks good options in Iraq — although it probably never really had them in the sense the Bush administration sought. The option of quickly turning Iraq into a successful, free-market democracy was never practical, and was as absurd a neoconservative fantasy as the idea that success in this objective would magically make Iraq an example that would transform the Middle East."

The president`s reservoir of credibility on Iraq is bone dry. His approval ratings are going down. Conservative voices in opposition to his policies are growing louder. And the troops themselves are becoming increasingly disenchanted with their mission. Yet no one knows quite what to do. Americans are torn between a desire to stop the madness by pulling the plug on this tragic and hopeless adventure and the realization that the U.S., for the time being, may be the only safeguard against a catastrophic civil war.

The president is scheduled to give a speech tonight to lay out his "clear strategy" for the future of Iraq. Don`t hold your breath. This is the same president who deliberately exploited his nation`s fear of terrorism in the aftermath of Sept. 11 to lead it into the long dark starless night of Iraq.

As for the Iraqis, they`ve been had. We`re not going to foot the bill in any real sense for the reconstruction of Iraq, any more than we`ve been willing to foot the bill for a reconstruction of the public school system here at home. There`s a reason why Ahmad Chalabi and the Bush crowd were so simpatico for so long. They all considered themselves masters of the con. They all thought that they could fool all of the people all of the time.

There`s a terrible sense of dread filtering across America at the moment and it`s not simply because of the continuing fear of terrorism and the fact that the nation is at war. It`s more frightening than that. It grows out of the suspicion that we all may be passengers in a vehicle that has made a radically wrong turn and is barreling along a dark road, with its headlights off and with someone behind the wheel who may not know how to drive.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

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Man sollte an ganz anderer Stelle mit psychologischen Hilfe ansetzen.

washingtonpost.com

Soldiers Vented Frustration, Doctor Says
Psychiatrist Studied Interviews With Guards Accused of Abusing Iraqi Detainees

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 24, 2004; Page A18

Physical abuses by U.S. military police of Iraqi prison detainees stemmed from a mixture of soldiers` anger and frustration over poor working conditions, their racism and the absence of any meaningful supervision, according to the report of an Air Force psychiatrist who studied the episode for the Army.

The unclassified report, by Col. Henry Nelson, provides the military`s principal, internal explanation for why the soldiers participated in the abusive actions. His independent study was based on a review of thousands of pages of interview transcripts and other documents the Pentagon has not released, and it is appended to a report of the Army investigation headed by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba.

At the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, "the worst human qualities and behaviors came to the fore" in an atmosphere of "danger, promiscuity and negativity" within a closed environment, wrote Nelson, a member of the Army`s investigating team. He noted training lapses, as others have, but also said that soldiers` unfamiliarity with Islamic culture, their pervasive sense of danger and the indefinite nature of their tenure were factors that wore them down.

"The sadistic and psychopathic behavior was appalling and shocking," Nelson wrote in the report, which was provided to The Washington Post by a government official. "Abuse with sexual themes occurred and was witnessed, condoned [and] photographed, but never reported."

Much of the language in Nelson`s study supports the Army`s contention that the abuses were a product of a distorted environment at Abu Ghraib last year, amounting to a wartime version of the malicious conduct by marooned children in the novel "Lord of the Flies." But the report is at odds with recent congressional testimony by top Army and military intelligence officials that the prison abuse involved only low-ranking soldiers and was not known by more senior officers.

On Aug. 23, 2003, Nelson wrote, an intelligence officer "kicked and beat a passive, cuffed detainee who was suspected of mortaring Abu Ghraib." This incident, Nelson wrote, "was witnessed by officers and NCOs [senior enlisted officers] alike."

Military officials have generally described the abuses as a function of "aberrant behavior" and weak leadership within the military police units stationed at the prison, rather than as a result of orders passed down the military chain of command. Nelson`s study, according to a brief summary given by Taguba, suggested the abuses were "wanton acts of select soldiers in an unsupervised and dangerous setting."

Some senators have said they suspect, to the contrary, that the abuses stemmed from a Washington-directed policy to encourage particularly aggressive interrogations during this period, involving an unusually close collaboration between military police who were guarding the prisoners and intelligence analysts who wanted to extract information from the detainees.

The collaboration deepened at the urging of an Army general sent from Washington last August to improve the efficiency of the intelligence-gathering process. Before then, the prison was run by the 800th Military Police Brigade; after a policy change formalized on Nov. 19, military police at two key cellblocks containing prisoners that posed a security threat were placed under the direct control of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.

Taguba said the collaboration violated Army doctrine, but senior Pentagon officials have challenged this view. Nelson did not address whether it was appropriate but confirmed that military police and intelligence analysts jointly perpetrated some abuses. In addition to the incident in August, he cited an Oct. 28-29 incident in which two military police beat up a prisoner suspected of involvement in a rape, at the specific instruction of "MI soldiers."

Witnesses -- including some of the abused Iraqis -- also told the investigators that "pairs" of interpreters and interrogators were involved in other abuses. Moreover, the military intelligence unit at the prison "seemed to operate in a conspiracy of silence," Nelson wrote, allowing the abuse to escape wider notice.

In highlighting psychological and cultural factors underlying the abuses, Nelson noted that soldiers sent to Iraq were immersed in Islamic culture for the first time and said "there is an association of Muslims with terrorism" that contributed to misperceptions, fear and "a devaluation of a people." He reported that one military police platoon leader was openly hostile to Iraqis, and that a police dog handler was "disrespectful and racist" -- attributing to his dog a dislike of Iraqi "culture, smell, sound, skin tone [and] hair color."

Nelson also described the climate at Abu Ghraib as grim and the living conditions as "deplorable" and dangerous, a circumstance that he said provoked some of the U.S. soldiers` anger and hostility toward their prisoners.

The prison was "lacking most of the amenities at other camps," the Iraqi guards were corrupt, and "all present . . . were truly in personal danger," Nelson said. A weapon was smuggled into the camp, mortars rained on the facility every day, and prisoners sporadically rioted, leading to "numerous injuries for both soldiers and detainees alike."

The prison has "both depressive and anxiety-laden elements that would grind down even the most motivated soldier and lead to anger and possible lack of control," Nelson said. He drew a contrast between the current detention mission and procedures during Operation Desert Storm, the first U.S. invasion of Iraq, in 1991, in which most detainees were held only briefly before being repatriated.

The present war, he said, is "ongoing, with no end in sight." Every day, he said, "the soldiers deal with . . . extraordinary frustrations and hostile detainees who are in total limbo concerning their fate and release." The prison guards and intelligence officers also were under pressure from their U.S. military leaders, he wrote, to "either prevent escape or obtain intelligence rapidly." Some of the abuses were committed by "MP and MI soldiers" as retribution, Nelson said. The soldiers were "especially indifferent and vindictive towards detainees involved in any violence towards coalition forces or who exhibited deviant behavior."

A prisoner who smuggled in the weapon was shot in the legs, and then a military police soldier ripped off his bandages, beat him on his wounds, and hanged him by the arms until they became dislocated, Nelson reported. Police also stripped, tethered together and photographed some Iraqis suspected of raping a young boy in the prison, he wrote.

A vindictive attitude was not the only psychological problem, Nelson wrote. "Clearly some detainees were totally humiliated and degraded" by people who were practicing a "perversive dominance." He said the events were "a classic example" of the formula that "predisposition plus opportunity" can produce criminal behavior.

"Inadequate and immoral men and women desiring dominance may be attracted to fields such as corrections and interrogations, where they can be in absolute control over others" in the absence of appropriate supervision, Nelson wrote. He noted that two men suspected as "ringleaders" in the abuses, Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr. and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, "both had experience in corrections."

"They collaborated with other MP soldiers and several unknown MI personnel, to include soldiers as well as their U.S. civilian contract interrogators and interpreters," Nelson wrote.

Frederick and Graner are now awaiting court-martial. Graner`s attorney Guy Womack did not return a phone call for comment; he has previously said Graner was only following orders from military intelligence officials. One of Frederick`s attorneys, Gary Myers, has said his client acted under the direct supervision of military intelligence officers.

It is important, Nelson wrote, "to remember dominance in and of itself is not improper. In fact, interrogators knowingly dominate their subjects and sometimes intimidate their subjects. But clearly, behavior at Abu Ghraib crossed the line."

Nelson also emphasized that "command factors" set the stage for the abuse and allowed it to persist. He cited, in particular, friction between the police and intelligence commanders, poor training and supervision of the soldiers, and what he characterized as a "lenient" attitude by senior officers in the military police at the prison toward infractions of the rules.

The abuses at the prison, he said, were "common knowledge among the enlisted soldiers," but even some officers knew of them or witnessed them. Those involved took the view that the chain of command would "essentially do nothing" and believed "I can get away with this," Nelson wrote.

"There were several commanders and NCOs [among those studied] who were ineffective leaders," Nelson said. He singled out in particular Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade and was responsible for the prison until she was shunted aside by intelligence officers on Nov. 19 at the request of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top U.S. military officer in Iraq.

Nelson said Karpinski had difficulty delegating work, dismissed punishments of lesser officers that were recommended by her staff, and was ineffective in resolving problems with personnel, logistics, administration and supplies, of which she was aware. Karpinski "felt herself a victim and she propagated a negativity that permeated throughout" the area of her command responsibility, Nelson wrote.

One of Karpinski`s attorneys, Fred Taylor, dismissed the claims in an official rebuttal, stating that Nelson was unqualified to make findings of fact. Taylor also said Army investigators had ignored statements by officers in her brigade "replete with praise and admiration of her clear guidance, firm, fair and common-sense enforcement of standards, [and] her caring for the soldiers."

In his summary, Nelson wrote that "the psychological factors of negativity, anger and hatred combined with a desire to dominate and humiliate within an unsupervised workplace" where no threat of punishment existed.

In his report, completed by early March, Nelson urged that a "competent authority . . . expedite the release of detainees." But it was not until April 23, after a group of Iraqi professors complained to the civilian U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, that Bremer announced a program to improve the detainees` processing and also to accelerate their release. Nelson also urged the military to have more psychological help available for soldiers in Iraq.

And finally, Nelson said, "we must be ever ready to prevent the recurrence of such inhumane behavior." The way to do that, he said, is to ensure that the guilty "face swift, appropriate justice."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Iraq Wedding Film Challenges U.S. on Air Strike


Reuters
Monday, May 24, 2004; 4:31 AM

By Tom Perry

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - New video showing Iraqis singing and dancing at a desert wedding begged more questions on Monday about a U.S. air strike last week that killed about 40 people.

The U.S. military has insisted most of the dead were foreign guerrilla fighters who had slipped over the nearby Syrian border. Local people say the Americans massacred wedding guests.

Associated Press Television News said it obtained the footage from a survivor of the strike early on May 19.

The U.S. military says troops found no signs of a wedding in the wreckage left at the remote hamlet of Mogr al-Deeb. But a spokesman, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, conceded on Saturday that six women were killed in the strike and a celebration may have been taking place: "Bad people have parties too," he said.

The film shows pick-up trucks racing across the desert -- many of the dead came from the regional capital Ramadi -- men dancing in a tent, children playing and a musician playing an electric organ. The same man later appeared dead in a shroud.

Ultimately the truth may count for less than the perception; many Iraqis, exasperated by 14 months of occupation and by a scandal over the abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers, find it easy to believe a tale of American brutality or incompetence.

The video is unwelcome news for Washington on a day when it is to present a proposal at the United Nations seeking approval for its continued military presence in Iraq following a handover of sovereignty to an interim government on June 30.

Nor will it help President Bush, who is to make a televised speech to the nation at midnight GMT that will lay out his strategy in Iraq. Bush`s chances of re-election in November have suffered as Americans question the cost in lives and dollars of occupying Iraq.

It remains to be seen how close an ally the future independent Iraq will be to Washington.

U.N. CRITICISM

The top U.N. human rights official, Bertrand Ramcharan, said even if some of those at the house in Mogr al-Deeb were involved in criminal activity, that was no excuse for killing so many people.

"The acting United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed shock over the deaths of some 40 civilians at a wedding party in Iraq near the Syrian border," his office said in a statement on Friday.

"Even if there are security-related concerns, there can be no license to commit carnage."

On Saturday, General Kimmitt said there was strong evidence of illegal activity at what he called a safe house for fighters.

"The more we look at the post-strike intelligence, the more that we continue to dig in to what we found at that location, the more we are persuaded that there was not a wedding going on," he said. "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations too. Bad people have parties too."

He said no children were killed, though footage of funerals taken by the Arab television channel Al-Arabiya on Wednesday showed at least one child being buried.

Kimmitt said there were "several inconsistencies" between what soldiers found at the site and the television footage of relatives of the victims, which were still being investigated.

Among items found at the house were weapons, binoculars modified for aiming artillery, significant amounts of medical equipment, fake identity cards and the machines for making them, "terrorist training manuals" and suspected cocaine, he said.

The house also seemed to have been used as a dormitory, with more than 300 sets of bedding gear and about 100 sets of prepackaged clothing, Kimmitt said. This suggested it was a staging post for foreign fighters coming into Iraq, he said.

Kimmitt said there was no sign of food or wedding gifts, but relatives of a well-known Iraqi singer said he had traveled from Baghdad to perform at a wedding at the house and had been killed in the attack. Reuters witnessed his funeral on Thursday.

BUSH SPEECH

With domestic support for his Iraq policies at an all-time low, Bush will deliver a prime-time speech on Monday trying to assure the public he has a strategy for handing over power to Iraqis and keeping the violence from getting out of control.

In heavy fighting over the weekend, U.S. troops said they killed at least 32 guerrillas in a raid on Sunday on Shi`ite militia fighters in Kufa, near the holy city of Najaf.

Two Americans were killed in an attack on a Marine convoy near the restive Sunni Muslim city of Falluja on the same day.

Monday night`s speech at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, marks the start of a public relations campaign designed to shore up Bush`s standing and draw public attention away from bloodshed to the transition to Iraqi rule.

The stakes are enormous for Bush, presidential historian Doug Brinkley said. With his public standing "heading into a downward spiral, it is imperative that the president appeal directly to the American public. It`s one of those moments historians will look at decades from now," he added.

Bush`s approval ratings have slipped to the mid-to-low 40 percent range. No recent president has been re-elected with such numbers so close to the November elections.

"There isn`t panic, but there is considerable concern," one senior Republican aide said.

© 2004 Reuters

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washingtonpost.com

Wall Street Firms Funnel Millions to Bush
Finance Sector Produces Surge of Cash to President Who Cut Taxes on Dividends, Gains

By Thomas B. Edsall and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 24, 2004; Page A04

At Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., a suggestion from chief executive E. Stanley O`Neal is not to be taken lightly.

O`Neal eliminated 24,000 jobs, froze pay and steadily pushed out competitors for executive power, including colleagues who had championed his rise up the corporate ladder. "Ruthless," O`Neal has reportedly told colleagues, "isn`t always bad."

So it came as no surprise that when O`Neal sent letters to senior executives at Merrill Lynch in early June asking them to contribute to President Bush`s reelection campaign, the response was prompt and generous.

Between June 12 and June 30 of last year, the Bush-Cheney campaign was inundated with 157 checks from Merrill Lynch executives and at least 20 from their spouses; 140 checks were for the maximum allowed by law: $2,000.

Total take generated by the O`Neal letter: $279,750 in less than three weeks. When that total is combined with the rest of the money contributed to Bush by employees during the current election cycle, Merrill Lynch personnel have given $459,050, according to Dwight Morris & Associates, which studies political money.

The money flowing from Merrill Lynch employees is part of a $12.14 million tidal wave of cash to the Bush campaign from the finance and insurance sectors.

Wall Street has stepped up to the plate in support of Bush, and Bush has sponsored legislation producing billions of dollars in revenue on Wall Street.

Capital gains and dividend tax cuts have encouraged substantial asset shifting by investors -- transactions producing commissions for securities firms. In addition, in 2001, Bush secured a gradual repeal of the estate tax, allowing the accumulation of investment wealth without fear of large tax liability for heirs.

The 10-year revenue loss from the elimination of the estate tax will be $133.2 billion, according to Congress`s Joint Committee on Taxation. The revenue losses from the dividend and capital gains cuts will be $125.3 billion through 2010, according to the committee.

In addition, the administration has proposed creation of tax-free "Lifetime Savings Accounts" that, if approved, would result in a major shift from savings accounts to investment accounts managed by Wall Street companies.

O`Neal is one of nine Wall Street "Rangers" -- each one has raised at least $200,000 for the Bush campaign. In addition, five other executives of prominent securities firms have raised at least $100,000 each to qualify as Bush "Pioneers."

The O`Neal-generated cash is a record for such a short time period, according to Morris and other campaign finance experts.

O`Neal`s success, however, represents only a small fraction of an unprecedented drive by top Wall Street firms in support of the president.

When employers of contributors to the Bush campaign are ranked, seven out of the top 10 are major securities firms. Employees of Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc. have contributed the most of any single company to Bush: $505,675.

Asked why so many of the top 10 employers of contributors are Wall Street securities firms, Scott Stanzel, spokesman for the Bush-Cheney `04 Campaign, said, "We are proud that we have over 1 million donors to the Bush-Cheney campaign representing every county in every state in this nation."

Altogether, personnel at these seven top 10 firms have given Bush $2.33 million, or a fifth of the $12.14 million from employees of the finance and insurance sector that has flowed to Bush this election cycle.

By comparison, the presumptive Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), has raised $472,564 from employees of the same seven firms, and the entire finance and insurance sector has given Kerry $2.7 million.

Many of the Wall Street Rangers and Pioneers are, like O`Neal, chairmen and CEOs -- top executives who rarely engage in the mundane work of political fundraising.

This year, the Wall Street Rangers include Philip J. Purcell, CEO of Morgan Stanley; Joseph J. Grano Jr., chairman of UBS Financial Services Inc.; Henry M. Paulson Jr., chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs & Co.; and John J. Mack, CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston Corp.

None of them tried to become a Pioneer for the Bush campaign in 2000.

Spokesmen for the firms that replied to inquiries about the contribution patterns denied that the money was related to Bush tax policies. Mark Herr, of Merrill Lynch, said, "The simple facts are these: Mr. O`Neal wrote a letter to executives and asked them if they wanted to contribute to the president. He also made it clear that no one was obliged to do so." In a prepared statement, UBS Financial Services said employee contributions "reflect personal decisions by UBS employees with their own funds and are not from UBS as a corporate entity."

For the securities industry, a lot has changed since 2000, and the changes wrought by the Bush administration have produced large new profits. Those profits stand to soar higher if Bush is reelected.

Three successive tax cuts proposed by Bush and passed by Congress were specifically designed to lower taxation on savings and investment. The tax rate on most corporate dividends fell from 38.6 percent to 15 percent. Most capital gains on investment are now taxed at 15 percent rather than 20 percent.

Such measures were explicitly designed to encourage investment, thus channeling billions of dollars through Wall Street investment banks.

The liberal Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy said last week that those tax cuts -- coupled with other tax advantages -- have lowered the average federal tax rate on investment income to 9.6 percent.

In contrast, federal tax rates on wages -- including Social Security and Medicare taxes -- average 23.4 percent. The Social Security payroll tax falls most heavily on wage earners making $87,900 or less because income above that level is exempt.

The most dramatic Bush tax proposal has yet to be enacted.

The administration has proposed the creation of "Lifetime Savings Accounts," to which any individual could contribute as much as $7,500 a year. The capital gains, dividends and interest earned in the accounts would be free of taxation, and the money could be withdrawn at any time for any reason.

The proposed savings accounts contrast sharply with existing tax-free accounts, which are often restricted to lower- and middle-income savers, have much lower annual contribution limits and can be accessed only for certain expenditures, such as retirement, education and health care.

Under the proposal, a family of four could shield earnings of as much as $30,000 a year from taxation. That would, in effect, eliminate capital gains, dividend and interest taxation for most families. The median pre-tax income for a family of four is $63,278, and only very high-income families could afford to put as much as $30,000 annually into a tax-free savings account.

In a major boon for Wall Street, the new accounts would make traditional bank accounts all but obsolete. The Securities Industry Association (SIA) firmly backs the proposal.

"Lifetime Savings Accounts will allow people to save more of their money tax-free," said Richard Hunt, SIA senior vice president for federal policy. "SIA has strongly advocated the expansion and enhancement of savings and investment options available to Americans," the organization said in a statement.

Bush`s plans for Social Security are potentially even more lucrative for the securities industry. The president has repeatedly said he would like to allow individuals to divert some percentage of their Social Security taxes into personal investment accounts, which in many cases would be managed by financial services firms.

The idea -- a centerpiece of Bush`s 2000 campaign -- has gone nowhere. But White House economic policy aides have said Social Security reform could become the crowning domestic achievement of a Bush second term.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Retired General Assails Planning for Iraq War
Zinni Warns Against Staying the Course

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 24, 2004; Page A19

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, former U.S. commander in the Middle East, charges in a book to be published today that "everybody in the military knew" that the Bush administration`s plan for Iraq consisted of only half the troops that were needed, and says that country is now "a powder keg" that could break apart into warring regions.

Zinni has been a critic of the Iraq war since before the invasion and served briefly as a special envoy for President Bush. He wrote that he was moved to speak out by "false rationales presented as a justification; a flawed strategy; lack of planning; the unnecessary alienation of our allies; the underestimation of the task; the unnecessary distraction from real threats; and the unbearable strain dumped on our overstretched military."

"In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence, and corruption," he wrote. " . . . If there is a center that can hold this mess together, I don`t know what it is. Civil war could break out at any time. Resources are needed; a strategy is needed; and a plan is needed."

The harsh new critique is being released just as Bush heads to the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pa., to present his latest strategy for Iraq in a prime-time address at 8 p.m. today. Zinni is hitting the interview circuit at a time when Republican lawmakers have turned sharply pessimistic about the situation in Iraq and the White House continues trying to restore confidence in its handling of the war despite falling poll numbers and continuing revelations about brutality against detainees in Iraq.

The book, "Battle Ready," is by novelist Tom Clancy, with Zinni and Tony Koltz. Zinni was U.S. special envoy to the Middle East for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from November 2002 to March 2003. In several interviews and statements at the time, Bush mentioned Zinni`s presence in the region as one reason for his optimism about the peace process and said he was looking forward to his recommendations. Referring to himself and Vice President Cheney, Bush said during an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office, "We both trust General Zinni."

A passage written by Zinni voiced support for the views of retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, whose estimate that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq was dismissed by the administration as wildly off the mark. "Recently, the Army chief of staff testified that we would need 300,000 troops to pacify Iraq," Zinni wrote. "Everybody in the military knew he was right. But the party line down from the Pentagon decreed that the number was half that, and he was pilloried."

Zinni, 60, appeared last night on CBS`s "60 Minutes" and said that staying the course in Iraq is not feasible. "The course is headed over Niagara Falls," he said. "I think it`s time to change course a little bit or at least hold somebody responsible for putting you on this course." He said the current situation is the product of "poor strategic thinking" combined with "poor operational planning and execution on the ground."

Zinni was one of the earliest and most outspoken critics of the war and remains highly regarded in the military. He was commander of the U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000. He wrote that when he left, he had a preliminary plan for attacking Iraq. "I`m not sure where it went after I left. As far as I can tell, the plan was pigeonholed," he said.

His successor, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, prosecuted the war past the fall of Baghdad and is now retired. Discussing the Iraq war with The Washington Post in December, Zinni said he believed that "the American people were conned into this."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Hallo B&N, falls Du diesen Artikel liest, oder sonst jemand, der sich mit dem US-Steuersystem auskennt. Was ist der Unterschied zwischen payroll-tax und income-tax.

payroll tax- die Lohnsummensteuer, die Sozialversicherungssteuer
income tax- die Ertragssteuer, die Lohnsteuer


washingtonpost.com

A Tax Plan for Kerry

By Ted Halstead and Maya MacGuineas

Monday, May 24, 2004; Page A23

John Kerry not only has a message problem, he seems to have conflicting economic priorities. Kerry wants to make job creation and helping the middle class the central theme of his campaign, but he has yet to offer any bold or compelling ideas to back up the rhetoric. At the same time, he has been unable to find a way to square his broader jobs agenda with his commitment to fiscal prudence. Allow us to suggest a solution to both problems: abolishing the payroll tax.

Although you`d never know it from listening to our political leaders, the largest tax now paid by over 70 percent of working American families is not the income tax but the payroll tax. No tax does more to discourage job creation or to reduce take-home pay for low- and middle-income workers. Likewise, nothing could do more to boost both than repealing it outright.

Unlike income taxes, the payroll tax kicks in from the first dollar earned and applies only to wages. It is split equally between employers and employees (except in the case of independent contractors, who bear both parts of the burden). While income taxes have been cut many times in recent decades, payroll taxes have risen steadily: from a tenth of the federal budget in the 1950s to over a third today.

A basic premise of economics is that the more you tax something, the less of it you get. By taxing labor so heavily, we are in effect choosing to have fewer jobs and to drive employment into the informal sector, where workers receive no benefits and often try to hide their wages. The payroll tax is particularly painful for small businesses, which we depend on for job creation. Not surprisingly, the National Federation of Independent Business routinely cites payroll tax relief as one of its top priorities.

As if retarding job growth weren`t bad enough, the payroll tax is also highly regressive, meaning that it falls disproportionately on low-income workers. Not only is its rate structure flat, but its largest component (which funds Social Security) applies only to wages up to $87,900 a year. In other words, the fastest-growing tax just happens to fall hardest on those who can least afford to pay it.

Kerry has flirted with the idea of payroll tax relief in the past. During the economic downturn, he suggested a "payroll tax holiday" to stimulate consumer spending and help lower-wage earners. More recently he proposed a temporary income tax credit to offset the cost of payroll taxes incurred by businesses for hiring new workers. But these proposals amount to little more than tinkering at the margins of the problem. If the payroll tax hinders job creation (which it does) and is highly regressive (which it is), why stop at half-measures? Any candidate who is serious about stimulating employment and helping working-class families should propose repealing the payroll tax permanently.

Of course, the roughly $750 billion a year generated by the payroll tax would need to be replaced with a new source of revenue earmarked for Social Security and Medicare. As it is, Kerry`s existing proposals are already at odds with his desire to cut the deficit in half. Thus any new funding stream will not only have to generate sufficient revenue, it will also have to avoid the numerous pitfalls of the payroll tax. Better yet, it should be structured to encourage economic growth. The ideal candidate is a national consumption tax.

Conservatives have been championing consumption taxes for decades on the grounds that they would encourage saving -- and, hence, long-term growth -- without discouraging work and enterprise. These are very important benefits. Traditional types of consumption taxes such as sales taxes or the "flat tax," however, are extremely regressive and therefore would be no improvement over the payroll tax on that front.

A better alternative would be a progressive consumption tax, levied not on individual purchases but rather on total spending. Each year, taxpayers would calculate their total income, subtract their total savings and pay taxes on the difference. The first, say, $25,000 of consumption would be tax-free, and from there the tax rates would be progressive rather than flat. The more you spent and the less you saved, the higher your tax rate would be.

Phased in gradually, a progressive national consumption tax could replace the entire revenue stream of the payroll tax. And it would be a far better funding stream for Social Security and Medicare, insofar as a consumption tax would encourage exactly what we most need as the retirement of the baby-boom generation approaches: higher rates of personal savings. Over time, higher saving rates would also boost economic growth and living standards.

By replacing payroll taxes with consumption taxes, Kerry (or his rival) could claim the ultimate policy hat trick: more jobs, higher take-home pay and more personal savings. On top of that, embracing this idea would help Kerry reconcile two strands of his own thinking that have so far been in near-constant tension: his commitment to fiscal rectitude and his penchant for populism.

One can almost hear the new campaign slogans: "balanced-budget populism," "pro-growth populism" -- or both.

Ted Halstead is president and chief executive of the New America Foundation. Maya MacGuineas is director of the foundation`s Fiscal Policy Program. They will answer questions at 11 a.m. tomorrow on www.washingtonpost.com.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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US soldiers storm mosque in worst day of fighting with Sadr`s militia
By Justin Huggler in Baghdad

24 May 2004

US forces carried out air strikes on the Shia holy city of Najaf and stormed a mosque in nearby Kufa yesterday, as 34 people were killed in the worst fighting yet between American troops and Shia militiamen loyal to the radical cleric, Muqtada Sadr. At least three civilians were among the dead, according to doctors.

The Sahla mosque complex in Kufa was the scene of the heaviest battle yet between the Americans and Sadr`s Mehdi Army. The violence came as the Shia militiamen withdrew from the other Shia holy city, Karbala, amid rumours of a deal with American troops.

But the battles in Kufa and Najaf appeared to be US troops` answer to an offer from Sadr for his militia to withdraw from Najaf if the Americans did the same. US forces have vowed to kill or capture Sadr, who launched a Shia uprising against the occupation in April.

As many as 20 Mehdi Army militiamen are believed to have died in the battle at the Sahla mosque. The mosque`s ornate gateway had been damaged, its decorated tiles smashed away and the stonework crumbling beneath. The desecration of the mosque provoked fury among Iraqi Shia, and an angry crowd gathered yesterday and vowed to resist the occupation.

The Americans said they had only attacked the mosque because the Mehdi Army was using it as a military base.

Witnesses said US forces bombarded the area around the mosque with artillery fire and air strikes before moving in yesterday. Then, at around 1am local time, about 100 US troops stormed the mosque and tanks smashed their way through the main gateway.

"I feel humiliated, our sanctity has been violated," Ali Wasi, one of about 100 local residents who gathered at the mosque to protest, told reporters. "These houses of prayer are the most valuable things we own, for Shias. I will resist them to the last drop of blood in my body."

American artillery pounded the area around the Najaf cemetery, where Mehdi Army militiamen have been using guerrilla tactics against US forces in the narrow alleys.

US warplanes carried out air strikes in the area north of the city. At least 14 people died in the strikes, among them three civilians and several police officers, who were killed when Najaf`s main police station was hit. Najaf is built around the Shrine of Imam Ali, Shia Islam`s pre-eminent saint, and the American onslaught there is causing anger across the Shia world.

There was confusion over the Mehdi Army`s withdrawal from Karbala yesterday.

All the evidence suggested the Americans had made a deal - but they denied it. Both US forces Mr Sadr`s militia had left the city after the cleric`s offer to pull his fighters out if the Americans did the same.

Local Iraqi leaders have been trying to negotiate a withdrawal. Local security forces were patrolling the streets yesterday, which is reminiscent of the US withdrawal from Fallujah, under a deal in which Iraqi forces under a former Iraqi general took control of security there.

But Major David Gercken, a spokesman for the US 1st Armoured Division, insisted: "There was no ceasefire, no deal made in Karbala. We do not and will not make deals with militias or criminals". And the Americans insisted their troops had not withdrawn from Karbala, but had been repositioned.

There were also signs yesterday that the shaky truce in Fallujah may not last. Two US soldiers were killed, and five others wounded, in an ambush near the city by insurgents using a bomb and rocket-propelled grenades. It was the first attack on US forces in the area since the Fallujah deal.


24 May 2004 11:46

© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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THE WORLD
Bush Faces a Defining Month on World Stage
In a series of summits, the president`s image as a leader will be tested as Kerry waits to pounce.
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

May 24, 2004

WASHINGTON — From Rome to Istanbul, President Bush faces a diplomatic gantlet in June that could burnish his image as an international leader or provide new ammunition for Sen. John F. Kerry`s charge that he has isolated the U.S. in the world.

With anxiety over Iraq dominating the presidential race, an unusual concentration of international summits offers Bush probably his best opportunity before election day to highlight his credentials as a world leader on a stage unavailable to Kerry, his presumptive Democratic challenger.

But next month`s events — a commemoration of the 60th anniversary of D-day in France; a gathering of leaders of the world`s top industrialized nations on Sea Island, Ga; U.S.-European Union talks in Ireland and a NATO summit in Turkey — also present Bush with unusual risks, many analysts agree.

If the meetings do not produce much tangible help on Iraq or reveal continuing tension with traditional allies, they could reinforce Kerry`s central foreign policy argument against Bush: that he has alienated too many other nations, leaving the U.S. bearing too much of the burden in Iraq.

"If … the feeling is that things are harmonious, that will play to Bush`s advantage," said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland`s program on International Policy Attitudes. "But if information comes back about demonstrations — about criticism and hostility — and the image of the world being critical of us grows, that could significantly hurt him."

International summits often have been perfunctory and predictable events. In an election year, such meetings have provided presidents a relatively low-risk opportunity to emphasize a "stature gap" with challengers by spotlighting their role as a global leader.

But because this year`s presidential race is revolving so much around foreign policy in general — and Iraq in particular — analysts in both parties believe the pressure on Bush to produce concrete achievements may be higher than usual.

"If these opportunities come and go without more help [on Iraq], it is going to be a disaster," said one Republican activist close to the Bush campaign. "He`s selling himself as a leader. But right now, who`s he leading?"

Richard Holbrooke, U.N. ambassador under President Clinton and a top foreign policy advisor to Kerry, said the meetings offer Bush "a tremendous opportunity" to rebuild ties abroad and polish his foreign policy credentials at home. But Holbrooke said that if Bush returns empty-handed on Iraq, especially from the NATO summit June 27-29, "I would say he`s failed again."

Adding to the stakes for Bush is the timing. These gatherings will occur as the administration plans to transfer authority to an interim Iraqi government on June 30 and hopes to win a United Nations resolution blessing the handoff.

Administration officials and European diplomats are cautiously optimistic about reaching consensus on a resolution, which would give Bush an important victory during this period of intense scrutiny. Kerry`s case against Bush, however, could be bolstered if the talks on the resolution bog down.

Beyond the substance of the meetings, the month`s whirlwind of diplomatic activity may provide powerful symbols that shape the campaign debate.

Images from the D-day commemoration June 6 in Normandy, France, could suggest reconciliation between Bush and the European leaders who will join him. The occasion also could allow the president to link the struggle in Iraq with U.S. sacrifices in World War II.

"At a time when the images are filling the screens of U.S. soldiers in positions that are not exactly fantastic, reviving the memories of the sacrifices of `the greatest generation` … could be key," said one Western diplomat sympathetic to the Iraq war.

On the other hand, Bush`s visits to Rome and Paris en route to Normandy and his trip to Istanbul, Turkey, expose him to the risk of large protests.

Italian opposition parties are organizing demonstrations against Bush. In Paris, left-leaning groups have called for similar protests, but observers there say it is unclear how much response they will generate — especially against the backdrop of the celebration of the U.S. role in liberating France from Nazi Germany.

Still, the protests could be an eye-opener for many Americans because polling has shown that only a minority believe that public opinion in most other countries opposed the war in Iraq, Kull said.

In University of Maryland surveys, he added, those who believe world opinion mostly opposed the war are much cooler toward Bush than those who think most other nations supported it. As a result, Kull said, extensive protests could hurt Bush by deepening a sense that the U.S. is fighting in Iraq without much international support.

Signs are growing that next month`s sessions will produce some accomplishments Bush can use to counter the broader charge that he cannot mobilize allies to work with the U.S.

Administration officials and foreign diplomats are most optimistic that the leaders of industrial nations meeting at the G-8 summit in Georgia from June 7 to 10 will approve a Bush proposal for a "Greater Middle East Initiative" aimed at encouraging democratic reform in the Muslim world.

"The prospect for something useful coming out on that are good," said one senior European diplomat in Washington, who requested anonymity.

The plan`s measures range from loans for economic development to grants to support local reform groups.

Similarly, it appears likely that NATO will approve the so-called Istanbul Cooperative Initiative that seeks to expand military ties between the alliance and Middle Eastern countries, officials say.

The two initiatives would not provide direct assistance to the U.S. mission in Iraq. Some Democrats, such as former NATO Supreme Commander Wesley K. Clark, question whether they would even do much to improve long-term relations between the West and the Arab world.

"There is a legacy of colonialism in the region" that makes Arab nations resistant to Western efforts to influence their forms of government, said Clark, who sought the Democratic nomination this year.

Still, agreement on such initiatives could allow Bush to argue that other world leaders share his vision that encouraging democratic reform in the Middle East is key to suppressing terrorism over the long-term.

"I`m sure that one of the themes [from these summits] will be that he has on board the leaders of the world in thinking about this region now," said Henry R. Nau, professor of international affairs at George Washington University and a former aide to President Reagan. "Without being explicit about it, he is suggesting that the intervention in Iraq is part of this effort to move the region in the direction of more political liberalization."

Yet consensus on long-term projects may not meet Bush`s most pressing political need if the procession of summits fails to produce more immediate help in Iraq. And that may be far more difficult.

At hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, senior administration officials acknowledged it was unlikely that NATO would provide significant numbers of troops or accept an operational role in Iraq — as Kerry has urged.

"We`d love to see a larger NATO role," testified Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. "[But] I don`t think anybody is going to want to put a lot of troops into Iraq until the killing stops."

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last week that he expected the alliance`s summit to focus on its difficulties meeting existing obligations to help secure Afghanistan.

Philip H. Gordon, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank and coauthor of the new book "Allies at War: America, Europe and the Crisis Over Iraq," said that most European leaders have grown so alienated from Bush`s foreign policy that they are unlikely to endorse any practical steps that would significantly reduce the pressure on the U.S. in Iraq.

"The Europeans would never say it, but the last thing in the world they want is to allow George Bush to preside over a united West and show that we still have allies," Gordon said.

Another senior European diplomat in Washington, requesting anonymity, said that NATO, eager to avoid an open breach with Bush, would look for ways to signal support, perhaps through training Iraqi troops.

"You will get language which the Bush administration can use to say Sen. Kerry is wrong when he says [the U.S.] has been abandoned by all [its] European allies, and that`s what this is about to a certain extent," the diplomat said.

*

Times staff writers Edwin Chen in Washington and Sebastian Rotella in London contributed to this report.




Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY
Rumsfeld`s Long List of Failures
The muddles he has caused extend far past the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
By Anthony Lewis

May 24, 2004

By the normal standards of business or government, Donald Rumsfeld should long since have resigned or been fired as secretary of Defense.

The reason is not ideology, nor is it his role in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, horrifying though that may be. The reason is incompetence. His record in Iraq over the last 13 months is the most dramatically incompetent performance by a public official in recent American history.

United States forces entered Baghdad in triumph in April 2003. Today they cannot prevent an assassination on the doorstep of occupation headquarters. Insecurity roils the country. Six weeks before some uncertain form of sovereignty is to be turned over to an Iraqi regime, no one knows what that regime will be.

Rumsfeld is the man responsible. He sought and won the responsibility for postwar Iraq from President Bush. He and his aides tossed aside State Department studies on the difficulties to be expected. Rumsfeld relied for advice on Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi exile who was wanted for fraud in Jordan and who provided what many have described as fraudulent intelligence. Chalabi and his organization got $39 million from the U.S. government until it finally, last week, stopped the gravy train.

The speed with which Iraq unraveled was stunning, beginning immediately after the military victory. Mobs looted Iraqi institutions — and for two months, incredibly, U.S. forces did nothing effective to stop it. Every Iraqi government department except the oil ministry was looted. The great national museum and the national library were ransacked. Looters took beds from hospitals, computers from universities.

It was a disaster for the occupation that followed. Electricity and water supplies were hurt. But the psychological damage was worse. Iraqis saw the occupying forces as being grotesquely unprepared to provide elementary security. The U.S. has never recovered from that loss of confidence. Asked about the looting at the time, Rumsfeld dismissed it as "untidiness."

Rumsfeld`s man in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, started out by disbanding the entire Iraqi army. The result was to leave hundreds of thousands of men on the street without income or dignity — a recipe for resentment. Lately, under the pressure of growing nationalist resistance, Bremer has started trying to undo his folly and rehire some former soldiers. He dealt with the confrontation in Fallouja by turning security in that city over to Saddam Hussein`s former officers.

It was Rumsfeld who thought it was wise to violate the third Geneva Convention, to which this country is a signatory, and unilaterally label all the prisoners held at Guantanamo as "unlawful combatants" — without the right to the hearings required by the convention.

The policy brought condemnation around the world; a top British justice, Lord Steyn, said Guantanamo was a "legal black hole." Rumsfeld dismissed complaints about the treatment of prisoners as "isolated pockets of international hyperventilation."

Brushing aside the law at Guantanamo was a prelude to the lawlessness at Abu Ghraib.

The Economist magazine, one of the most pro-American voices in the world, said the Guantanamo policy was "both wrong and dangerous for America`s reputation. It was wrong because it violated the very values and rule of law for which America was supposedly fighting." The Economist added that it was "a symbol of a `we`ll decide` arrogance."

The political performance of the occupation authority in Iraq, again under Rumsfeld`s agent, Bremer, has been halting. Bremer resisted Iraqi calls for early elections — an unpersuasive position for a power supposedly bringing democracy to Iraq. He imposed on Iraq a transitional constitution written by Americans — and sure to be disowned by the Shiite majority in any truly sovereign Iraqi government.

And now, Abu Ghraib, according to Seymour Hersh in the last issue of the New Yorker, can be traced directly back to Rumsfeld.

The results of this parade of incompetence are terrible for the United States. Countries long friendly to us are seething with anti-American feelings. And it is hard to see any way out of the mess Rumsfeld has created in Iraq. We are now reduced to pleading for help from a United Nations we so recently scorned.

The honorable course for a public official responsible for such disasters is to resign. Lord Carrington, the British foreign secretary, showed how when he resigned after Argentina occupied Britain`s Falkland Islands in 1982 — even though he was only remotely responsible. But then, Rumsfeld`s boss has shown that responsibility for disaster does not matter. "You are a strong secretary of Defense," President Bush told him this month, "and the nation owes you a debt of gratitude."

Anthony Lewis is a former columnist for the New York Times and the author of "Gideon`s Trumpet" (1964, Random House).



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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O father, let me help fill thy coffers
George Clooney taps celebs for cash as his dad seeks House seat
- Carla Marinucci
Monday, May 24, 2004

Star-powered California cash from a who`s who of Hollywood has poured into an unlikely political race in recent weeks -- the fight for Kentucky`s Fourth Congressional District.

The movie money flowing to a region best known for horses and coal is aimed at Democratic hopeful Nick Clooney, who -- while not exactly a household name in California -- has the family connections that count. In recent weeks, Clooney has recently reaped an "Ocean`s 11" of contributions, thanks to the clout of his son -- actor George Clooney.

The seat has been held by Democratic Rep. Ken Lucas, who won a narrow victory two years ago over Republican Geoff Davis. Now, Clooney is set to face Davis, who won a GOP primary last week, and celebrities are rushing like "Three Kings" to help out their colleague`s dad by writing fat campaign checks.

Indeed, a full two-thirds of Clooney`s donations to date come from outside his own home state, according to OpenSecrets.org, a campaign donation watchdog group.

Check out the lists of A-list donors that John Kerry can only wish for:

In the $2,000 range: Kevin Spacey; Danny DeVito and wife Rhea Perlman; Kevin Costner; Paul Newman; Oscar-winning actors Adrien Brody and Renee Zellweger; actor-director Michael Douglas; TV star Bonnie Hunt; Screen Actors Guild president Melissa Gilbert; "Friends" star Matt LeBlanc and his wife, Melissa; singer Bette Midler; former "ER" star Noah Wyle and his wife; producer Jerry Weintraub; and of course, George Clooney and his personal assistant Amy Cohen.

Bigwig producer Harvey Weinstein and director Steven Soderbergh each donated $2,000; they co-produced the Clooney-directed "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," the story of TV producer Chuck Barris -- who also donated $2,000. The checks may illustrate what might be called a "Perfect Storm" of politics: an open seat in a conservative district in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives -- and a politically inclined, savvy son who clearly has the means and the well-placed contacts to help make it happen for his father.

But Democratic insiders say the elder Clooney never would have gotten this far without his own credentials: he`s a much-beloved and respected TV newscaster who has been a familiar face to a generation of Kentuckians.

Still, it`s not a cinch for any Democrat in the conservative district where 61 percent of the electorate voted for President Bush in 2000. And where Lucas, the outgoing Democratic congressman, is so conservative he once refused to meet former Democratic President Bill Clinton at the local airport -- and voted "present" rather than support Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco as minority leader.

The younger Clooney held a fund-raiser for his dad at his home in Studio City recently that apparently scored a windfall for the candidate.

And the former "Batman" star`s handwritten appeal, according to reports, was alone worth the price of admission -- a minimum $500 to the maximum $2, 000 general election donation.

"OK, this is a little tricky," began the note from the star of "Intolerable Cruelty" and "The Thin Red Line":

"I`ll start with a warning: I`m asking for money so you might want to stop reading and pretend you never got this letter,`` it said. "My father, Nick, is running for the U.S. House of Representatives in Kentucky`s 4th District. He`s the Democratic candidate.

"If he wins, he`ll be the only Democrat from Kentucky in Congress.

"If I was allowed, I`d pay for the whole thing (and cover a few Father`s Days), but I can`t,`` he wrote, according to reports. "So, I`m writing you in hopes of scaring up some cash for his Congressional bid.

The capper: "And I`ll wash your car every week till it`s paid off, and Armor-all the tires ... in a toga. Hope to see you there.``

No word from Clooney`s camp on whether the toga campaign promise will be kept.
Who`s who of political donors

Some of Hollywood`s entertainers and power brokers who are writing checks to the Kentucky 4th Congressional District campaign of Democrat Nick Clooney:

$2,000 contributions: Kevin Spacey, Kevin Costner, Steven Soderbergh, Harvey Weinstein, Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman, Paul Newman, Adrien Brody, Renee Zellweger, Jerry Weintraub, Michael Douglas, Matt LeBlanc, Bette Midler

$1,000 contributions: Salma Hayek, Drew Barrymore, Nancy Sinatra, Steven Spielberg, Meg Ryan, Norman Lear, Jeffrey Katzenberg

$500 contributions: Courteney Cox Arquette, Andy Garcia, Lucy Liu, Julianna Margulies, William H. Macy

Source: OpenSecrets.org

Chronicle student researcher Julia Malta-Weingard contributed to this report.E-mail Carla Marinucci at [e-mail].

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Is missile defense really needed?
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Sunday, May 23, 2004

PRESIDENT Ronald Reagan had a dream. Let`s build a missile shield that will protect us from our enemy`s nuclear missiles. In popular culture, we called it Star Wars and ever since, our country has been spending billions of dollars to try to create an anti-ballistic missile system.

Now, the Bush administration plans to deploy a national missile defense system in California and Alaska that has already cost $130 billion. This year, the Bush budget calls for spending yet another $10.2 billion.

But who is the enemy? If it`s North Korea, diplomatic reassurance that we will not invade that country will work better than a still unproven missile system. If it`s China, why have we given them "most-favored nation" trade status? If it`s Iran, they do not have the nuclear material or the missiles with which to attack the United States. If it`s al Qaeda, no missile shield will protect us from a dirty bomb, the dispersion of biological or chemical weapons or suicide bombers who decide to detonate themselves in our shopping malls.

But the real problem with the missile shield is that scientists say there is virtually no proof that we Americans have gotten anything for our billions of dollars. Nevertheless, President Bush is determined to get Star Wars up and running by Sept. 30, before the presidential election. Why? Probably because he wants to prove that, despite the disarray and scandal in Iraq, he is the leader who can protect our national security.

Scientists, however, have voiced great doubt that any part of Star Wars can work. In a May, 76-page, report titled "Technical Realities," the Union of Concerned Scientists found "no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against a real attack."

In addition, 49 retired senior military officers, including a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote an "Open Letter to the President" in March, asking Bush to postpone deployment of an untested and unproven ground-based missile shield. Instead, they want the president to use these billions to "accelerate programs to secure the multitude of facilities containing nuclear weapons and materials and to protect our ports and borders against terrorists who may attempt to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States."

They have asked Bush to commit these billions of dollars to fortifying our nation`s seaports and trains and other sites vulnerable to terrorists.

In addition to improving homeland security, think what California`s share of these billions could buy. Money that`s projected for ballistic missile defense in 2005, for example, could pay for 205,234 housing vouchers or health care for 413,584 uninsured adults or 21,569 elementary school teachers, or 6, 079 fire engines, or 163,534 Head Start placements or health care for 949,480 children.

Beyond spending precious taxpayer dollars, Star Wars has voided the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and is likely to ignite an arms race with other countries -- perhaps China.

Nor is the missile shield completely defensive. As many critics have noted, the technology needed to make a ballistic-missile system work perfectly also creates the ability to build offensive space-based weapons, which would violate the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.

Late in the fall of 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld delivered to Congress a report from a task force he chaired. It was called "Vision 2020" and described how the United States could use space-based weapons to dominate the world. Such military dominance, however, will only intensify fear and resentment of our nation and likely result in even more terrorist attacks. Memo to the President: You can`t win an urban battle in Fallujah with space- based weapons.

Star Wars, like the war in Iraq, is a military choice, not a necessity. We don`t need more weapons to secure our future. What we need are solutions to the ethnic and religious clashes and political and economic inequities that divide the people on this planet.

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Monday, May 24, 2004
War News for May 24, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Car bomb kills four outside Green Zone in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Fighting continues in Najaf.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier and one US Marine killed by roadside bomb ambush near Fallujah.

Bring ‘em on: Four US soldiers wounded in mortar attack near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi civilians killed by roadside bomb ambush near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Withdrawing Spanish troops attacked, one soldier wounded.

Bring ‘em on: Five US soldiers wounded by explosive devices and small arms fire near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two British security contractors killed in Baghdad RPG attack.

Civilian deaths in Iraq. “An Associated Press survey of the deaths in the first 12 months of the occupation found that more than 5,000 Iraqis died violently in Baghdad and in three provinces. The toll from both criminal and political violence ran dramatically higher than the number of violent deaths before the war, according to the statistics from morgues.”

Guardsmen protecting contractors. “Members of a National Guard unit assigned to protect civilian contractors in Iraq says the task puts them at greater risk than when they were hauling military supplies for the Army. Sgt. Donald Curttright of the 1221st Transportation Company said the 150-member unit doesn`t have enough manpower to provide security for defense contractor KBR, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root. ‘There might be 30 trucks, and we`ll have six or seven of us riding shotgun armed with M-16 (rifles),’ he said during a trip home to Excelsior Springs. ‘If we`re attacked, we`re expected to protect the whole thing. I don`t know how we`re supposed to do it.’” Would Rummy please explain again why outsourcing logistics functions in a combat zone is such a great idea?

Unhappy chickenhawks. “Influential conservatives in Washington - who saw ‘liberation’ of Iraq as a bridgehead for spreading democracy through the Middle East - meanwhile believe reluctance to take on Sunni insurgents and deal with Iraq`s many militia armies is a betrayal of that mission, and will only store up trouble for the future.”

Iraqi security forces still untrained, unequipped, and unready. “On Capitol Hill last week, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that despite an intense Pentagon effort to cut through contracting snarls, most Iraqi police officers would not be fully equipped with radios, weapons and vehicles until December. He said the equipping problems had been solved. But in a veiled criticism, he suggested that responsibility for the delays lay with L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator in Iraq, and Mr. Bremer`s top aides, who until recently were in charge of equipping the police. ‘We should have done this earlier,’ General Myers told the House Armed Services Committee on Friday, ‘but it was somebody else`s responsibility for a while, and now that`ll come under General Petraeus.’” Myers is finally starting to notice that Baghdad fashion maven L. Paul Bremer is incompetent? What took so long?

Oregon’s governor. “A former Marine corporal, the Democrat tries to find time to attend the funeral of every Oregon soldier who dies in the war in Iraq, and says it ‘probably means more to me than anything I have done.’ Kulongoski has attended funerals or memorial services for 10 out of the 18 soldiers with strong Oregon ties, at times taking the podium. It`s the grieving parents that affect him the most, said the governor, a father of three.”

Wedding video. “The videotape obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early Wednesday, killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck. The U.S. military says it is investigating the attack, which took place in the village of Mogr el-Deeb about five miles from the Syrian border, but that all evidence so far indicates the target was a safehouse for foreign fighters.”

Commentary

Opinion: “In the history of the world, several great civilizations that seemed immortal have deteriorated and died. I don`t want to seem dramatic tonight, but I`ve lived a long while, and for the first time in my life, I have this faint, faraway fear that it could happen to us here in America as it happened to the Greek and Roman civilizations. Too many Americans don`t understand what we have here, or how to keep it. I worry for my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren. I want them to have what I`ve had, and I sense it slipping away.”

Analysis: “Today, the United States is confronted by another ill-considered war, conceived in ideological zeal and pursued with contempt for truth, disregard of history and an arrogant assertion of American power that has stunned and alienated much of the world, including traditional allies. At a juncture in history when the United States needed a president to intelligently and forcefully lead a real international campaign against terrorism and its causes, Bush decided instead to unilaterally declare war on a totalitarian state that never represented a terrorist threat; to claim exemption from international law regarding the treatment of prisoners; to suspend constitutional guarantees even to non-combatants at home and abroad; and to ignore sound military advice from the only member of his Cabinet - Powell - with the most requisite experience. Instead of using America`s moral authority to lead a great global cause, Bush squandered it. In Republican cloakrooms, as in the Oval Office, response to catastrophe these days is more concerned with politics and PR than principle. Said Tom DeLay, House majority leader: ‘A full-fledged congressional investigation - that`s like saying we need an investigation every time there`s police brutality on the street.’”

Analysis: “However, the White House spins such a withdrawal, Gray writes, ‘the rest of the world will recognise it as a humiliating defeat - and it is here that the analogy of Vietnam is inadequate. The Iraq war has been lost far more quickly than that in South-east Asia, and the impact on the world is potentially much greater. Whereas Vietnam had little economic significance, Iraq is pivotal in the world economy. No dominoes fell with the fall of Saigon, but some pretty weighty ones could be shaken as the American tanks rumble out of Baghdad.’ In fact, they`re already shaking; and not just in the Middle East.”

Opinion: “The president`s reservoir of credibility on Iraq is bone dry. His approval ratings are going down. Conservative voices in opposition to his policies are growing louder. And the troops themselves are becoming increasingly disenchanted with their mission. Yet no one knows quite what to do. Americans are torn between a desire to stop the madness by pulling the plug on this tragic and hopeless adventure and the realization that the U.S., for the time being, may be the only safeguard against a catastrophic civil war. The president is scheduled to give a speech tonight to lay out his ‘clear strategy’ for the future of Iraq. Don`t hold your breath. This is the same president who deliberately exploited his nation`s fear of terrorism in the aftermath of Sept. 11 to lead it into the long dark starless night of Iraq.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Montana soldier wounded in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 2:46 AM
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Chris Rowthorn: `Democracy in the United States is clinging by its fingernails`
Date: Monday, May 24 @ 09:48:52 EDT
Topic: The Constitution & Civil Liberties

By Chris Rowthorn

If George W. Bush is re-elected in 2004, the fate of American democracy will be held in the hands of Al Qaeda and like-minded terrorists the world over. Is this rank paranoia or is it a logical conclusion based on careful observation of recent events? Before you decide, please try this little thought exercise: Imagine for one moment what is becoming an increasingly likely scenario in the United States: another large-scale terrorist attack somewhere on American soil. This might be a dirty bomb in New York City, a bio-terror attack in Washington, or a thermonuclear device in either of these two cities.

What would the Bush administration do in the face of such an attack?

First, the Bush administration would ram the Patriot Act II through Congress. This, in and of itself, would basically spell the end of American democracy. The Patriot Act II contains all the provisions necessary to turn America from a relatively free democracy into a Soviet-style totalitarian state. Most importantly, it would allow the government to declare anyone it wished to be `an enemy combatant� and strip them of their rights as a citizen. It also contains provisions that would effectively repeal the fourth amendment (the freedom from unreasonable searches) and the fifth amendment (the right to a grand jury and the freedom from testifying against oneself).



But passing the Patriot Act II would only be the start. Faced with another large-scale terror attack on American soil, the administration would almost certainly declare martial law, suspend or significantly curtail the freedom of the press, and authorize the military to act as domestic policemen (the Bush administration has already floated the idea of authorizing the military to act as domestic policemen, see the New York Times article `Misusing the Military,� July 24, 2002). Finally, the administration would quite likely suspend elections for some period of time, using the excuse that `an election cannot be held during this time of crisis.� All of these measures would ostensibly be to keep the peace in the country and prevent further attacks, but they would also nicely serve to cement the ruling party�s grip on power, perhaps once and for all.

Certainly all of this sounds like the wildest fantasy, but consider how the United States reacted to the attacks of 9-11. Consider in particular how the Bush administration manipulated the tragedy for its own cynical ends. What is most important is not what the Bush administration did in response to the attacks of 9-11, but what they learned from the attacks and their aftermath. What have they learned? They have learned that the country will indeed allow them exploit a terrorist attack for their own ends. They have learned that the country will not blame them for allowing it to happen. They have learned that they will rally round the president, even if that very president allowed the attacks to happen due to his own negligence. In short, there is every reason to think that the Bush administration�s experience of 9-11 will have emboldened them to exploit any future terrorist attack in an even more cynical and ruthless fashion.

It is not too much to say that democracy is clinging by its fingernails in the United States. It would take very little to push it over the edge and replace it with a system that can only be realistically called fascism. The Bush administration is both ready and willing to make this change � they are merely waiting for the opportunity. They are well aware that this opportunity would come in the form of another large-scale terrorist attack on American soil. And given what we know of America�s porous borders, the ruthlessness of groups like Al Qaeda, and the administration�s own disastrous record of preventing terrorist attacks, can we be even remotely sure that such an attack will not come sometime in the next four years? Most experts on terrorism agree that such an attack is not a matter of `if� but `when�. If such an attack were to occur, not only would thousands of Americans die, but American democracy would die with it. That is, if the Bush administration was at the helm when the attack occurred.

Thus, we must do all that we can to ensure that George W. Bush is not reelected president in 2004. While George W. Bush is in office, American democracy is in a position of great peril � it could literally vanish in an instant. This means voting for the only candidate who has any real chance of defeating him in the 2004 presidential election: Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. With John Kerry in office, we can be sure that the Constitution will be protected. More importantly, we can be sure that the great American experiment in democracy will not be held captive to the whims of nihilistic terrorists who would like nothing more than to see the United States of America go the way of Nazi Germany and Mussolini�s Italy.

Chris Rowthorn is an American journalist based in Japan. He has written for The Japan Times and now writes almost exclusively for Lonely Planet Guidebooks. He can be reached at [e-mail].



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The Covert Kingdom:

Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Texas

By Joe Bageant

05/24/04 "ICH" -- Not long ago I pulled my car up alongside a tiny wooden church in the woods, a stark white frame box my family built in 1840. And as always, an honest-to-god chill went through me, for the ancestral ghosts presumably hovering over the graves there. From the wide open front door the Pentecostal preacher’s message echoed from within the plain wooden walls: “Thank you Gawd for giving us strawng leaders like President Bush during this crieeesis. Praise you Lord and guide him in this battle with Satan’s Muslim armies.” If I had chosen to go back down the road a mile or so to the sprawling new Bible Baptist church---complete with school facilities, professional sound system and in-house television production---I could have heard approximately the same exhortation. Usually offered at the end of a prayer for sons and daughters of members in the congregation serving in Iraq, it can be heard in any of the thousands upon thousands of praise temples across our republic.

After a lifetime of identity conflict, I have come to accept that, blood-wise, if not politically or spiritually, these are my people. And as a leftist it is very clear to me these days why urban liberals not only fail to understand these people, but do not even know they exist, other than as some general lump of ignorant, intolerant voters called “the religious right,” or the “Christian Right,” or “neocon Christians.” But until progressives come to understand what these people read, hear, are told and deeply believe, we cannot understand American politics, much less be effective. Given fundamentalist Christianity’s inherent cultural isolation, it is nearly impossible for most enlightened Americans to imagine, in honest human terms, what fundamentalist Americans believe, let alone understand why we should all care.

For liberals to examine the current fundamentalist phenomenon in America is accept some hard truths. For starters, we libs are even more embattled than most of us choose to believe. Any significant liberal and progressive support is limited to a few urban pockets on each coast and along the upper edge of the Midwestern tier states. Most of the rest of the nation, the much vaunted heartland, is the dominion of the conservative and charismatic Christian. Turf-wise, it’s pretty much their country, which is to say it presently belongs to George W. Bush for some valid reasons. Remember: He did not have to steal the entire election, just a little piece of it in Florida. Evangelical born-again Christians of one stripe or another were then, and are now, 40% of the electorate, and they support Bush 3-1. And as long as their clergy and their worst instincts tell them to, they will keep on voting for him, or someone like him, regardless of what we view as his arrogant folly and sub-intelligence. Forget about changing their minds. These Christians do not read the same books we do, they do not get their information from anything remotely resembling reasonably balanced sources, and in fact, consider even CBS and NBC super-liberal networks of porn and the Devil’s lies. Given how fundamentalists see the modern world, they may as well be living in Iraq or Syria, with whom they share approximately the same Bronze Age religious tenets. They believe in God, Rumsfeld’s Holy War and their absolute duty as God’s chosen nation to kick Muslim ass up one side and down the other. In other words, just because millions of Christians appear to be dangerously nuts does not mean they are marginal.

Having been born into a Southern Pentecostal/Baptist family of many generations, and living in this fundamentalist social landscape means that I gaze into the maw of neocon Christianity daily. Hell, sometimes hourly. My brother is a fundamentalist preacher, as are a couple of my nephews, as were many of my ancestors going back to god-knows-when. My entire family is born-again; their lives are completely focused inside their own religious community, and on the time when Jesus returns to earth---Armageddon and The Rapture.

Only another liberal born into a fundamentalist clan can understand what a strange, sometimes downright hellish family circumstance it is---how such a family can love you deeply, yet despise everything you believe in, see you as a humanist instrument of Satan, and still be right there for you when your back goes out or a divorce shatters your life. As a socialist and a half-assed lefty activist, obviously I do not find much conversational fat to chew around the Thanksgiving table. Politically and spiritually, we may be said to be dire enemies. Love and loathing coexist side by side. There is talk, but no communication. In fact, there are times when it all has science fiction overtones…times when it seems we are speaking to one another through an unearthly veil, wherein each party knows it is speaking to an alien. There is a sort of high eerie mental whine in the air. This is the sound of mutually incomprehensible worlds hurtling toward destiny, passing with great psychological friction, obvious to all, yet acknowledged by none.

Between such times, I wait rather anxiously and strive for change, for relief from what feels like an increased stifling of personal liberty, beauty, art, and self-realization in America. They wait in spooky calmness for Jesus. They believe that, until Jesus does arrive, our “satanic humanist state and federal legal systems” should be replaced with pure “Biblical Law.” This belief is called Christian Reconstructionism. Though it has always been around in some form, it began expanding rapidly about 1973, with the publication of R. J. Rushdoony’s, Institutes of Biblical Law (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1982).

Time out please… In a nod toward fairness and tolerance---begging the question of whether liberals are required to tolerate the intolerant---I will say this: Fundamentalists are “good people.” In daily life, they are warm-hearted and generous to a fault. They live with feet on the ground (albeit with eyes cast heavenward) and with genuine love and concern for their neighbors. After spending 30 years in progressive western cities such as Boulder, Colorado and Eugene, Oregon, I would have to say that conservative Christians actually do what liberals usually only talk about. They visit the sick and the elderly, give generously of their time and money to help those in need, and put unimaginable amounts of love and energy into their families, even as Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh blare in the background. Their good works extend internationally—were it not for American Christians, there would be little health care on the African continent and other similar places. OK, that’s the best I can do in showing due respect for the extreme Christian Right. Now to get back to the Christian Reconstructionists…

Christian Reconstruction: Establishing a Savage Eden

Christian Reconstruction is blunt stuff, hard and unforgiving as a gravestone. Capital punishment, central to the Reconstructionist ideal, calls for the death penalty in a wide range of crimes, including abandonment of the faith, blasphemy, heresy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, sodomy, homosexuality, striking a parent, and ``unchastity before marriage`` (but for women only.) Biblically correct methods of execution include stoning, the sword, hanging, and burning. Stoning is preferred, according to Gary North, the self-styled Reconstructionist economist, because stones are plentiful and cheap. Biblical Law would also eliminate labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Leading Reconstruction theologian David Chilton declares, "The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics…” Incidentally, said Republic of Jesus would not only be a legal hell, but an ecological one as well---Reconstructionist doctrine calls for the scrapping of environmental protection of all kinds, because there will be no need for this planet earth once The Rapture occurs. You may not have heard of Rushdoony or Chilton or North, but taken either separately or together, they have influenced far more contemporary American minds than Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Howard Zinn combined.

A moreover covert movement, although slightly more public of late, Christian Reconstructionism has for decades exerted one hell of an influence through its scores of books, publications and classes taught in colleges and universities. Over the past 30 years Reconstructionist doctrine has permeated not only the religious right, but mainstream churches as well, via the charismatic movement. Its impact on politics and religion in this nation have been massive, with many mainstream churches pushed rightward by pervasive Reconstructionism, without even knowing it. Clearly the Methodist church down the street from my house does not understand what it has become. Other mainstream churches with more progressive leadership, simply flinch and bow to the Reconstructionists at every turn. They have to, if they want to retain members these days. Further complicating matters is that leading Recoconstruction thinkers, along with their fellow travelers, the Dominionists, are all but invisible to non-fundamentalist America. (I will spare you the agony of the endless doctrinal hair-splitting that comes with making fundamentalist distinctions of any sort---I would not do that to a dog. But if you are disposed toward self-punishment, you can take it upon yourself to learn the differences between Dominionism, Pretribulationism, Midtribulationism, and Posttribulationism, Premillennialism, Millennialism… I recommend the writings of the British author and scholar George Monbiot, who has put the entire maddening scheme of it all together---corporate implications, governmental and psychological meaning---in a couple of excellent books.)

Fundamentalists such as my family have no idea how thoroughly they have been orchestrated by Reconstructionists driven Christian media and other innovations of the past few decades. They probably would not care now, even if they knew. Like most of their tribe (dare we say class, in a nation that so vehemently denies it has a class system?) they want to embrace some simple foundational truth that will rationalize all the conflict and confusion of a postmodern world. Some handbook that will neatly explain everything, make all their difficult decisions for them. And among these classic American citizens, prone toward religious zealotry since the Great Awakening of the 18th Century, what rock could appear more dependable upon which to cling than the infallible Holy Bible? From there it was a short step for Christian Reconstructionist leaders to conclude that such magnificent infallibility should be enforced upon all other people, in the same spirit as the Catholic Spanish Conquistadors or the Arab Muslim Moors before them. It’s an old, old story, a brutal one mankind cannot seem to shake.

Christian Reconstruction strategists make clear in their writings that homeschooling and Christian academies have been and continue to create the Rightist Christian cadres of the future, enabling them to place ever-increasing numbers of believers in positions of governmental influence. The training of Christian cadres is far more sophisticated than the average liberal realizes. There now stretches a network of dozens of campuses across the nation, each with its strange cultish atmosphere of smiling Christian pod people, most of them clones of Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. But how many outsiders know the depth and specificity of Reconstructionist political indoctrination in these schools? For example, Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, a college exclusively for Christian homeschoolers, offers programs in strategic government intelligence, legal training and foreign policy, all with a strict, Bible-based “Christian worldview.” Patrick Henry is so heavily funded by the Christian right it can offer classes below cost. In the Bush administration, seven percent of all internships are handed out to Patrick Henry students, along with many others distributed among similar religious rightist colleges. The Bush administration also recruits from the faculties of these schools, i.e. the appointments of right-wing Christian activist Kay Coles James, former dean of the Pat Robertson School of government, as director of the U.S. office of personnel. What better position than the personnel office from which to recruit more fundamentalists? Scratch any of these supposed academics and you will find a Christian Reconstructionist. I know because I have made the mistake of inviting a few of these folks to cocktail parties. One university department head told me he is moving to rural Mississippi where he can better recreate the lifestyle of the antebellum South, and its “Confederate Christian values.” It gets real strange real quick.

Lest the Christian Reconstructionists be underestimated, remember that it was Reconstructionist strategists whose “stealth ideology” managed the takeover of the Republican Party in the early 1990s. That takeover now looks mild in light of today’s neocon Christian implantations in the White House, the Pentagon and the Supreme Court and other federal entities. As much as liberals screech in protest, few understand the depth and breadth of the Rightist Christian takeover underway. They catch the scent but never behold the beast itself. Yesterday I heard a liberal Washington-based political pundit on NPR say the Radical Christian right’s local and regional political action peak was a past fixture of the Reagan era. I laughed out loud (it was a bitter laugh) and wondered if he had ever driven 20 miles eastward on U.S. Route 50 into the suburbs of Maryland, Virginia or West Virginia. The fellow on NPR was a perfect example of the need for liberal pundits to get their heads out of their asses, get outside the city, quit cruising the Internet and meet some Americans who do not mirror their own humanist educations and backgrounds.

If they did, they would grasp the importance The Rapture has taken on in American national and international politics. Despite the media’s shallow interpretation of The Rapture’s significance, it is a hell of a lot more than just a couple hundred million Left Behind books sold. The most significant thing about the Left Behind series is that, although they are classified as “fiction,” most fundamentalist readers I know accept the series as an absolute reality soon coming to a godless planet near you. It helps to understand that everything is literal in the Fundamentalist voter universe.

I’ll Fly Away, Oh Lordy (But you won’t.)

Yes, when The Rapture comes Christians with the right credentials will fly away. But you and I, dear reader, will probably be among those who suffer a thousand-year plague of boils. So stock up on antibiotics, because according to the “Rapture Index” it is damned near here. See for yourself at http://www.raptureready.com. Part gimmick, part fanatical obsession, the index is a compilation of such things as floods, interest rates, oil prices, global turmoil… As I write this the index stands at 144, just one point below critical mass, when people like us will be smitten under a sky filled with deliriously happy naked flying Christians.

But to blow The Rapture off as amusing-if-scary fantasy is not being honest on my part. Cheap glibness has always been my vice, so I must say this: Personally, I’ve lived with The Rapture as the psychologically imprinted backdrop of my entire life. In fact, my own father believed in it until the day he died, and the last time I saw him alive we talked about The Rapture. And when he asked me, “Will you be saved?” Will you be there with me on Canaan’s shore after The Rapture?” I was forced to feign belief in it to give a dying man inner solace. But that was the spiritual stuff of families, and living and dying, religion in its rightful place, the way it is supposed to be, personal and intimate---not political. Thus, until the advent of the Reconstructionist Christian influence, I’d certainly never heard The Rapture spoken about in the context of a Texan being selected by God to prepare its way.
Now however, this apocalyptic belief, yearning really, drives an American Christian polity in the service of a grave and unnerving agenda. The psuedo-scriptural has become an apocalyptic game plan for earthly political action: To wit, the messiah can only return to earth after an apocalypse in Israel called Armageddon, which the fundamentalists are promoting with all their power so that The Rapture can take place. The first requirement was establishment of the state of Israel. Done. The next is Israel`s occupation of the Middle East as a return of its "Biblical lands," which in the Reconstructionist scheme of things, means more wars. These Christian conservatives believe peace cannot ever lead to The Rapture, and indeed impedes the 1,000 year Reign of Christ. So anyone promoting peace is an enemy, a tool of Satan, hence the fundamentalist support for any and all wars Middle Eastern, in which their own kids die a death often viewed by Christian parents as a holy martyrdom of its own kind. “He (or she) died protecting this country’s Christian values.” One hears it over and over from parents of those killed.

The final scenario of the Rapture has the “saved” Christians settling onto a cloud after the long float upward, from whence they watch a Rambo Jesus wipe out the remnants of the human race. Then in a mop-up operation by God, the Jews are also annihilated, excepting a few who convert to Christianity. The Messiah returns to earth. End of story. Incidentally, the Muslim version, I was surprised to learn recently, is almost exactly the same, but with Muslims doing the cloud-sitting.

If we are lucky as a nation, this period in American history will be remembered as just another very dark time we managed to get through. Otherwise, one shudders to think of the logical outcome. No wonder the left is depressed. Meanwhile, our best thinkers on the left ask us to consider our perpetual U.S. imperial war as a fascist, military/corporate war, and indeed it is that too. But tens of millions of hardworking, earnest American Christians see it as far more than that. They see a war against all that is un-Biblical, the goal of which is complete world conquest, or put in Christian terminology, “dominion.” They will have no less than the “inevitable victory God has promised his new chosen people,” according to the Recon masters of the covert kingdom. Screw the Jews, they blew their chance. If perpetual war is what it will take, then let it be perpetual. After all, perpetual war is exactly what the Bible promised. Like it or not, this is the reality (or prevailing unreality) with which we are faced. The 2004 elections, regardless of outcome, will not change that. Nor will it necessarily bring ever-tolerant liberals to openly acknowledge what is truly happening in this country, the thing that has been building for a long, long time---a holy war, a covert Christian jihad for control of America and the entire world. Millions of Americans are under the spell of an extraordinarily dangerous mass psychosis.

Pardon me, but religious tolerance be damned. Somebody had to say it.

Joe Bageant is a senior editor at the Primedia History Group and writes from Winchester, Virginia. He may be contacted at [e-mail].

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Published on Monday, May 24, 2004 by USA Today
History Lesson: GOP Must Stop Bush
by Carl Bernstein


Thirty years ago, a Republican president, facing impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate, was forced to resign because of unprecedented crimes he and his aides committed against the Constitution and people of the United States. Ultimately, Richard Nixon left office voluntarily because courageous leaders of the Republican Party put principle above party and acted with heroism in defense of the Constitution and rule of law.

"What did the president know and when did he know it?" a Republican senator — Howard Baker of Tennessee — famously asked of Nixon 30 springtimes ago.

Today, confronted by the graphic horrors of Abu Ghraib prison, by ginned-up intelligence to justify war, by 652 American deaths since presidential operatives declared "Mission Accomplished," Republican leaders have yet to suggest that George W. Bush be held responsible for the disaster in Iraq and that perhaps he, not just Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is ill-suited for his job.

Having read the report of Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, I expect Baker`s question will resound again in another congressional investigation. The equally relevant question is whether Republicans will, Pavlov-like, continue to defend their president with ideological and partisan reflex, or remember the example of principled predecessors who pursued truth at another dark moment.

Today, the issue may not be high crimes and misdemeanors, but rather Bush`s failure, or inability, to lead competently and honestly.

"You are courageously leading our nation in the war against terror," Bush told Rumsfeld in a Wizard-of-Oz moment May 10, as Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and senior generals looked on. "You are a strong secretary of Defense, and our nation owes you a debt of gratitude." The scene recalled another Oz moment: Nixon praising his enablers, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, as "two of the finest public servants I`ve ever known."

Sidestepping the Constitution

Like Nixon, this president decided the Constitution could be bent on his watch. Terrorism justified it, and Rumsfeld`s Pentagon promoted policies making inevitable what happened at Abu Ghraib — and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The legal justification for ignoring the Geneva Conventions regarding humane treatment of prisoners was enunciated in a memo to Bush, dated Jan. 25, 2002, from the White House counsel.

"As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," Alberto Gonzales wrote Bush. "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva`s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." Quaint.

Since January, Bush and Rumsfeld have been aware of credible complaints of systematic torture. In March, Taguba`s report reached Rumsfeld. Yet neither Bush nor his Defense secretary expressed concern publicly or leveled with Congress until photographic evidence of an American Gulag, possessed for months by the administration, was broadcast to the world.

Rumsfeld then explained, "You read it, as I say, it`s one thing. You see these photographs and it`s just unbelievable. ... It wasn`t three-dimensional. It wasn`t video. It wasn`t color. It was quite a different thing." But the report also described atrocities never photographed or taped that were, often, even worse than the pictures — just as Nixon`s actions were frequently far worse than his tapes recorded.

It was Barry Goldwater, the revered conservative, who convinced Nixon that he must resign or face certain conviction by the Senate — and perhaps jail. Goldwater delivered his message in person, at the White House, accompanied by Republican congressional leaders.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee likewise put principle above party to cast votes for articles of impeachment. On the eve of his mission, Goldwater told his wife that it might cost him his Senate seat on Election Day. Instead, the courage of Republicans willing to dissociate their party from Nixon helped Ronald Reagan win the presidency six years later, unencumbered by Watergate.

Another precedent is apt: In 1968, a few Democratic senators — J. William Fulbright, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern and Robert F. Kennedy — challenged their party`s torpor and insisted that President Lyndon Johnson be held accountable for his disastrous and disingenuous conduct of the Vietnam War, adding weight to public pressure, which, eventually, forced Johnson not to seek re-election.

Today, the United States is confronted by another ill-considered war, conceived in ideological zeal and pursued with contempt for truth, disregard of history and an arrogant assertion of American power that has stunned and alienated much of the world, including traditional allies. At a juncture in history when the United States needed a president to intelligently and forcefully lead a real international campaign against terrorism and its causes, Bush decided instead to unilaterally declare war on a totalitarian state that never represented a terrorist threat; to claim exemption from international law regarding the treatment of prisoners; to suspend constitutional guarantees even to non-combatants at home and abroad; and to ignore sound military advice from the only member of his Cabinet — Powell — with the most requisite experience. Instead of using America`s moral authority to lead a great global cause, Bush squandered it.

In Republican cloakrooms, as in the Oval Office, response to catastrophe these days is more concerned with politics and PR than principle. Said Tom DeLay, House majority leader: "A full-fledged congressional investigation — that`s like saying we need an investigation every time there`s police brutality on the street."

When politics topples principles

To curtail any hint of dissension in the ranks, Bush scheduled a "pep rally" with congressional Republicans — speaking 35 minutes, after which, characteristically, he took no questions and lawmakers dutifully circled the wagons.

What did George W. Bush know and when did he know it? Another wartime president, Harry Truman, observed that the buck stops at the president`s desk, not the Pentagon.

But among Republicans today, there seems to be scant interest in asking tough questions — or honoring the example of courageous leaders of Congress who, not long ago, stepped forward, setting principle before party, to hold accountable presidents who put their country in peril.

Carl Bernstein`s most recent book is a biography of John Paul II, `His Holiness`. He is co-author, with Bob Woodward, of `All the President`s Men` and `The Final Days`.

© Copyright 2004 USA TODAY

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Broadcast on Sunday, May 23, 2004 by 60 Minutes / CBS News
Our Darkest Days Are Here
by Andy Rooney


The following is a weekly 60 Minutes commentary by CBS News Correspondent Andy Rooney.

If you were going to make a list of the great times in American history, you`d start with the day in 1492, when Columbus got here.

The Revolution when we won our independence would be on the list.

Beating Hitler.

Putting Americans on the moon.

We`ve had a lot of great days.

Our darkest days up until now have been things like presidential assassinations, the stock market crash in 1929, Pearl Harbor, and 9-11, of course.

The day the world learned that American soldiers had tortured Iraqi prisoners belongs high on the list of worst things that ever happened to our country. It`s a black mark that will be in the history books in a hundred languages for as long as there are history books. I hate to think of it.

The image of one bad young woman with a naked man on a leash did more to damage America`s reputation than all the good things we`ve done over the years ever helped our reputation.

What were the secrets they were trying to get from captured Iraqis? What important information did that poor devil on the leash have that he wouldn`t have given to anyone in exchange for a crust of bread or a sip of water?

Where were your officers? If someone told you to do it, tell us who told you. If your officers were told – we should know who told them.

One general said our guards were "untrained." Well, untrained at what? Being human beings? Did the man who chopped off Nicholas Berg`s head do it because he was untrained?

The guards who tortured prisoners are faced with a year in prison. Well, great. A year for destroying our reputation as decent people.

I don`t want them in prison, anyway. We shouldn`t have to feed them. Take away their right to call themselves American - that`s what I’d do. You aren`t one of us. Get out. We don`t want you. Find yourself another country or a desert island somewhere. If the order came from someone higher up, take him with you.

In the history of the world, several great civilizations that seemed immortal have deteriorated and died. I don`t want to seem dramatic tonight, but I`ve lived a long while, and for the first time in my life, I have this faint, faraway fear that it could happen to us here in America as it happened to the Greek and Roman civilizations.

Too many Americans don`t understand what we have here, or how to keep it. I worry for my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren. I want them to have what I`ve had, and I sense it slipping away.

Have a nice day.

©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc.

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Published on Saturday, May 22, 2004 by the Guardian/UK
America Hardly Seems Like America Any More
by Terry Jones


Tony Blair tells us that we should do everything we can to support America. And I agree. I think we should repudiate those who inflict harm on Americans, we should shun those who bring America itself into disrepute and we should denounce those who threaten the freedom and democracy that are synonymous with being American.

That is why Tony`s recent announcement that he wishes to stand shoulder to shoulder with George Bush is so puzzling. It`s difficult to think of anyone who has inflicted more harm on Americans than their current president. Since he assumed the title of most powerful man in the world, 4 million Americans have lost their health insurance and 2 million jobs have disappeared. According to a CNN report, "half of all Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck - effectively one paycheck away from poverty". And Mr Bush`s latest budget proposes to withdraw support of all kinds for working families earning less than $35,000 a year. At the same time the national debt has rocketed to more than $26,000 for every family.

As for bringing America into disrepute, Mr Bush scores a high rating here too. No American president has been so successful in making Americans ashamed of being American. According to a Gallup poll last year, the majority of Americans - 64% - "cite a fear of unfriendliness as the top concern of traveling abroad". And that was before the photos. Nowadays, I suppose, the main motive for Americans to travel abroad must be to get away from Bush`s doublespeak. During a run-up to an election, all administrations will try to claim credit for spreading largesse even where they don`t deserve it, but Bush`s administration has gone one further by trying to claim credit for largesse it has actually been doing its damnedest to stop.

The justice department, for example, is boasting about spending $47m on a local law enforcement program, when Bush had actually proposed cutting its budget by 87%. And the $11.7m that the secretary of health boasts they are setting aside to help those without healthcare is for a program that Bush has tried to shut down every year he`s been in office.

President Bush has successfully turned America into a byword for man`s inhumanity to man: from torturing its prisoners to massacring over 40 people, including 15 children and 10 women, at an Iraqi wedding party. The president has left no stone unturned in reversing the good name of Americans throughout the world.

But perhaps it is in the area of democracy and freedom that Bush achieved the most spectacular results. He seems perfectly happy to hold on to power even when the majority of Americans didn`t vote for him. As the undersecretary of defense for intelligence puts it: "George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the US. He was appointed by God." I wonder what Sonia Gandhi would have done in George Bush`s place?

As for the freedom of which Americans have always been so justly proud, has any president ever done more to undermine it? The American Civil Liberties Union tells us that the patriot act alone, which was rushed through Congress in the name of the "war on terror", puts at risk the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth and 14th amendments.

Thousands of men, mostly Arabs or south Asians, have now been secretly imprisoned in America without charge, and the government has refused to publish their names or whereabouts. They have been "disappeared". Don`t cry for me, Argentina. In fact, the more I think about it, America hardly seems like America any more.

If Tony Blair really were concerned about helping Americans, he would surely be helping them to reclaim their country and institutions from this catastrophic presidency.

·Terry Jones is a writer, film director, actor and Python www.terry-jones.net

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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I wonder what brand of makeup Bush will be wearing at his speech tonight?[/url]

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Published on Monday, May 24, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
It`s Not Just the Emperor Who is Naked, But the Whole Empire
by Robert Jensen


Republican politicians took potshots at House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi last week after she called President Bush "incompetent" and criticized his judgment and leadership. Her conclusion -- "the emperor has no clothes" -- understandably made Republicans angry, because it is so obviously accurate.

Pelosi`s remarks deserve scrutiny, but not because she was too harsh on the president. The lies and distortions that Bush and his top officials used to promote the U.S. invasion of Iraq were exposed long ago, and day-by-day the disastrous consequences of the occupation are obvious to all but the most fanatical of the Leader`s faithful.

But the problem is not just that the EMPEROR is bare, but that the U.S. EMPIRE has no clothes, and in that respect mainstream Democrats stand before the world as naked as the most reactionary Republicans.

It is understandable that many think of Bush administration policies as a radical departure from past U.S. foreign policy, and certainly the doctrine of preemption (which is so far untested, because Iraq posed no threat to the United States; the U.S. invasion, therefore, didn`t preempt anything but was instead a simple crime against peace) and the open call for world domination have taken the country -- and the world -- down a particularly dangerous path. But Bush is hardly the first president to engage in empire building.

A few years ago, anyone who described the United States as an empire was branded part of the loony left. But since 9/11, even conservative pundits talk of empire, albeit in perversely positive terms, exhorting U.S. leaders to seize the opportunity to remake the world.

But that project didn`t begin with 9/11. Whatever point in U.S. history one claims as the beginning of the imperial project (the genocide of indigenous people in North America? the Monroe Doctrine? the conquest of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War?), there is no doubt that U.S. empire building went into high gear after World War II. The fact that the United States doesn`t acquire colonies in the same fashion as past empires, preferring instead to install compliant governments that will do its bidding, doesn`t make us less an empire. The modalities of control change, but the game remains the same; set the terms for the world economy and derail the possibility of independent development by any means necessary, with a gargantuan military on call when violence is required.

Nor do the differences in style and tactics make Democratic administrations any less imperial than Republicans. The Cold-War liberals of the Democratic Party had no greater qualms than Republicans about using the military to extend U.S. power in the Third World. The blood of millions of dead Vietnamese is on the hands of liberal darling John F. Kennedy and conservative curmudgeon Richard Nixon alike. Whatever the differences in domestic policy in the postwar period between Republicans and Democrats, in international relations the consensus on each side of the aisle was firmly in favor of militarism to project U.S. power around the world. The only admirable people in either party were the few dissidents (such as Democrats Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening, the only two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that justified expansion of the Vietnam War, or Republican Rep. Pete McCloskey, who challenged Nixon).

That pattern continues up to this day. We should not forget that for all the talk of Bill Clinton`s "multilateralism," he launched an illegal attack on Iraq in 1998 and insisted on maintaining the harshest economic embargo in modern history on that country for eight years, which killed as many as 1 million Iraqis -- policies that had virtually no support in the world. In short, Clinton killed more Iraqis than Bush as he ignored international law and world opinion. I doubt the fact that Clinton is smarter and more rhetorically gifted than Bush makes much difference to the dead in Iraq.

And while Bush bears primary responsibility for the Iraq War, he couldn`t have done it without the help of some Democrats (such as John Kerry, who voted for it) and the inaction of others (such as Pelosi, who voted against the war but expended no political capital to mount a serious campaign to stop it and added to the case for war with false statements such as "Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons" as late as November 2002).

There`s no indication that any of the current strategists in the Democratic Party have learned anything from all this. Kerry is not calling for an end to the illegal and immoral occupation but instead advocates a continued U.S. presence with an international fig leaf.

Neither Republicans nor mainstream Democrats seem capable of admitting that the invasion of Iraq was never about weapons of mass destruction, terrorist ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, or creating democracy; it was simply an intensification of the longstanding U.S. project of controlling the strategically crucial energy resources of the Middle East. That project has gone on under Democratic and Republican presidents alike, taking different forms but always with that same goal of expanding U.S. power.

It`s not just the Iraq War that is immoral. The whole rotten project of empire building is immoral -- and every bit as much a Democratic as a Republican project. When politicians from both parties offer platitudes about America`s benevolent intentions as they argue about the most appropriate strategies for running the world, we should remember this trenchant comment after World War I from W.E.B. DuBois: "It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on herself, first, as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral protagonist in this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for this role."

This analysis doesn`t mean voters can`t judge one particular empire-building politician more dangerous than another. It doesn`t mean we shouldn`t sometimes make strategic choices to vote for one over the other. It simply means we should make such choices with eyes open and no illusions.

Here, I borrow phrases from Pelosi`s condemnation of Bush: "When are people going to face reality? Pull the curtain back."

Indeed, Rep. Pelosi, pull the curtain back. You will see naked emperors, Republican and Democratic. You will see the cowardly legislators who chose to step aside before the war, when spirited opposition in Congress might have helped derail the disaster that is playing out in Iraq.

Pull the curtain back, and step in front of the mirror.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of "Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity." He can be reached at [e-mail].

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House divided
GOP enforcer Tom DeLay and his former partner Dick Armey are locked in a nasty dispute over the future of the Republican Party.

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By Mary Jacoby

May 24, 2004 | WASHINGTON -- When former House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey`s official portrait was unveiled at a reception in the Capitol`s Statuary Hall last month, Speaker Dennis Hastert delivered a praiseworthy little speech, as did Armey`s longtime policy nemesis, former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri. "I was tickled with Dick Gephardt`s generosity," Armey said in an interview with Salon. "He was very nice. He said he couldn`t resist being there to hang me."

But one dignitary was conspicuously absent: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. "I asked that he speak," Armey said. "Who`d be the most natural guy after the speaker? He is the guy that I came in with -- we were part of the celebrated `Texas Six-Pack` of 1984. He is the most senior member of the House from Texas, and he is my successor. He was invited, and he declined."

Once good friends, the two Texas Republicans -- whose relationship was badly strained by the fallout from a botched 1997 coup attempt against then Speaker Newt Gingrich -- have now dropped all pretense of collegiality. Because they were leaders of the House GOP during its headiest days, their enmity is more than a personal drama; it is a metaphor for the troubled legacy, 10 years later, of the 1994 Republican "revolution" that brought them into power.

For the first time since the Eisenhower administration, Republicans control all of Washington, from the White House to both chambers of Congress. Yet the party of limited government has, under President Bush, instead presided over a massive expansion of government spending. New spending on defense and security was inevitable after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Armey conceded. But there is no justification, he said, for the budget-busting Medicare prescription drug program, the largest new entitlement since Lyndon Johnson`s Great Society, which will saddle the government with $8.1 trillion in unfunded liabilities over the next 75 years. Record deficits threaten the cherished Bush tax cuts, he added. Even the corporate-welfare farm subsidies that Armey, as a free-market conservative, had fought to kill are back. The moves all have one thing in common, he asserted: They are designed to secure votes.

"We`re letting the political hacks overrule the policy wonks in this town," Armey lamented to me. Republican principles are being sacrificed in the pursuit of short-term political goals, he complained. And the irony, he added, is that all the maneuvering for votes may instead end up costing Republicans at the polls this year if disgusted fiscal conservatives simply stay home. A spokesman for DeLay declined to comment for this story.

Armey`s stature as a former House leader lends his critique special weight. But most remarkable is that he is willing to make it at all. While many House conservatives say privately that they feel helpless in sticking up for their principles in the face of ruthless intimidation from the Bush White House and DeLay, few have dared to speak as boldly as Armey has. DeLay, who is known as "The Hammer" for his ability to pound Republicans into supporting the party line, doesn`t just discourage dissent, he beats it to a pulp. And the "with us or against us" mentality, once directed only toward terrorists and Democrats, is increasingly targeting conservative dissenters as well.

During last fall`s battle over Medicare prescription drug benefits, for example, DeLay engaged Stuart Butler, a vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, in an oddly personal debate at a meeting of the Republican Study Committee, a group of 50 House conservatives. DeLay ridiculed the venerable think tank`s research as uninformed. (Its insistence that the Bush administration was low-balling the bill`s costs turned out to be correct.) His attacks were so aggressive -- "name-calling," as one attendee described it -- that many Republicans left muttering that DeLay had crossed a line.

And in March, at a meeting of all the House Republicans, DeLay slammed Armey for having said publicly that high deficits will make it harder to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. "It would seem to me that I stated the obvious, but it was apparently something that offended him deeply," Armey said.

Although he is out of Congress and the GOP leadership, Armey makes his comments at some personal risk; he is now a lobbyist on Washington`s fabled K Street, which is ruthlessly patrolled by DeLay and his key ally, Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist. For years, Norquist and DeLay have worked to purge the nation`s corporate lobby shops of Democrats, and companies that fill GOP campaign coffers with money are rewarded with access to lawmakers. Enemies don`t get their calls returned, and without access, they lose clients. Access is coordinated by the White House, often through the office of another powerful Texan, political strategist Karl Rove.

For two years, the assistant who answered Rove`s phone was a woman who had previously worked for lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a close friend of Norquist`s and a top DeLay fundraiser. One Republican lobbyist, who asked not to be named because DeLay and Rove have the power to ruin his livelihood, said the way Rove`s office worked was this: "Susan took a message for Rove, and then called Grover to ask if she should put the caller through to Rove. If Grover didn`t approve, your call didn`t go through."

Observers of Washington`s lobbying scene who know how DeLay plays the money game wonder if the majority leader had a hand in a recent decision by the state of Texas to cancel a $180,000-a-year contract with Armey`s law firm, Piper Rudnick. Texas` stated reason for the pullout was that Piper Rudnick had created a conflict of interest by agreeing also to represent the state of Florida. However, the Florida contract is for lobbying to prevent military base closures; the contract with Texas specifically excluded work on base closings.

Texas is also represented in Washington by the Federalist Group, which employs a former DeLay aide. A spokesman for DeLay said the majority leader had nothing to do with Texas` decision to drop the Piper Rudnick contract. Armey declined to comment on the matter, saying only that DeLay doesn`t scare him. "There`s only one person in this town who won`t take my calls, and I wouldn`t call him anyway. You can`t hurt a man who don`t give a damn."

Armey was an economics professor at the University of North Texas when, after watching Congress on C-Span, he decided to run for the House of Representatives in 1984. Armey "got into Congress not because he wanted to become a political figure, but because he saw it as the best way to achieve his strongly felt policy goals," said congressional analyst Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. Armey subsequently built a dedicated following for his unwavering conservative economics: free markets, less government regulation and a simplified "flat tax." And Armey was not above hurling insults at the most despised liberals. He once called Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., "Barney Fag" (Armey insists that he misspoke) and former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton a "Marxist."

DeLay, who owned a pest control business in Sugar Land, Texas, before his election to Congress, was never one of the conservative movement`s intellectual lights. He excelled at the mechanics of politics: cutting deals, counting votes, raising money. And although the two friends shared a deep opposition to abortion rights and gay rights, religious-right issues were never Armey`s passion. DeLay once declaimed from a church pulpit that God was using him to advance a "biblical worldview," and that he had pursued the impeachment of President Clinton because he had the "wrong worldview." Armey generally left God out of his public pronouncements, quoting not the Bible but Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.

In 1994 Gingrich put Armey in charge of drafting the "Contract With America," the Republican campaign manifesto that unexpectedly helped propel the minority GOP to power that November. Gingrich found himself speaker, Armey ran unopposed for majority leader and DeLay fought his way into their circle by winning a three-way race for House whip, prevailing over Gingrich`s closest friend in the House, Rep. Bob Walker, R-Pa.

By 1997, however, things were falling apart. Egged on by fiscal militants, Gingrich had pursued an unpopular partial shutdown of the federal government in the winter of 1995-1996 rather than approve President Clinton`s budget. Gingrich`s leadership became increasingly autocratic and erratic, and DeLay and then Rep. Bill Paxon, R-N.Y., hatched a failed plot to oust him. Armey`s role in the plot remains murky. He insists he was not part of the coup and instead tried to warn Gingrich. But many rank-and-file Republicans did not believe him. At the time, Armey was also under assault from conservatives for cutting deals with the Clinton administration as majority leader, and after the coup craziness, Armey`s support eroded. With the position of speaker out of his grasp, he retired from Congress in January 2003 after nine terms.

Now, in addition to his lobbying work, Armey is chairman of Citizens for a Sound Economy, a conservative, grass-roots, free-market advocacy organization. During travels last fall to promote his new book, "Armey`s Axioms: 40 Hard-Earned Truths From Politics, Faith, and Life," the former majority leader said he found conservatives in the heartland to be discouraged by the enormous expansion of public spending and record budget deficits. "Wherever I went," Armey said, "I had people who were the natural constituency of the Republican Party say, `Oh, the heck with it. I`ll just stay home.`"

In a close presidential election, such GOP disaffection could prove decisive, he argued, a bigger factor undermining Bush than Ralph Nader might be for John Kerry. "You`ve got the Kerry people worried sick about the possibility that Nader might take 3 percent of their vote. But I think the Bush folks need to say, `Well, how do we survive if 3 or 4 or 5 percent of our foundation base just decides to sit out the election?"

Echoing Armey, pollster John Zogby said he has heard the same anecdotal evidence of Republican disenchantment. "Today I`m in Austin, Texas," Zogby said in a phone interview, "and my driver said, `I`ve been a Republican all my life, but I can`t support him [Bush].`"

Polling data is beginning to reflect the souring mood, he said. In a survey of likely voters taken May 10-13, Zogby found that President Bush had the support of 71 percent of self-described conservatives, but 19 percent were for John Kerry. "That`s really intriguing to me because the president and the administration have spent the last four years shoring up their conservative base," Zogby said. "But the tide may be going back out for them."

In Armey`s view, hardball players like Rove and DeLay have lost perspective in their single-minded pursuit of power. The signal case is Medicare, he said. Desperate to co-opt one of the Democrats` strongest campaign issues, the White House made passage of Medicare prescription drug benefits one of its top priorities. But the seniors whom the bill was meant to win over are in revolt, perplexed by the program`s complexity and worried that it will encourage employers to drop private drug coverage from retirement benefits. Kerry holds a 20-point advantage over Bush in key battleground states on the question of who would better handle the rising costs of prescription drugs, according to a joint poll conducted last month by the Republican Tarrance Group and the Democratic firm of Lake, Snell and Perry.

On the day the prescription drug bill came before the House for final passage last November, Armey published an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal urging lawmakers to vote against it. "I believe that good policy is good politics," he wrote. "This is a case where bad politics has produced a bad policy proposal. Conservatives would be smart, and right, to reject it." Armey`s breaking ranks incensed DeLay and Speaker Hastert, who were straining to ram the bill through.

Armey`s encouragement of a mutiny may well have contributed to the extraordinary events on the floor of the House. Fiscal conservatives resisted "The Hammer," prompting Republican leaders to hold open a 15-minute vote for an unprecedented three hours, from 3 a.m. to dawn, as DeLay and other leaders pounded the holdouts. "There was a lot of heavy-handed, mean-spirited whipping going on," Armey said. In the end, the bill squeaked through.

Afterward, Hastert told Armey he was furious at his meddling, but the two made up. "It`s always a healthier thing when two people who have a disappointing experience between them meet to say, `Hey, my good friend, I know I let you down,`" Armey said. But there was no reconciliation with his fellow Texan. "Tom DeLay somehow saw it as a betrayal on my part, and he`s not so quick to patch things up," Armey said.

In the long run, Armey says, Republicans will be stronger if they allow genuine internal debate. But that is hardly the trend in the House, where DeLay "has taken every norm the Legislature has operated on and shredded it," the AEI`s Ornstein said. Once, Republicans lambasted Democrats, when they were in the majority, for denying them the opportunity to amend bills on the House floor. Today, congressional leaders have gone even further by barring Democrats from participating in key conference committees, where final deals on legislation are worked out. In Texas, DeLay engineered a mid-decade redistricting of congressional seats designed to oust incumbent Democrats, breaking the tradition of realigning only after a 10-year census. "On a scale of 1 to 10, Democrats abused their majority status at about a level 5 or 6," Ornstein observed. "Republicans today have moved it to about an 11."

And in a symbolic obliteration of Armey`s influence, DeLay took over a Web site Armey had used to promote his prized flat-tax proposal when he was in Congress. The URL -- www.freedom.gov -- remains the same. But now the site contains propaganda about the "Victory in Iraq."

Armey opposed the invasion. In August 2002, he met separately with Bush and Vice President Cheney in an attempt to talk them out of it. "I said, `This has the potential to be an albatross at election time.` I was so desperate that I quoted Shakespeare instead of Jimmy Buffett," he said. "I don`t know the exact quote. Something like, `Our fears betray us,` or `Our fears make cowards of us all.`"

While he believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorist organizations, Armey did not agree with the administration`s assessment of a dire and imminent threat. He said he told Bush and Cheney that it was "against the character of our nation" to strike a country that had not attacked first. Liberating the Iraqi people was the more resonant argument, Armey said, because it was in keeping with American principles. But that, of course, was not the stated reason for the war; had it been, it`s unlikely Americans would have supported the invasion.

Similarly, Armey said Congress probably would not have approved the Medicare bill had all relevant information been known before the vote last fall. Medicare`s chief actuary, Richard Foster, revealed after the vote that the Bush administration had threatened to fire him if he informed Congress of his true, higher cost estimate: not $400 billion but as much as $600 billion over 10 years.

If, by speaking out, Armey hopes to embolden his former colleagues to stand up to DeLay`s bullying, it`s not clear he will succeed. In interviews last week, several of the conservatives who voted against the Medicare bill were reluctant to say anything that might draw DeLay`s wrath. And Armey`s critiques do not sit well with others among his former Republican colleagues, some of whom view him as a hypocrite. "What did Armey do when he was in office to restrain the growth of government?" asked Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill. "He led the floor debate to create the Department of Homeland Security. I would say he contributed to the growth of government."

Unlike DeLay, Armey, who now demands simon-pure conservatism, voted for final passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, the Bush-backed education reform much reviled by many on the right as meddling by the federal government in state and local matters.

To his critics, Armey says that`s precisely why he left his job as majority leader. He was having to make even more serious compromises on policy under a Republican president than he did under Clinton, and he no longer wanted to have to take party positions contrary to his philosophy.

"There`s a marvelous song by John Denver," he said, paraphrasing the lyrics. "It goes: `Some days are diamonds, some days are stones. There`s a face I see in the mirror, more and more is a stranger to me, more and more is the danger of becoming what I thought I`d never be.`"

"When you wake up and see that stranger in the mirror," he said, "that`s when you know it`s time to go."

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About the writer
Mary Jacoby is Salon`s Washington correspondent.

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May 24, 2004
Text of U.N. Draft Resolution on Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 4:11 p.m. ET

The United States and Britain circulated the following draft U.N. resolution on Iraq to Security Council members Monday. The date in section 5(a)(i) is incomplete, as in the distributed text.

The Security Council,

Recalling its previous relevant resolutions on Iraq, in particular resolutions 1483 (2003) and 1511 (2003),

Reaffirming the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq,

Recognizing the importance of international support, particularly that of countries in the region, Iraq`s neighbors and regional organizations, for the people of Iraq in their efforts to achieve security and prosperity,

Determined to mark a new phase in Iraq`s transition to a democratically elected government, and looking forward, to this end, to the end of the occupation and the assumption of authority by a sovereign Interim Government of Iraq by 30 June 2004,

Welcoming the ongoing efforts of the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General to assist the people of Iraq in achieving the formation of a sovereign Interim Government of Iraq,

Welcoming the progress made in implementing the arrangements for Iraq`s political transition referred to in resolution 1511 (2003),

Affirming the importance of the principles of rule of law, including respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and of democracy, including free and fair elections.

Recalling the establishment of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) on 15 August 2003, and determined that the United Nations should play a leading role in assisting the Iraqi people in the formation of institutions for representative government,

Recognizing that international support for restoration of stability and security is essential to the well-bring of the people of Iraq as well as to the ability of all concerned to carry out their work on behalf of the people of Iraq, and welcoming Member State contribution in this regard under resolution 1483 (2003) of 22 May 2003 and resolution 1511 (2003) of 16 October 2003,

Recalling the report provided to the Security Council on 16 April 2004 under resolution 1511 (2003) on the efforts and progress made by the multinational force authorized under that resolution, welcoming the willingness of the multinational force to continue efforts to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq in support of the political transition, especially for upcoming elections, and to provide security for the UN presence in Iraq, as further described in the letter to the President of the Security Council and recognizing the importance of the consent of the sovereign government of Iraq for the presence of the multinational force and of close coordination between the multinational force and that government,

Noting that the multinational force will operate in accordance with generally accepted principles of international law and cooperate with relevant international organizations,

Affirming the importance of international assistance in reconstruction and development of the Iraqi economy,

Recognizing the benefits to Iraq of the immunities and privileges enjoyed by Iraqi oil revenues and by the Development Fund for Iraq, and noting the importance of providing for continued disbursements of this fund by the Interim Government of Iraq and its successors upon dissolution of the Coalition Provisional Authority,

Determining that the situation in Iraq continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security,

Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,

1. Endorses the formation of a sovereign Interim Government of Iraq that will take office by 30 June 2004;

2. Welcomes the commitment of the occupying powers to end the occupation by 30 June 2003, at which time the Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist and the Interim Government of Iraq will assume responsibility and authority for governing a sovereign Iraq;

3. Endorses the proposed timetable for Iraq`s political transition to democratic government, including:

a. formation of a sovereign Interim Government of Iraq that will assume governing authority by 30 June 2004:

b. convening of a national conference; and

c. holding of direct democratic elections by 31 December 2004 if possible, and in no case later than 31 January 2005, to a Transitional National Assembly which will, inter alia, have responsibility for drafting a permanent constitution for Iraq under which democratic elections to a national government will be held;

4. Calls on all Iraqis to implement these arrangements peaceably and in full, and on all States and relevant organizations to support such implementation;

5. Decides that, in implementing its mandate to assist the Iraqi people, the Special Representative of the Secretary General and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI)

a. shall in particular:

i. assist in the convening, no later than XX XX 2004, of a national conference to select a Consultative Council;

ii. advise and support the Interim Government of Iraq and the Transitional National Assembly, as required, on the process for holding elections;

iii. promote national dialogue and consensus-building on the drafting of a national constitution by the people of Iraq; and

b. shall as circumstances permit:

i. advise the Interim Government of Iraq in the development of effective civil and social services;

ii. contribute to the coordination and delivery of reconstruction, development and humanitarian assistance;

iii. promote the protection of human rights, national reconciliation, and judicial and legal reform in order to strengthen the rule of law in Iraq; and

iv. advise and assist the Interim Government of Iraq on initial planning for the eventual conduct of a comprehensive census;

6. Reaffirms the authorization for the multinational force under unified command established under resolution 1511 (2003), having regard to the letter referred to in preambular paragraph 10 above, decides that the multinational force shall have authority to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq including by preventing and deterring terrorism, so that inter alia the United Nations can fulfill its role in assisting the Iraqi people as outlined in paragraph five above and the Iraqi people can implement freely and without intimidation the timetable and program for the political process and benefit from reconstruction and rehabilitation activities, and decides further that the mandate for the multinational force shall be reviewed 12 months from the date of this resolution or at the request of the Transitional Government of Iraq;

7. Notes the creation by the multinational force of a distinct entity within the multinational force and under its unified command with a dedicated mission to provide security for the UN presence in Iraq and requests Member State and relevant organizations to provide resources to support that entity;

8. Recognizes that the multinational force will also assist in building the capability of the Iraqi security forces and institutions, through a program of recruitment, training, equipping, mentoring and monitoring, to enable the Iraqi forces progressively to play a greater role in creating conditions of security and stability in Iraq and welcomes in that regard the arrangements that are being put in place to establish a partnership between the multinational force and the sovereign Interim Government of Iraq and to ensure coordination between the two;

9. Requests Member States and international and regional security organizations to contribute assistance to the multinational force, including military forces, to help meet the needs of the Iraqi people for security and stability, humanitarian and reconstruction assistance, and to support the efforts of UNAMI;

10. Emphasizes the importance of developing effective Iraqi police, border enforcement and Facilities Protection Service for the maintenance of law, order, and security, including combating terrorism and requests Member States and international organizations to assist the Interim Government of Iraq in building the capability of these Iraqi institutions;

11. Condemns all acts of terrorism in Iraq, and decides that, in accordance with their obligations under resolutions 1373 (2001), 1267 (1999), 1333 (2000), 1390 (2002), 1455 (2003) and 1526 (2004) and with other relevant international obligations, all States shall take immediate and necessary steps, inter alia, to freeze funds and other financial assets or economic resources of relevant individuals and entities, to prevent the entry into or transit through their territories of relevant individuals, to prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer of arms and related material to relevant individuals and entities, to refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to relevant individuals or entities, to prevent individuals and entities from using their respective territories for the purpose of financing, planning, facilitating or committing terrorist acts against Iraq or its citizens, and to ensure that such individuals are brought to justice;

12. Welcomes efforts by Member States to support the Interim Government of Iraq through the provision of technical and expert assistance;

13. Decides that the prohibitions related to the sale or supply to Iraq of arms and related materiel under previous resolutions shall not apply to arms or related materiel required by the multinational force or the sovereign government of Iraq to serve the purpose of this resolution, calls upon the multinational force and the sovereign government of Iraq each to ensure appropriate implementation procedures are in place, and stresses the importance for all States, particularly Iraq`s neighbors, to strictly abide by them;

14. Reiterates its request that Member States, international financial institutions and other organizations strengthen their efforts to assist the people of Iraq in the reconstruction and development of the Iraqi economy, including by providing international experts and necessary resources through a coordinated program of donor assistance;

15. Notes that upon dissolution of the Coalition Provisional Authority that funds in the Development Fund for Iraq shall be disbursed at the direction of the Interim Government of Iraq and its successors, and decides that the Development Fund for Iraq shall be utilized in a transparent manner and through the Iraqi budget including to satisfy outstanding obligations against the Development Fund for Iraq, that the arrangements for the depositing of proceeds from export sales of petroleum, petroleum products, and natural gas and its products established in paragraph 20 of resolution 1483 (2003) shall continue to apply, that the International Advisory and Monitoring Board referred to in resolution 1483 (2003) shall continue its activities in monitoring the Development Fund for Iraq and shall include as an additional member a duly qualified representative of the sovereign government of Iraq, and that the provisions above shall be reviewed no later than 12 months from the date of this resolution or at the request of the Transitional Government of Iraq, and that appropriate arrangements shall be made for the continuation of deposits of the proceeds referred to in paragraph 21 of resolution 1483 (2003);

16. Decides that in connection with the dissolution o the Coalition of Provisional Authority, the Interim Government of Iraq and its successors shall assume the rights, responsibilities and obligations relating to the Oil for Food Programme that were transferred to the Authority pursuant to Resolution 1483 (2003), including all operational responsibility for the Programme and any obligations undertaken by the Authority in connection with such responsibility, and responsibility for ensuring independently authenticated confirmation that goods have been delivered, and further decides that, following a 120 day transition period, the Interim Government of Iraq and its successors shall assume responsibility for certifying delivery of goods under contracts prioritized in accordance with that resolution, and that such certification shall be deemed to constitute the independent authentication required for the release of funds associated with such contracts;

17. Further decides that the provision of paragraph 22 of resolution 1483 (2003) shall continue to apply, except that the privileges and immunities provided in that paragraph shall not apply with respect to any claim arising out of an obligation entered into by Iraq after 30 June 2004;

18. Welcomes the commitment of creditors, including those of the Paris Club, to identify ways to reduce substantially Iraq`s sovereign debt, urges the international financial institutions and bilateral donors to take immediate steps to provide their full range of loans and other financial assistance to Iraq, recognizes that the Interim Government of Iraq has the authority to conclude and implement such agreements as may be necessary in this regard, and requests creditors, institutions and donors to work as a priority on these matters with the Interim Government of Iraq;

19. Recalls the continuing obligation of Member States to freeze and transfer certain funds, assets and economic resources to the Development Fund for Iraq in accordance with paragraph 23 of resolution 1483 (2003);

20. Calls upon all Member States to take appropriate steps within their respective legal systems to stay for a period of 12 months from 30 June 2004 all legal and other similar proceedings before their courts or other tribunals involving claims by or against the State of Iraq, its Government, or any of its agencies or instrumentalities, including its State-owned enterprises or similar bodies;

21. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council within three months from the date of this resolution on UNAMI operations in Iraq, and on a quarterly bases thereafter on the progress made toward national elections and fulfillment of all UNAMI`s responsibilities;

22. Decides to remain actively seized of this matter.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

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A militiaman in Najaf. The U.S. is engaged in delicate negotiations with several of Iraq`s main militias to disband and integrate them into the security forces.

May 25, 2004
Failing to Disband Militias, U.S. Moves to Accept Them
By DEXTER FILKINS

AGHDAD, Iraq, May 24 — With only weeks to go until an Iraqi government takes over, American officials have failed to disarm the tens of thousands of fighters in private militias deployed almost exclusively along ethnic and religious lines.

In the 15 months since the fall of Saddam Hussein, American officials have declared repeatedly that they would disband the private militias, recognizing that their narrow, sectarian interests could threaten a unified and democratic Iraqi state.

But with the sharp deterioration of the security situation in recent months, American officials appear to have resigned themselves to working with militias in Falluja, Baghdad and elsewhere even as American soldiers die fighting them in street battles in Karbala and Najaf.

A senior allied official said Monday that the Americans were engaged in delicate negotiations with several of the country`s main militias to disband and integrate them into the security forces. The official said the Americans hoped to announce an agreement with the militias as early as this week. But it is not clear, with so few weeks left before the transfer of sovereignty, whether the Americans will have the leverage to disarm the militias.

The danger is that on June 30 the Americans will hand over power to an Iraqi administration that will not have a monopoly on the use of armed force, in an environment that many fear could set the stage for sectarian and ethnic warfare as the country moves toward what are intended to be democratic elections.

As that date approaches, the Americans are quietly allowing some of these armed groups to flourish and, in some cases, have even helped recreate them.

In Falluja, the scene of deadly fighting last month, American commanders agreed to set up an Iraqi security force composed almost entirely of former members of Mr. Hussein`s Republican Guard and anti-American guerrillas.

In Baghdad and southern Iraq, the Americans have allowed the two largest Shiite militias, the Badr Corps and the Dawa army, to remain intact, largely on the promise by their leaders that the fighters will stay off the streets.

In northern Iraq, as part of the effort to disband the 60,000-man Kurdish militia, entire military units simply donned police uniforms of the new Iraqi state but otherwise stayed in the same place with the same commanders.

Even fighters in the Mahdi Army of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whom American soldiers have been killing in large numbers in recent weeks, may be given a chance for legitimacy. In a recent news conference, the general commanding American forces in Najaf and Karbala said he would be willing to consider taking Mahdi Army militiamen into a new Iraqi security force being set up to help secure southern Iraq.

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 18, the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, suggested that the American government had accepted the continued existence of the militias, provided they remained friendly to the United States.

Asked if he intended to disarm militias controlled by the mainstream Shiite parties like Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Mr. Wolfowitz suggested that he did not.

"That is not part of the mission unless it is necessary to bring them under control," he said. "The approach to those militias is to try over time to integrate them into new Iraqi security forces. And the real answer to disarming militias is to create an alternative security institution. And then the militias can go away."

Most of the militias were formed during Mr. Hussein`s rule by groups opposed to him, and they have evolved into the armed wings of various political groups and factions.

The decision to turn over control of Fallujah to former members of the Republican Guard has bought a measure of peace and stability to the city after weeks of ferocious fighting.

But one former American official familiar with the issue said that while tolerating militias may lead to greater security in the short term, doing so could threaten the democratic process and risk dividing Iraq along ethnic and religious lines.

"We are not going to get free and fair elections, and we are not going to get sustainable democracy of any kind in Iraq unless we make some kind of progress in demobilizing these militias," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a former senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Mr. Diamond said he was worried that the militias, most of which are connected to political parties, would use their guns to intimidate voters, steal ballot boxes and assassinate opponents. "Everything we know from similar situations in other countries tells us that the militias will use their control of arms to create facts on the ground," he said.

The persistence of the militias is fueled by the deep insecurity each of the main ethnic and religious groups feels about the others. No one wants to disarm first, so no one disarms at all. Iraqi political and religious leaders complain loudly about the other groups` militias, but rarely mention their own.

A senior leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq sharply criticized the American decision to gather former Republican Guard soldiers into a "security force" in Falluja.

"Of course we are not happy — they are Republican Guards, with the same uniforms, the same mustaches," said Adel Abdel Mehdi, the group`s leader.

Yet Mr. Mehdi`s party controls one of the largest militias in Iraq, the Badr Corps, whose cadre are thought to number in the thousands. Not only does Mr. Mehdi not regard the Badr Corps as a problem, he says they should be deployed to provide security around the country.

So far, the Americans have held firm, vowing to crush any militia, like the Mahdi Army, that comes out into the streets. But since the Iraqi security forces disintegrated in the face of the uprisings in Falluja and southern Iraq last month, the American forces have begun to reconcile themselves to two realities.

One is that the rapid military training offered to the Iraqis failed to turn them into effective fighting forces. The other is that Iraqis are reluctant to fight other Iraqis on behalf of the Americans.

With little more than a month to go before sovereignty is transferred, most of the big armed groups remain intact, sustained in the last year by either the tacit or explicit approval of the American administration.

In some cases, the Americans have allowed militias that it considers friendly simply to change their names. The Badr Corps, for instance, has changed its name to the Badr Reconstruction Organization, and its leaders claim that it is now involved only in cultural activities. The head of the group, Abu Hassan al-Ameri, remains in his same offices, and his men still carry Kalashnikov rifles. "All of our guns have been licensed by the Americans," Mr. Ameri said.

As with most other militias, the Badr organization is made up almost entirely of a single religious or ethnic group. So strong is the Shiite identification of the Badr Corps that in the 1980`s, during the Iran-Iraq war, some of its members fought for Iran, another majority-Shiite country, against the Sunni-led forces of Iraq.

From the beginning, the task of disarming the militias has been a difficult one. Every Iraqi family is permitted to own one high-powered assault rifle, and virtually all of them do. Like the American minutemen of yore, the militias are composed mostly of civilians, who assemble — or disappear — on short notice.

While the United States has tried a hands-off approach with armed groups it regards as friendly, it has tried to co-opt ones that have demonstrated hostility. After the heavy fighting in Falluja last month, American commanders accepted an offer from a former general in the Republican Guards to set up a security force of his former troops.

One result is that Falluja has been mostly peaceful since the deal was reached a month ago. But the peace has come at considerable cost: It has enraged mainstream Shiites, who were stunned to learn that the Americans had resurrected the very soldiers they deposed a year before. Shiite leaders worry that the short-term peace in Falluja will give way to disaster in the future.

"Today, they are in Falluja; tomorrow they will be in Baghdad," said Mr. Mehdi, the Shiite leader.

These days in Falluja, the line separating an insurgent and a member of the "security forces" is sometimes invisible.

"All the people in Falluja are fighters," said Naji Obeid, a 35-year-old member of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, an American-sponsored force.

When the Marines tried to enter Falluja last month, Mr. Obeid joined the fight against them. When the peace deal was struck, he put his Iraqi civil defense uniform back on and returned to work.

"The people, they were fighting against the Americans, and they were fighting to protect their city," he said. "And now they are in the new Iraqi Army, protecting their city."

American officials insist that the Falluja security force will be disbanded soon. Yet there are indications that far from ending the Falluja experiment, the Americans are considering applying its lessons in other cities.

In a news conference this month, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the commander of the American division that has been battling the Mahdi Army, said he might be willing to accept members of that militia into a new, 4,000-man security force he and his men are creating to police areas like Karbala and Najaf.

"If the militia dissolves tomorrow, what I`ve got is 600 unemployed young men on my hands," General Dempsey said. "Some of them are probably decent young men who have been badly led astray."

For months, the solution posed by the Americans, at least publicly, has been to break up the command structure of the sectarian militias and disperse their fighters into ethnically mixed government-run security forces. Yet American officials concede that they have seldom accomplished that.

In northern Iraq, where Kurdish militias number as many as 60,000 men, the "pesh merga" have in some cases simply changed into Iraqi government uniforms.

Anwar Dolani, 46, was a pesh merga fighter for 25 years. A few months ago, he and 891 of his comrades joined a local battalion of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps together.

"The same peshmerga commanders are now the I.C.D.C. commanders," Mr. Dolani said.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, Mr. Dolani said his primary allegiance was still to the Kurds, not the Iraqi nation. "If the Arabs try to be in charge of us and try to take our rights," he said, "we will not be silent. We will fight."

Only in rare cases have the Americans have been able to deploy ethnically diverse military units. While much of the Iraqi security forces disintegrated during the uprising of the Mahdi Army last month, one unit stood out: the 36th I.C.D.C. Battalion. That unit, a unique creation, was formed by drawing militiamen from the main Iraqi political parties and mixing them together.

General Dempsey has said the 36th Battalion is a template for the security force he plans to form to take over in places like Najaf and Karbala once the Mahdi Army is dispersed. "When things became difficult, they stood and fought," he said.

Under the plan being negotiated now, Iraqi militiamen would be offered jobs in the Iraqi security services and become eligible for army pensions. They would even qualify for job training.

But some Iraqis doubt that the 36th Battalion can be duplicated outside the ethnically mixed cities of Mosul and Baghdad. In most other parts of the country — Basra, the Sunni triangle — local populations tend to be much more homogeneous — and rivalrous.

Mr. Diamond, the former coalition authority adviser, said the Americans had initially intended to dismantle the militias fully and spread the fighters around. But after the revolts in Falluja and the south, he says he is not so sure the Americans will be willing to do that, especially with those militias that are nominally friendly, like those controlled by the Shiites.

"You are talking about a long, long process," Mr. Diamond said. "I don`t see that we have the will or the stomach for it anymore."

Warzer Jaff contributed reporting from Falluja and Sulaimaniya for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company











16 May, 2004 Karbala, Iraq Scenes from the streets of Karbala: Fighters from the Mahdi Army, followers of the Shia cleric Muktadah Sadr, take up positions around the shrine of Imam Hussein in the center of Karbala as they fight against US troops trying to dislodge them from the city. Please Credit

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May 25, 2004
NEWS ANALYSIS: CONTEXT
Bush Starts Out on a Five-Week Run Concerning Iraq, Much of It Apparently Uphill
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, May 24 — President Bush`s speech on Monday night kicked off a critical five-week period in which the White House must not only make good on its pledge to return self-governance to the Iraqi people but also convince the American electorate that the benefits of deposing Saddam Hussein have outweighed the costs in blood, money and battered prestige.

It is a tall order. Mr. Bush spoke against the backdrop of unabated violence in Iraq, the prison abuse scandal, confusion about the plan for transferring authority to an as-yet-unnamed interim government on June 30 and the difficult negotiations concerning the role of the United Nations.

Making his task that much more complicated was the hard-fought presidential campaign, in which Mr. Bush`s role as commander in chief is no longer the unalloyed strength the White House once assumed it would be.

In the hours before his address, delivered at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., Mr. Bush got a fresh reminder of just how fully his political fate is now tied to events in Iraq.

A new crop of opinion polls showed that his job approval ratings continue to fall, that Americans increasingly think the nation is on the wrong track and that most people do not think Mr. Bush has a clear plan for bringing the involvement of the United States in Iraq to a successful conclusion.

With so much of what is happening in Iraq beyond Mr. Bush`s control, the five-part plan for stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq that he outlined Monday night may not unfold in the orderly manner he described.

"Did this prepare the American people for the fact that Iraqis might make different choices, that Iraq could devolve into a civil war, that what we`re doing there is much less popular in Iraq than the president implies, and did he look at the downside rather than the upside?" asked Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The answer is no."

Mr. Bush has a plan, Mr. Cordesman said, but "it`s very easy to see the plan unravel because it`s not so much dependent on the quality of our plan but on the dynamics of Iraq`s internal politics."

Mr. Bush made only one concrete concession to the grim reality of the past few weeks, setting out a plan to build a new high-security prison and tear down Abu Ghraib, the jail where some Iraqi prisoners were abused by their American captors and where Mr. Hussein`s government had earlier tortured and killed untold numbers of its own citizens.

Otherwise, Mr. Bush stuck to the basic approach he has settled on over the past several months, betting that his steady-on strategy would ultimately be judged resolute rather than inflexible or unrealistic. He again tied what is happening in Iraq to the broader war on terror, and he warned that the attacks in Iraq would not end with the planned handover of sovereignty in five weeks, but he was optimistic about the final outcome.

"There are difficult days ahead and the way forward may sometimes appear chaotic," Mr. Bush said. "Yet our coalition is strong. Our efforts are focused and unrelenting and no power of the enemy will stop Iraq`s progress."

If the five-point approach he set out covered all the bases on paper, it still risked appearing detached from the violence and chaos that has threatened to engulf Iraq and extract a heavy political price from Mr. Bush and his fellow Republicans at home. Coming into the address, Mr. Bush was clearly under pressure from within his own party as well as from Democrats to go beyond his usual counseling of patience and fortitude.

"There`s a growing unease in this country and in Congress about whether we have a plan for success in Iraq," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. "Even those who have been stalwart supporters of the president`s decision to invade Iraq now have many questions about how we make the transition to a peaceful and democratic country."

Senator Collins said it was clear that the administration had misjudged what the United States would face once Mr. Hussein was deposed, and that this speech was critical to his efforts to maintain both domestic and international support.

"America needs to hear from the president not only his resolve, which very few people doubt, but also his plan for accomplishing what right now seem to be very difficult and daunting goals," she said before the speech.

As he presses ahead on the diplomatic and military fronts, Mr. Bush is also confronting the continued fallout from the prison abuse cases, which have expanded to encompass incidents beyond those first disclosed at Abu Ghraib and fueled intense reactions in the United States and abroad. There are sure to be continued questions about the administration`s trust in Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader, who is under investigation for passing highly classified American intelligence to Iran.

It is uncertain whether the Iraqi people will accept as legitimate the interim government that is to be named this week by the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, and whether that government will be subject to the same types of attacks that cost the life of, among others, Izzedin Salim, the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, who was killed by a car bomb last week. With Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis all vying for power, there is no assurance that the interim government will hold together or be able to function.

To Mr. Bush`s allies, the main job now is not so much to adjust policy as to do a better job of reminding the American people why the United States went into Iraq in the first place and the benefits to the United States of succeeding in nurturing a stable democracy in the heart of the Middle East.

"Over the last several weeks there`s been an overemphasis on the prison situation and the continued bloodshed and attacks in Iraq," said Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia. "Now is the time for the president to step up and tell the public why we`re doing what we`re doing and remind them of the importance of the mission."

In a statement after Mr. Bush`s address, Mr. Cantor, the chief deputy Republican whip in the House, said the president "reiterated our nation`s noble but realistic goals for Iraq, highlighting a tough road that will not be completed soon."

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the expected Democratic presidential candidate, continued his strategy of muting his criticism of the president`s Iraq policies. Content to allow Mr. Bush to take the political heat for what is happening in Iraq, Mr. Kerry issued a mild statement noting that Mr. Bush had said little that was new and that the challenge now was to reach out to allies so the United States would not have to go it alone.

Strategists in both parties were poring over the latest public polls, all of which showed Iraq taking a heavy toll on Mr. Bush`s political standing. A CBS News poll found that Mr. Bush`s approval rating for his handling of the war in Iraq had fallen to 34 percent, down five percentage points from two weeks ago and down from 72 percent a year ago.

For Democrats, the torrent of bad news from Iraq has had the effect of denting Mr. Bush`s post-Sept. 11 aura as commander in chief and simultaneously drowning out good news on the economy that might otherwise put Mr. Bush in a more commanding position.

But some Republicans said the situation in Iraq would only focus more attention on Mr. Kerry and what they said was his unsuitability to run the war on terrorism. The political implications for Mr. Bush would be limited, said Alan K. Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming, because voters did not trust Mr. Kerry to provide any better answers.

"If it`s a threat to his re-election, then the question is, What is the other guy saying?" Mr. Simpson said. "Out in the land — and I travel all over — people are saying, `What`s Kerry going to do about it? Got any new ideas, chum?` "

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 25, 2004
Campaign Ads Are Under Fire for Inaccuracy
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, May 24 — A record year for political advertising has brought with it a hail of televised exaggerations, omissions and mischaracterizations that pollsters say seem to be leaving voters with mistaken impressions of Senator John Kerry and President Bush.

The degree to which the advertisements push the facts, or go beyond them, varies by commercial. While Mr. Bush`s campaign has been singled out as going particularly far with some of its claims, Mr. Kerry`s campaign has also been criticized as frequently going beyond the bounds of truth.

In three of its advertisements, Mr. Bush`s campaign has said Mr. Kerry would raise taxes by at least $900 billion in his first 100 days in office. Mr. Kerry has no such plan.

In an advertisement for Mr. Kerry, an announcer said, "George Bush says sending jobs overseas makes sense for America." Mr. Bush never said that. A report to Congress by his top economic adviser said cheaper production of goods overseas had long-term benefits but did not make the plain case that domestic job losses were a good thing.

Outside groups are getting into the act as well.

The League of Conservation Voters, which has endorsed Mr. Kerry, is running an advertisement in Florida warning that "President Bush opened up Florida`s coast to offshore drilling." But the drilling area that was opened under Mr. Bush is 100 miles off the coast, much farther than it would have been under a Clinton administration proposal.

Of course, it is a time-tested practice to make one`s opponent look as bad as possible in a political campaign, whether the race is for town council or the presidency of the United States. And the campaigns and outside groups say they are under no obligation to present defenses for their opponents in their own advertisements, all of which are at least tenuously based in fact.

But this campaign season, with total advertising spending at roughly $150 million since early last summer, the number of distortions and omissions is worrying some good-government groups, which say they fear that the big money behind the claims is leaving indelible impressions.

"Even people who don`t think there is much information in these ads and say they don`t learn anything from them tell us they believe factoids they could only have gotten from these ads, and they`re wrong," said Brooks Jackson, director of Factcheck.org, an Annenberg Public Policy Center Web site that vets political advertisements for accuracy. "It`s beyond subliminal — it`s something else I haven`t come up with a name for."

This month the Annenberg Center, at the University of Pennsylvania, released a poll of voters in battleground states that found many believed misleading statements made in the advertisements.

In a survey conducted from April 15 to May 2, 61 percent of the 1,026 voters questioned in the 18 swing states where most of the advertising has run said they believed Mr. Bush favored sending jobs overseas. And 72 percent said they believed that three million jobs had been lost during Mr. Bush`s presidency. Mr. Kerry made that claim in a spot in late February, when the most commonly used Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed the actual net job loss to be closer to 2.3 million, down from 2.7 million in late summer. That number is now less than 1.6 million. (Mr. Kerry`s figures did not include government jobs.)

In the same survey, 46 percent of those questioned said they believed Mr. Kerry "wants to raise gasoline taxes by 50 cents a gallon." Three spots for Mr. Bush have said that Mr. Kerry supported a 50-cent-a-gallon tax hike on gasoline, an assertion based from comments Mr. Kerry that appeared in two newspapers 10 years ago regarding a position he never acted on and has long since abandoned.

More than half of those surveyed also said they believed Mr. Kerry had "voted for higher taxes 350 times." That idea, Annenberg researchers concluded, is based on a commercial for Mr. Bush in which an announcer said, "Kerry supported higher taxes over 350 times." While Bush campaign aides say the contention is accurate and have made public a list of instances to which it refers, they acknowledge that in several of these cases Mr. Kerry had in fact either voted to maintain tax rates or even to cut them, but not by as much as Republicans had proposed.

"Each of these votes amounted to higher taxes than an alternative," said Terry Holt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign. "We expect that voters will reach the obvious conclusion that John Kerry will increase your taxes or will oppose efforts to cut taxes."

Asked why the spot did not simply say that Mr. Kerry has consistently voted for higher taxes than Republicans have proposed, which even the Kerry campaign would not dispute, Mr. Holt said, "We said `supported higher taxes,` as provably true and totally accurate."

Several other commercials this year have been criticized for pushing past the facts when they could have indisputably conveyed similar points with less sensational-sounding claims.

For instance, one of Mr. Kerry`s new commercials boasts that he provided "a decisive vote" for President Bill Clinton`s 1993 economic plan, which, it maintains, "created 20 million new jobs." The bill passed by a single vote in the Senate, giving anybody who voted for it a claim to have provided a decisive vote. But at the time, it was the last-minute support of Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska, that was considered decisive. And even economists who credit the plan with playing a significant role in the 1990`s boom say Mr. Kerry`s spot goes too far.

"To say that any one economic package was responsible for all of the stuff going on in the 90`s is kind of ridiculous," said L. Douglas Lee, president of Economics From Washington, an economic policy analysis firm. Still, Mr. Lee said, the 1993 package was an important factor in the boom.

Asked why the spot did not simply say Mr. Kerry voted for a package credited with helping to set the conditions for the boom, Michael Meehan, a Kerry spokesman, said: "That`s why we have elections. People get to decide. We said it created 20 million jobs. If people don`t believe that, they should vote for someone else."

Aides on both sides said privately that it was hard to fit all the nuance of complex policies into a vehicle designed to convey thoughts no more complex than "Tastes Great, Less Filling."

"There`s only so much you can do in a 30-second ad," said an aide to Mr. Kerry, making a point that was echoed by a senior strategist for the Bush campaign.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, does not accept that. "When they could make the 30-second ad accurate and they don`t, you`ve got to believe that they`re intentionally misleading you," she said.

Kenneth M. Goldstein, an associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, said it was to be expected that the campaigns would take liberties, and that with both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush flush with cash, there was plenty of time for them to answer each other`s claims.

"Politics is about putting your best foot forward and putting the other person in the worst light," Mr. Goldstein said. "Do we expect someone who`s advertising to say, `You know, I really don`t want to put this person`s record in the worst light because that`s not fair`?"

In the end, Mr. Jackson of Factcheck.org said, all that can be done is to continue to vet commercials for accuracy and try to set the record straight as publicly as possible. That, he said, is an occasionally thankless task:

"I`ve had consultants tell me, `Your ad watch runs once, my ad runs many times; who`s going to win?` "

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 25, 2004
No. 2 Army General to Move In as Top U.S. Commander in Iraq
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, May 24 — The top American officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, will leave his command this summer, to be replaced by the Army`s second-ranking general, senior Pentagon officials said Monday. The change is part of an overhaul of the American command structure in Iraq that will put a higher-ranking officer in charge.

Pentagon officials said that replacing General Sanchez with the Army vice chief of staff, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., in no way reflected on General Sanchez`s handling of the widening prisoner-abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison, outside of Baghdad, which was under his authority.

While the move may not have come purely as a result of Abu Ghraib, General Sanchez has been under pressure recently in Iraq, especially as the insurgency has posed increasing military challenges in the central town of Falluja and in several southern towns.

His intended new assignment, which was to lead the United States Southern Command in Miami, may now have been given to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld`s senior military assistant, Lt. Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, leaving it unclear where General Sanchez will be assigned, one defense official said. Other officials said, however, that General Sanchez might not yet have lost that prize.

Some lawmakers have criticized General Sanchez, among other top officers, for failing to give Congress an early warning about politically explosive photographs of American military police officers abusing Iraqi prisoners that were turned over to military investigators in January.

A spokesman for General Sanchez said the general "stands by his testimony before Congressional committees" that he did not learn of the abuses until January, months after they began. But sending General Craddock to Iraq could have given critics of Secretary Rumsfeld a target of convenience.

Generals Sanchez and Craddock are both three-star officers who would have needed Senate approval for promotion to a higher rank, and either might have faced a lengthy confirmation process. General Casey is already a four-star officer, and presumably could be installed in the new position more rapidly.

Pentagon officials noted that General Sanchez had spent more than a year in command in Iraq, and it was natural for him to leave sometime soon after the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30.

"It would be appropriate for him to be leaving in the next couple of months," said a senior Defense Department official. "He`s been there longer than any other commander."

General Casey would be a logical and noncontroversial replacement for General Sanchez. A career infantryman and former commander of the First Armored Division who once directed the military`s Joint Staff, General Casey is known as a forceful officer who is highly respected by Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Casey holds a master`s degree in international relations from Denver University.

Under a new American military command structure drawn up for the post-June 30 political setting, a four-star officer will have overall responsibility but will focus on political and reconstruction issues with the designated American ambassador, John D. Negroponte. A three-star officer, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, will oversee daily military operations.

The changes come during a larger reshuffling of top generals and admirals that typically happens every summer as the Pentagon carries out a regular rotation of its more senior commanders worldwide.

But the paths for Generals Sanchez and Casey have recently taken some sharp curves and dips.

For several weeks, senior military and Pentagon officials said, a leading plan was to promote General Sanchez to four-star rank, making him the Army`s senior-ranking Hispanic officer and rewarding his work in Iraq by giving him the Southern Command, which has responsibility for most of Latin America.

Under that plan, officials said, General Craddock would have been awarded a fourth star, and taken General Sanchez`s place in Baghdad as head of the new Multinational Force Iraq, after June 30.

But something happened in the past few days to derail that plan. Even as the military`s top worldwide commanders met in Washington for a two-day conference, defense officials would not say Monday night what caused the plan to change.

Under a new plan, General Craddock would move to the Southern Command, opening the spot for General Casey in Iraq, one defense official said.

"Casey is a more forceful type than Craddock," said the defense official, who suggested that the last-minute changes may have been a result of Mr. Rumsfeld and his top advisers deciding they needed "a different personality."

"More importantly," said the official, "where is Sanchez going, because Craddock is going to Southcom instead, leaves no seats when the music stops."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 25, 2004
Moore Film Is Held Up by Questions About Rights
By SHARON WAXMAN

LOS ANGELES, May 24 — Tense relations between Disney and Miramax are complicating a deal to find a distributor for Michael Moore`s anti-Bush documentary movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," which is still without American representation two days after winning the Palme d`Or at the Cannes International Film Festival.

Lions Gate, Focus Features and Newmarket have all expressed strong interest in releasing the film, which criticizes the president`s launching of the war in Iraq and details ties between the Bush family and Saudi Arabia`s upper class, including the bin Laden family.

But executives at those companies, many of whom signed confidentiality agreements over the film, acknowledged privately that negotiations had been stalled because it is unclear who has the rights to it.

"The deal hasn`t been struck, with us or anyone else," said one leading executive at a distributor. "I think it`s because of all the complications with Disney. Miramax is more consumed with dotting the i`s and crossing the t`s on the Disney equation."

A Disney spokeswoman, Zenia Mucha, said there was no delay in transferring the film rights to the Miramax co-chairmen, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, who will make a deal with another distributor as private individuals.

"We have been working diligently to do anything humanly possible to transfer the interests to Harvey and Bob," Ms. Mucha, said adding that the transfer might be imminent. Still, executives at Miramax confirmed that Disney had not yet worked out a deal for the Weinstein brothers to acquire the film privately, though they refused to discuss the issue in more detail.

The controversy over the film and the maneuvering over the transfer of the rights is just the latest problem between Michael Eisner, the Walt Disney chairman, and the Weinsteins, who are in rancorous negotiations with him to renew their contract to run Miramax, an art-house division of Disney. The Weinsteins have hired prominent Hollywood lawyers, which is unusual for such negotiations.

Mr. Eisner was said to be furious over news reports just before the Cannes festival that Disney had prohibited Miramax to distribute the film for political reasons. The news stoked a controversy that ultimately drew more attention to the movie, embarrassing Mr. Eisner and possibly raising the price for the film.

Last week in New York Mr. Eisner told friends that Harvey Weinstein had made the movie despite his objections a year ago and had hidden the $6 million budget in loan financing documentation.

That was why, Mr. Eisner told friends, that when Harvey Weinstein asked in recent weeks to see the film to consider its distribution by Miramax, the Disney chairman was angry to learn that the film had been made.

A Miramax executive did not dispute that Disney opposed the film`s distribution by Miramax, but the executive pointed out that Disney was fully aware that Miramax had provided a bridge loan to Mr. Moore to make the film, because distribution of the money required Disney`s approval. The Miramax executive denied that anything had been hidden from Disney.

Meanwhile, despite Mr. Moore`s prediction over the weekend that the film would find a distributor within 24 hours, "Fahrenheit 9/11" now has distribution in every major international territory except the United States, and the frustration within Miramax at being unable to make a deal is palpable, with one executive there calling the current standoff ridiculous.

In the past when Miramax has been forced to relinquish a film because of Disney`s objections, such as with the Roman Catholic satire "Dogma" or the sexually disturbing "Kids," the Weinsteins have been permitted to buy the movie rights themselves and find independent distribution.

In this case Mr. Moore and the Weinsteins have been making complex demands on competing bidders. Mr. Moore insists that whoever distributes the movie do so in July, presumably when it can still have an impact on the November election. A DVD release before November would double that impact.

The Weinsteins, meanwhile, are looking for separate distributors for theatrical and DVD release and will certainly sell the DVD rights for more than the theatrical release, say those close to the negotiations, if the film rights are transferred as expected.

Distributors say any delay will make it harder for them to promote the film properly, with just over a month to create a marketing campaign and materials.

Meanwhile Mr. Eisner looks out of step in rejecting a film that has been embraced by the Cannes audiences and the festival jury and that seems certain to be a moneymaker. He was skewered in a column in Variety on Monday in which Peter Bart wrote: "Now that `Fahrenheit 9/11` is becoming arguably the season`s hottest item, Michael Eisner and his cohorts will be asked gain why they dumped what will surely be a very profitable film and why they did so in a manner designed to maximize Michael Moore`s exalted profile as the artist as victim?"

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 25, 2004
Bush Vows to Stay Course; Car Bomb Explodes in Iraq
By REUTERS

Filed at 3:41 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car bomb exploded on Tuesday outside a Baghdad hotel used by foreigners and U.S. tanks fought Shi`ite militia, hours after President Bush vowed America would stay the course to build a stable Iraq.

In a televised address to assure voters that his project in Iraq was on track, Bush conceded there could be more violence to come ahead of a planned handover of formal power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30 and Iraqi elections in the new year.

``As the Iraqi people move closer to governing themselves, the terrorists are likely to become more active and more brutal. There are difficult days ahead and the way forward may sometimes appear chaotic,`` said Bush, whose sliding job approval ratings are raising questions over his re-election chances in November.

At least two people were wounded, police said, when the stationary car blew up leaving a deep crater outside the Karma hotel, frequented by foreigners and close to the Australian embassy. Australia is a close U.S. ally in Iraq.

On Monday, two British security guards were killed near the U.S. headquarters in a grenade attack on their car.

Iraqi witnesses also said a U.S. military convoy had been attacked near the turbulent Sunni Muslim city of Falluja. There was no U.S. comment. It was not clear it there were casualties.

U.S. tanks were in action before dawn south of the capital, battling Shi`ite Mehdi Army fighters around the town of Kufa.

At least 11 people were killed and 22 wounded, hospital staff in Kufa and the nearby holy city of Najaf said. Guerrillas fired rockets and grenades at U.S. forces around Kufa.

Radical Shi`ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr launched the uprising last month against the U.S. occupation. A sharp U.S. offensive in recent days has contained the fighting to the Najaf area.

``My fellow Americans, we will not fail,`` Bush said of the overall U.S. mission to create a democratic, friendly Iraq.

``We will persevere and defeat this enemy and hold this hard-won ground for the realm of liberty.``

U.N. RESOLUTION

The United States asked the United Nations to endorse its handover of power on June 30 to a ``sovereign`` Iraqi government but proposed U.S. forces there be allowed to ``take all measures`` to keep order and set no date for them to leave.

Welcomed by many Iraqis 14 months ago as liberators from Saddam Hussein, U.S. forces face growing frustration among the population, heightened by continuing violence and a scandal over the abuse of prisoners by U.S. troops.

Bush said he would demolish Saddam`s former torture center at Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad, which has become newly notorious as the site of humiliating torments inflicted by American soldiers on naked and terrified inmates and captured on camera.

Demolishing the prison would be a ``fitting symbol of Iraq`s new beginning,`` said a somber sounding Bush, who stumbled three times over the pronunciation of Abu Ghraib.

As he spoke, word came from a senior defense official that the Pentagon is considering replacing Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez as the top military officer in Iraq. The official denied however that the move was linked to the Abu Ghraib affair.

The draft U.N. resolution, distributed to the 15-nation U.N. Security Council by the United States and Britain, would back the formation of a ``sovereign interim government.``

As part of the transition process, U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, now in Baghdad, is due to name a president, a prime minister, two vice presidents and 26 ministers soon.

They would stay in office until elections for a national assembly, expected to be held by January 2005 -- although officials concede that voting will be highly problematic without a very significant improvement in security in Iraq.

No vote on the resolution is expected until Brahimi reports to the council. But most council members expect the measure to be adopted, perhaps with some amendments. ``No one is in a position to vote against,`` said one envoy.

U.S. TROOPS

The definition of sovereignty, particularly on the role of foreign troops, is a contentious issue, with the Bush administration attempting to assure U.N. members they would not be asked to approve an occupation under another name.

The text endorses a U.S.-led multinational force, which would have ``authority to take all necessary measure to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability.``

But the draft has run into criticism from France, Germany and others, who opposed the Iraqi invasion last year. It does not give a definite timetable for the foreign force to leave but calls for a review after a year. An elected Iraqi government, after January, can also call for such a review.

Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham acknowledged there was no authority for Iraq to ask foreign troops to leave.

But, quoting earlier remarks from Secretary of State Colin Powell, he said, ``The United States has said we will leave if there is a request by the Iraqi government to leave.``

The draft resolution says Iraq would have control over its oil revenues -- but subject to an international audit board.

In his half-hour televised speech at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Bush offered no timetable for withdrawing the 138,000 U.S. troops from Iraq.

A CBS poll found 41 percent of voters approved of the job Bush is doing as president, while 52 percent disapproved. Two weeks ago, 44 percent approved. A year ago, two in three did.

Copyright 2004 Reuters Ltd.

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May 25, 2004
The President`s Speech

If President Bush had been talking a year ago, after the fall of Baghdad, his speech at the Army War College last night might have sounded like a plan for moving forward. He was able to point to a new United Nations resolution being developed in consultation with American allies, not imposed in defiance of them, and to a timetable for moving Iraq toward elected self-government. He talked in general terms of expanding international involvement and stabilizing Iraq. But Mr. Bush was not starting fresh. He spoke after nearly 14 months of policy failures, none of them acknowledged by the president, which have left Iraq increasingly violent and drained Washington`s credibility with the Iraqi people and the international community. They have been waiting for Mr. Bush to make a clean break with those policies. He did not do that last night. The speech reflected the fact that Mr. Bush has been backtracking lately, but he did not come close to charting the new course he needs to take. His "five steps" toward Iraqi independence were merely a recitation of the tasks ahead.

Mr. Bush plans a series of addresses on Iraq before June 30. It was impossible not to wonder last night why he had waited until the security situation in Iraq had become disastrous, until Americans had begun losing faith in his leadership and, indeed, until just 37 days before a crucial new phase begins the transition to Iraqi sovereignty.

It`s regrettable that this president is never going to admit any shortcomings, much less failure. That`s an aspect of Mr. Bush`s character that we have to live with. But we cannot live without a serious plan for doing more than just getting through the June 30 transition and then muddling along until the November elections in the United States. Mr. Bush has yet to come up with a realistic way to internationalize the military operation and to get Iraq`s political groups beyond their current game of jockeying for power and into a real process of drafting a workable constitution.

The draft of the United Nations resolution that circulated yesterday was disappointingly sketchy on these points. It contains the phrases of international support — like references to a "multinational" military force — without committing the Security Council to do anything in particular. The draft endorses a continued American-led military presence in Iraq for at least a year beyond June 30, but it does not ensure expanded international participation. The resolution envisions that after the United Nations names the interim government leaders, it will proceed cautiously, and only when it deems it safe to do so.

There are ways Mr. Bush can achieve the clean break that is so essential.

A good start, first put forward by the Center for American Progress in Washington, is to go much further in internationalizing the next phase of the Iraq operation. Mr. Bush could convene a summit meeting to create a multinational group to oversee the transition. The U.N. Security Council could step up its participation by appointing an international high representative who would actively supervise the interim Iraqi government until the first round of elections. Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has proposed restructuring the military force in Iraq under NATO, with an American commander. Mr. Bush should pursue that at the NATO summit meeting next month.

The president still has a number of speeches left to deliver before June 30. We hope he will use them to come up with a more specific plan, to stop listing the things we already knew needed to be done and to explain to us how he intends to do them. An acknowledgment of past mistakes would be nice.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 25, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The 50¢-a-Gallon Solution
By GREGG EASTERBROOK

WASHINGTON — Republican strategists have been making hay of Senator John Kerry`s support a decade ago of a 50-cent-per-gallon increase in the federal gasoline tax. History let Mr. Kerry off the hook: the proposal never advanced in Congress, so he never cast a vote for it.

Few politicians, especially those with presidential ambitions, would entertain such a big jump in the federal gasoline tax today. With the price of gasoline reaching more than $2 a gallon at the pumps this month, Senator Kerry has argued for oil to be diverted from the nation`s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a plan President Bush has rejected in pursuit of his energy bill.

But the country would indeed be better off if gasoline taxes had been raised by 50 cents a gallon when Mr. Kerry favored the idea. And the United States would still be wise today, if it increased gasoline taxes by the same amount now.

The federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents per gallon, while state gasoline taxes average 24.6 cents per gallon. Had federal gas taxes gone up 50 cents a gallon 10 years ago, several things might not have happened or would have had far less impact.

The S.U.V. and pickup-truck crazes would not have occurred, or at least these vehicles would be much less popular; highway deaths would have been fewer; and gasoline demands would be lower as would oil imports. To continue, the world price of oil would have been lower, since petroleum demand in the United States is the first factor in oil markets; greenhouse-gas emissions in this country would be lower; Persian Gulf oil states would have less influence on the global economy and less significance to American foreign policy; fewer dollars would have flowed to the oil sheiks; and the trade deficit balance for the United States would be smaller.

Don`t all those things sound pretty good? And if higher gasoline taxes had moderated the ever-growing national thirst for oil, fuel at the pump still would have become more expensive — but Americans would be sending the extra money to Washington rather than Riyadh.

Of course, Americans don`t want to send extra money to Washington. But new gasoline taxes could be revenue-neutral — intended to discourage oil waste rather than fill government coffers, with other taxes cut as the pump tax rises. Ideally, proceeds from a revenue-neutral gasoline tax could be used to reduce income taxes and payroll taxes of the poor and lower middle class. Gasoline prices affect this group regressively.

Most economists would say that higher pump prices are a better counterforce to rising oil consumption than complex regulatory schemes. (When prices rise, consumers make their decisions on how to respond, usually preferred over government-imposed solutions.) Three decades ago, the United States used about 15 million barrels of oil a day; now it`s 20 million barrels and rising. About 10 million barrels a day are imported now, compared with about 4 million barrels 20 years ago.

One downside would be lower profits for the Big Three in Detroit, which are S.U.V.-dependent. Any new gas tax would need to be phased in over a period of years, giving Detroit time to adjust. General Motors, Ford and Daimler Chrysler all sell high-quality cars with a higher mile-per-gallon performance at a profit in Europe. They can do so here, too.

When the Bush campaign broadcast an ad highlighting Mr. Kerry`s 1994 gas tax position, the Kerry campaign was quick to point out that one of those who had promoted the idea of a higher gasoline tax, offset by reductions in other taxes, was N. Gregory Mankiw, now chairman of President Bush`s Council of Economic Advisers. In 1999, Mr. Mankiw proposed that the federal gasoline tax be increased by 50 cents per gallon, with income taxes reduced an equivalent amount. "Cutting income taxes while increasing gasoline taxes would lead to more rapid economic growth, less traffic congestion, safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming," Mr. Mankiw wrote.

This was a good idea when John Kerry spoke of it a decade ago; it was a good idea when Mr. Mankiw proposed it five years ago; it remains a good idea now.

Gregg Easterbrook is the author, most recently, of "The Progress Paradox."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 25, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Delusions of Triumph
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Republicans, we hear, are frustrated by polls showing that the public has a poor opinion of George Bush`s economic leadership. In their view, the good news about Mr. Bush`s economic triumphs is being drowned out by the bad news from Iraq.

A recent article in The New York Times, citing concerns of "Republican elected officials, pollsters and strategists," put it this way: "The creation of nearly 900,000 new jobs in the last four months — a development that might otherwise have redefined the race in Mr. Bush`s favor — has been largely crowded out of the electorate`s psyche by images from Iraq."

Funny, isn`t it? In 2002, Republican strategists used the impending Iraq war to distract the public from the miserable economic news. Now they`re complaining that Iraq is taking voters` focus off the economy.

But is the economic news really that good? No. While the recent economic performance is better than in the administration`s first three years, it isn`t at all exceptional by historical standards. And after those three terrible years, the economy has a lot of ground to make up.

Let`s start with the "nearly 900,000 new jobs" created in the last four months. Is that exceptional? Well, during the first four months of 2000, the last presidential election year, the economy created 1.1 million new jobs. An e-mail message to Bush`s supporters from Ken Mehlman, his campaign manager, takes a longer view, boasting of 1.1 million jobs created since last August (when job growth finally turned positive). But in April 2000, payroll employment was 2.3 million higher than in August 1999.

And that was after seven years of sustained employment growth; rapid job growth is hard to achieve when the economy is already close to full employment. To find a year comparable to 2004, we need to look back to 1994, when the economy was still recovering from the first Bush recession. In the first four months of that year, the economy added almost 1.3 million jobs.

The experience of 1994 also gives us some indication of how likely job growth is to "redefine" an election. Between December 1993 and November 1994 the economy gained 3.6 million jobs, a number beyond the Bush administration`s fondest dreams. Yet voters, convinced that Bill Clinton was leading the country astray, gave his party a severe defeat in that year`s midterm elections. So it`s interesting that a new CBS News poll finds that 65 percent of Americans believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction — a level not seen since 1994.

If you want to convince yourself that I`m not playing games with dates, go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site at stats.bls.gov. Click on "U.S. economy at a glance," then on the green dinosaur next to "Change in payroll employment" for a 10-year chart of monthly job gains and losses. The chart reveals that for 37 months, from January 2001 to February 2004, the Bush administration presided over dismal job numbers: employment for each month fell, or grew far more slowly than the norm during the Clinton years. March and April were much better, but they still weren`t exceptional by 1990`s standards.

And a mere return to Clinton-era job growth isn`t enough: after all those years of poor job performance, we need extra-rapid growth to make up for lost time.

Here`s one way to look at it. The job forecast in the 2002 Economic Report of the President assumed that by 2004 the economy would have fully recovered from the 2001 recession. That recovery, according to the official projection, would lead to average payroll employment of 138 million this year — 7 million more than the actual number. So we have a gap of 7 million jobs to make up.

And employment is chasing a moving target: it must rise by about 140,000 a month just to keep up with a growing population. In April, the economy added 288,000 jobs. If you do the math, you discover that President Bush needs about four years of job growth at last month`s rate to reach what his own economists consider full employment.

The bottom line, then, is that Mr. Bush`s supporters have no right to complain about the public`s failure to appreciate his economic leadership. Three years of lousy performance, followed by two months of good but not great job growth, is not a record to be proud of.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Bush Poll Numbers On Iraq at New Low

By Dan Balz and Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A01

Public approval of President Bush`s handling of the conflict in Iraq has dropped to its lowest point with growing fears that the United States is bogged down and rising criticism of Bush`s handling of the prison abuse scandal, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

Support for Bush on virtually every aspect of the Iraq conflict has declined in the past month as the administration has battled insurgents and grappled with the expanding investigation into the treatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

The poll underscored the political challenges that confronted Bush as he went on national television last night to defend his policy and outline the steps that will lead to a transfer of governing authority to a new Iraqi government on June 30.

Bush`s overall job approval rating declined to 47 percent, the lowest the Post-ABC News polls have recorded since he took office, with 50 percent saying they disapprove. Just four in 10 Americans gave the president positive marks for his handling of Iraq, the lowest since he launched the conflict in March 2003.

On the question of whether U.S. forces should remain in Iraq until that country is stabilized or withdraw to avoid further casualties, 58 percent said they favored staying there, down from 66 percent last month. The percentage favoring a troop withdrawal reached 40 percent, up 7 percentage points in the past month.

Despite Bush`s declining approval ratings, he runs even when pitted against Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), his Democratic challenger. Asked how they would vote if the election were held today, 46 percent of registered voters said Bush, 46 percent said Kerry and 4 percent said independent Ralph Nader. Without Nader factored into the competition, Kerry led Bush 49 percent to 47 percent. A month ago, Bush led Kerry 48 to 43 percent with Nader at 6 percent.

When matched against Kerry on issues of national security and terrorism, Bush was seen as a stronger leader and more reliable in keeping the country safe and more trusted in dealing with a national crisis. Bush also bested Kerry on who is better equipped to deal with Iraq and the war on terrorism, although Bush`s margins have declined in the past month.

Bush`s political standing has been weakened by an erosion in support among independents and by signs of potential disaffection among his typically rock-solid Republican base. Democrats continue to give the president low marks across the board.

A month ago Bush`s job approval rating stood at 51 percent, and virtually all of the decline since then is attributable to a drop of 7 percentage points among Republicans. Just 20 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of independents approve of how he is handling the presidency.

On Iraq, a majority of Democrats (87 percent) and independents (58 percent) gave Bush negative marks. Among members of his party, the president`s support, while strong, declined 8 percentage points over the last month, to 75 percent.

On the issue of withdrawing U.S. forces, 53 percent of Democrats favored withdrawal, which puts them at odds with Kerry, while more than four in 10 independents and one-fifth of Republicans said they preferred getting out to staying indefinitely. The number of independents and Republicans favoring withdrawal rose about 10 percentage points each in the past month.

The president received higher marks for managing the war on terrorism, although the 58 percent approval rating in the new poll marked the first time Bush has dropped below 60 percent on that question since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Bush`s approval rating on Iraq is now lower than his economic approval rating: Forty-four percent said they approved of how he has handled the economy, compared with 54 percent who disapproved. The last two employment reports have shown significant new job creation, and although Bush`s economic ratings remain negative, they are not as low as in March.

Rising gasoline prices represent a potential economic problem for Bush. Almost two in three Americans said rising prices have caused some kind of financial hardship, but fewer than two in five said the hardship was serious. Those surveyed apportioned the blame relatively evenly among the administration, U.S. oil companies and the oil-producing countries.

A majority of those surveyed also expressed optimism that the situation in Iraq will be better a year from now, but in all other respects, the public expressed pessimism about the U.S. mission there.

Those surveyed remained evenly divided over whether the war in Iraq has been worth the cost, with 48 percent saying it was and 50 percent saying it was not. But 65 percent said they believe the United States is bogged down there, 57 percent said the United States is not making significant progress in establishing a democratic government and 58 percent said Bush does not have a clear plan for Iraq.

Disapproval of Bush`s handling of the prisoner-abuse scandal rose dramatically in the past month, with 57 percent giving him negative marks and 36 percent giving him positive marks. A month ago, as the scandal was first unfolding, a plurality (48 percent to 35 percent) said they approved of the way he was dealing with it. Disapproval jumped sharply among independents and Republicans as well as among Democrats. Three in five independents give Bush negative marks on the prison scandal as do almost one-third of Republicans, and three-quarters of all Democrats.

When asked to compare Bush and Kerry, those surveyed said they had more confidence in Kerry on economic issues and more confidence in Bush on national security issues. Bush`s greatest advantage came in the war on terrorism, where he led Kerry by 52 percent to 39 percent. On Iraq, Bush led 48 percent to 42 percent, while on the economy, Kerry led 48 percent to 43 percent. In all cases, the public viewed Bush less favorably than in the Post-ABC poll of a month ago.

Those surveyed also see Bush as a strong leader, with 62 percent saying that characterization fit the president to 52 percent who said it applied to Kerry. Three in five said Bush can be trusted in a crisis, while 46 percent said Kerry could be trusted. A bare majority (52 percent) said Bush has made the country safer; 39 percent said Kerry will do so if he is elected.

Three in four said they see Bush as a politician who takes a position and sticks to it; four in 10 said the same of Kerry. On the other hand, while 49 percent said Bush is willing to listen to different points of view, 69 percent said that of Kerry. Kerry scored higher than Bush on which one understands the problems of ordinary Americans.

On the question of which candidate shares their values, the public was closely divided -- 49 percent said Bush shared their values while 48 percent said the same of Kerry, a finding that reflects the divided electorate.

A total of 1,005 randomly selected adults were interviewed May 20-23. The 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

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A Speech Meant to Rally Public Support Doesn`t Answer Key Questions

By Robin Wright and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A12

With only five weeks before the transition in Iraq and five months before the U.S. elections, President Bush last night called for more patience, more time, more resources and more support to transform troubled Iraq.

But Bush did not provide the midcourse correction that even some Republicans had called for in the face of increasingly macabre violence in recent weeks -- from the assassination of the president of Iraq`s Governing Council and controversy over dozens killed by U.S. warplanes at a purported wedding party to the grisly beheading of an American civilian.

Nor did Bush try to answer some of the looming questions that have triggered growing skepticism and anxiety at home and abroad about the final U.S. costs, the final length of stay for U.S. troops, or what the terms will be for a final U.S. exit from Iraq. After promising "concrete steps," the White House basically repackaged stalled U.S. policy as a five-step plan.

In effect, the president said his current plan is good enough to win, and he set out to rally Americans to his cause with rousing language that placed the conflict in Iraq in the context of the larger, more popular battle against terrorism.

"Our terrorist enemies have a vision that guides and explains all their varied acts of murder," Bush said. "They seek to impose Taliban-like rule, country by country, across the greater Middle East." He asserted that extremists now see Iraq as "the central front in the war on terror."

Still, the questions left unanswered last night could continue to make the administration vulnerable to criticism. "The more explicit and precise, the better. A lot of rhetoric without altering the substance will not do," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, who has been critical of the Bush administration`s foreign policy. "What`s involved is basically American credibility."

The president`s soothing recitation of policy particulars offered few benchmarks or specifics on the most sensitive issues, such as the relationship between the Iraqi government to be installed July 1 and the U.S.-led coalition troops that are scheduled to remain in Iraq to provide basic security -- and what happens if Iraqis do not want foreign forces to launch new offensives. That issue underscores the potential controversies even after the occupation ends.

Throughout his address at the Army War College, Bush tried to generate new support for his Iraq strategy by contrasting two strikingly different scenarios for the future -- "one of tyranny and murder, the other of liberty and life." Tough times in the coming months will be offset by prospect of hopeful change in the years ahead, he said.

Echoing a theme from a year ago after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the president evoked his broad "vision" of a new Iraq inspiring freedom that will "advance and change lives in the greater Middle East." He also waxed eloquent about a future for the people of the Middle East that would allow them to "reclaim the greatness of their own heritage."

The alternative, Bush warned, is the descent of Iraq and the region into extremism. "The failure of freedom would only mark the beginning of peril and violence," he said. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were an undercurrent throughout the speech, as the president sought to rekindle the public acclaim associated with the broader war on terrorism that began by toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Bush`s speech was the kickoff to a campaign to reassure U.S. voters and rally international backing for a United Nations resolution circulated yesterday at the Security Council, which the White House hopes will be put to a vote before the president leaves for D-Day commemorations in Europe the first week of June. It will be followed by a speech every week until the June 30 transition, as the Bush administration tries to shore up public support. Among Americans, 64 percent believe the president does not have a clear plan for Iraq, according to a poll released yesterday by the University of Pennsylvania`s National Annenberg Election Survey.

The immediate reaction to the speech, which was not carried by any of the major broadcast networks, broke down largely on partisan lines. Republican stalwarts said Bush fulfilled the mission set out by the White House to reassure the American public. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said in a statement that Bush`s speech "gave us the two things we needed most: an honest report on the present and a detailed plan for the future."

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) said Bush was "at his best tonight in laying a foundation, upon which he has to build every week to sustain the support of the American people and the world in bringing freedom to Iraq."

But Bush immediately came under attack from key congressional Democrats who specialize in foreign policy.

"I`m extremely disappointed. He didn`t answer any of the important questions. I don`t think he leveled with the American people. This may be the last time we have to get it right," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del), ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry said Bush had only repeated general principles already laid out by the administration. Kerry said the president needed instead to "genuinely reach out" to allies so the United States no longer has to "go it alone" and to create stability.

"That`s what our troops deserve, and that`s what our country and the world need at this moment," he said in a statement.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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TV Viewers Offered Choice: `Fear Factor` or Bush

By Tom Shales

Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page C01

Old Blue Tie was back, but not exactly in top form. The official topic of George W. Bush`s speech last night was his grand plan for rebuilding Iraq, but the address may have been prompted more by a political crisis than by foreign policy: A new poll showed Bush receiving his lowest public approval rating ever for his handling of the war he started.

It is doubtful Bush changed millions of minds with last night`s speech, which was delivered in the extremely friendly surroundings of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., but without much energy or urgency. Bush didn`t look terribly convinced by his own argument that the situation in Iraq is improving, nor did he appear all that thrilled by his five-point plan to bring about "Iraqi freedom" in the future.

"We`re makin` progress," Bush said in his colloquial way. "You`re makin` speeches," a skeptic might justifiably have retorted.

The speech, just over 30 minutes long, was semi-nationally televised. It was carried on cable news networks like Fox`s and NBC`s CNBC and MSNBC, but the four major broadcast networks decided not to air it. The White House did not formally request the time, and the networks determined in advance that the news content of the speech was low, while perhaps feeling the partisan content was high. Bush is, after all, not only the president but a candidate for the presidency.

Perhaps the networks should be faulted for not carrying the speech anyway, out of deference to the chief executive and leader of the free world, whether they subjectively felt it newsy or not. Besides, the probable reason they opted out was a matter of profits: This was the last Monday night of the May ratings sweeps (which officially end tomorrow night), and the networks wanted to hew to scheduled programming and the commercials therein.

And so the tattered old NBC peacock turned its back on the president to offer two episodes of its ultimate dumb-downer, "Fear Factor," the program on which women in bikinis eat worms. ABC, meanwhile, ignored the president for "A Beautiful Mind" -- that is, the film of that title, getting its network debut.

While Bush`s oratorical prowess has never been awe-inspiring -- he`s inferior even to his father as a galvanizer -- he has still, to a large degree, mastered the basics of TV speechmaking -- short, punchy sentences for the most part, with clarity given precedence over emotional eloquence. Last night`s speech was clear enough but also dry and dispirited. Not even the military audience gave the impression of being enraptured, and the speech was interrupted only a few times for applause -- once when Bush praised the work of the coalition troops, mostly American, once when he said "terrorists will not determine the future of Iraq," and so on.

Bush appeared to be using three prompting devices: one to his left, one to his right and one in the center, mounted on the camera used for the head-on shot. Bush was best when relying on that camera. When he looked to his right or left to read the speech, he seemed to be peering far into the distance, certainly not making contact with viewers at home. It`s not as if the hall is so cavernous that Bush had to reach people in remote mezzanines and balconies.

Besides, it`s the folks at home who matter, the audience Bush really needs to impress. It`s unlikely he did that last night. In addition to a generally lackluster delivery, Bush stumbled over the crucial name Abu Ghraib, the now infamous prison where grisly torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops has become an international scandal as well as an enormous embarrassment to the Bush administration.

Bush pledged to build a nice new prison and tear down Abu Ghraib when it`s completed.

When he finished the speech, Bush was given a pro forma standing ovation, then remained in the room to shake as many outstretched hands as possible.

In post-speech analysis on the Fox News Channel, columnist Charles Krauthammer praised Bush for presenting "a more realistic vision" of the Iraq scenario than in past speeches. The president "succeeded to that extent" in what he set out to accomplish, Krauthammer told anchor Brit Hume, neither of them quite bursting into hip-hip-hoorays. On the same network Fred Barnes complained that Bush had inadequately addressed the issue of safety for civilian workers and other Westerners in Iraq during the reconstruction process. "He didn`t say enough about that," Barnes grumped.

The speech was so bland that even the usual suspects had a hard time working up much indignation or exaltation over it.

Over on CNN, blank-faced correspondent John King told anchor Paula Zahn that the speech contained "no new policies . . . at all," thus inadvertently helping to explain why only cable networks and not the big four broadcast networks bothered to carry it. Bush reportedly plans to make five more speeches on the subject of progress in Iraq -- if any -- but he might as well make them by telephone if they`re all going to be as unimpressive and uninspired as last night`s was.

Of course, most people by now have probably heard the rumor, or the wild conjecture, that Osama bin Laden either will be caught just in time for the November election or has in fact already been caught and is being held in captivity so he can be sprung strategically as an "October surprise" -- one that will clinch the election for Bush. If that`s true -- and this is an age of incredible-but-truisms -- Bush can make the worst speeches of his career and no one will care.

In that sense only, last night`s was a good beginning.

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Mr. Bush`s Challenge



Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A16

WITH DOUBTS growing about his Iraq policy, President Bush faces one of the most important tests of his presidency in the coming weeks. His speech last night at the Army War College laid out the agenda: handing power to a sovereign Iraqi government by June 30; winning U.N. Security Council endorsement for the continued presence of U.S. and other foreign troops; improving security and neutralizing extremist groups so that reconstruction can proceed; and, finally, preparing for the election of a representative Iraqi government by early next year.

Each of those steps is daunting, but another challenge was implicit in the president`s appearance last night and in White House plans for a series of such addresses: Mr. Bush must convince an increasingly skeptical American public and Congress that the goals are achievable and the sacrifices worth making. Last night`s speech was, at least, a beginning and a commendable show of determination; but it`s not clear that the president`s rhetoric, or the steps he is planning, are vigorous enough to turn the situation around.

The bad news from Iraq has induced not just appropriate concern but a sense of panic in some quarters of Washington. A host of voices, some of them in Congress, now declare the war irretrievably lost and demand that America cut its losses and withdraw its troops, and soon. We believe Mr. Bush is right to reject that counsel and stick to the goal, as he said last night, of creating in Iraq "a free, representative government that serves its people and fights on their behalf." But it`s not enough for Mr. Bush to restate the broader stakes in the war on terrorism, as he did last night, or to express his faith in Iraqis` desire for democracy. It is misleading to focus only on the problems of Islamic and Baathist terrorism when the United States also faces in Iraq complex challenges of ethnic divisions and growing anti-American nationalism -- challenges for which the country and, it seems, the administration were not prepared.

Mr. Bush would be more persuasive if he would acknowledge more honestly what has gone wrong in the past year and how it can be corrected. That is true of the evident failure to deploy sufficient numbers of troops, recruit more international support or nurture genuine Iraqi political leaders, and it applies to the abuses of Iraqi prisoners by American guards and interrogators, which Mr. Bush continues to describe as the isolated acts of individuals, despite abundant evidence of a systemic failure. The president promised last night to build a new prison in Iraq and then seek Iraqi approval to tear down the notorious Abu Ghraib complex -- but for U.S. credibility to be repaired with Iraqis and U.S. allies, Mr. Bush must also renounce the policies that led to the abuses. He repeated that he would send more troops if U.S. commanders asked for them. But he is the commander in chief; he can and should make that urgent and necessary decision himself.

Mr. Bush also needs a strategy for transforming the troubled pattern of U.S. relations with key allies. Yesterday the administration introduced the draft of the Security Council resolution that is crucial to its political and security plans, only to encounter objections from the same governments in Europe that have opposed the Iraq mission all along. Mr. Bush often speaks about overcoming these divisions but shrinks from the steps that might accomplish that, such as working personally to forge a consensus with European leaders on a common approach to Iraq. Bolder action and more honest words from the president might not change the situation in Iraq overnight, but it might, at least, persuade more Americans that he can lead the country to a success.

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Homemade Oil Crisis

By David Ignatius

Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A17

The "oil crisis" of 2004 is one more sign that a Bush administration that once hoped to transform the sources of instability in the Middle East is instead retrenching to a messier version of the old status quo.

Desperate to slow the recent rise in oil prices, finance ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries last weekend demanded that OPEC countries raise their production, arguing in their communique that "lower oil prices would be of benefit to the whole world economy." Since Saudi Arabia is the only OPEC country with much spare capacity, that put the kingdom back in the familiar position of receiving entreaties from skittish Europeans, Japanese and Americans.

The Saudis responded graciously enough, and why not? They are in the driver`s seat. Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi promised that the kingdom would pump an additional 600,000 barrels a day, boosting its output to 9.1 million barrels daily. And Saudi sources have been hinting that they`re prepared to go further -- up to the kingdom`s current maximum of about 10.5 million barrels a day.

To underline Saudi Arabia`s decisive role in the oil market, Saudi officials were telling insiders at an International Energy Agency meeting in Amsterdam yesterday that over the next several years, they may increase their maximum capacity to 11.5 million or 12 million barrels per day -- to maintain their preferred excess-capacity buffer of 2 million barrels a day above planned production.

In this week`s frantic market, even the Saudi offers to boost production haven`t significantly pushed prices down. But analysts expect that as the market steadies, prices will fall several dollars from yesterday`s record futures-market close of $41.72 a barrel.

The drama on the oil spot market has masked the fact that the recent price squeeze has been building for several years -- and is largely a result of conflicting policy decisions made in Washington and Riyadh. A rapidly growing Chinese economy meant that upward pressure on prices was inevitable. But neither the Saudis nor the Americans took appropriate steps to defuse the problem before it became a crisis.

The Bush administration contributed to the oil price squeeze in several ways, according to industry experts. First, it failed to address the fact that demand for gasoline in the United States was increasing sharply, thanks to ever more gas guzzlers on the road and longer commutes. The administration also continued pumping 120,000 barrels a day of crude into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, making a tight market even tighter. And by letting the value of the dollar fall sharply over the past year, the White House all but forced the Saudis to raise dollar-denominated oil prices to compensate.

The administration`s more serious mistake was that as energy supplies tightened, it did nothing to reduce U.S. demand. A year when the United States was fighting a war in Iraq would have been an ideal time to ask the country to sacrifice a bit, to reduce its dependence on oil from the Middle East. Instead, the Bush administration let SUV Nation roll on.

Meanwhile, as Americans burned their energy, the Saudis subtly fiddled with the oil market. By keeping inventories low and encouraging a policy of "just in time" deliveries to refiners, they kept spot prices on a knife edge. The result was that OPEC, after years of powerlessness, became in effect a central bank for oil.

"U.S. policymakers are guilty of denial," says Roger Diwan, a managing director of PFC Energy, a Washington-based consulting firm. "Tighter specifications for refiners, runaway demand and supply bottlenecks have indeed created market tightness. Blaming the producers doesn`t solve the problems created by contradictory U.S. energy policies over the last two decades."

Bush administration officials who talked blithely in the run-up to the Iraq war about replacing Saudi Arabia as the locus of the oil market should be forced to drink a barrel of crude. As things have turned out, events have underlined the inevitability of Saudi Arabia as the supplier of last resort. An administration that set out to transform the Saudi-dependent status quo has ended up reinforcing it -- at the very time that terrorist attacks are showing the kingdom`s vulnerability.

Conspiracy theorists will see these developments in oil markets as further evidence of a plot between the House of Saud and the House of Bush. That`s nonsense. What we are seeing in the market is a result of clever policies in Saudi Arabia and dumb ones in the United States. This "crisis" is man-made, and the more it resembles the oil-crisis frenzy of the 1970s, the more nervous we should all be.

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Election Dangers To Be Avoided

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A17

Here is the one good thing to come out of the Florida fiasco of 2000: This time we have advance warning of the problems that might await us on Election Day.

So how do we avoid another mess? Here are some issues, and some fixes.

Touch-screen voting machines without paper trails. To have a recount, you need something to recount. But what if newfangled voting equipment leaves no record of how ballots were cast?

Dick Polman, a fine political writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, recently reminded his readers of a January legislative election in Broward County -- poor Florida! -- in which touch-screen machines failed to record the votes of 134 people who had cast ballots. The winner had a margin of only 12 votes.

As Polman noted: "Under state law, a hand recount was required -- yet there was nothing to recount, because touch-screens don`t produce paper receipts."

If you thought the controversy over Florida was bad the last time, imagine another excruciatingly close election in which there is evidence of error -- and no way of tracing its source. Is this inventive nation incapable of producing voting equipment with the efficiency of the touch-screen and the security of a paper trail? Failure to solve this problem would be pretty embarrassing for a country that casts itself as the world leader in both technology and democracy.

Phony felons. One of the outrages of 2000 was the creation of a list of "possible felons" who were knocked off Florida`s voter rolls. Under Florida law, felons can`t vote. Thanks to the work of Greg Palast, a left-of-center investigative writer, the public learned that the list of felons that the state gave to local election officials was defective. Local officials were supposed to do additional checking, but some were more diligent than others. Given that the list of "possible felons" was disproportionately from minority groups, minority voters had a much higher chance of being kicked off the rolls.

How many people were unfairly denied the right to vote under this program? A computer analysis by the Palm Beach Post in 2001 found that of the 19,398 potential voters knocked off the lists, more than 14,600 matched a felon by name, birth date, race and gender. That left 4,798 unaccounted for. Of the rest, the newspaper`s analysis found that at least 1,100 eligible voters were "wrongly purged from the rolls." Bush was awarded Florida by a margin of 537 votes over Gore.

Most states do not permanently deny former felons the right to vote, and the few that still do should abandon a practice so often rooted in a racist past. More urgently, states and localities need to make sure that voters who were never felons don`t get caught up in a voter purge. Fortunately, there are election officials in Florida wary of a new list of potential felons they recently received from the state.

"I have no desire to move forward quickly," Deborah Clark, the Pinellas County supervisor of elections, told the St. Petersburg Times last week. "I would rather move forward cautiously. We`ve had enough bad experience with this project, with information we have received." Indeed.

Badly designed ballots and the straight-ticket punch. Give Florida a break for a moment. In 2000, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis, Chicago had the most error-ridden presidential election of any U.S. city. Most striking: The error rate in Cook County (which is mostly Chicago) skyrocketed from 2.7 percent in 1996 to 6.2 percent in 2000.

No, Chicago voters didn`t get dumber. What happened is that in 1997 the Illinois legislature abolished the straight-ticket punch, under which voters could cast votes for every one of their party`s candidates by making a single hole on a punch card. That was a corrective to Chicago`s tendency to cram its ballot with way too many contests. As the Tribune noted, there were 456 perforated squares on ballots in 2000. It`s a miracle the error rate wasn`t higher.

What`s needed are either much shorter ballots or a return to the straight-ticket option. Don`t worry, independents, ways could be found to make it easy for you to split your ticket.

Okay, I know, the straight-ticket punch is not on many reformers` wish lists. But let`s fix the other problems fast. This would be about the worst moment in our history to have the Supreme Court pick the president two times in a row.

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Our Soldiers and Us

By Eliot A. Cohen

Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A17

At a recent hearing a congressman began his questions to American top brass by sputtering, "I can`t believe that our wonderful soldiers would do anything to hurt American foreign policy." It was a stunningly naive remark, a product of several decades of civilians` guilty consciences about their treatment of Vietnam veterans and of the gradual isolation of American elites from the reality of military service. The horrors of Abu Ghraib were not of themselves part of the price paid for the end of the draft, but perhaps the bewilderment of Americans who admire the military from afar is.

Military service, or a life spent with soldiers, brings one to the realization that soldiers, like the rest of us, fall on a continuum, a normal distribution of most human virtues and vices. At the right end of the curve lie men and women of extraordinary physical, mental and indeed spiritual distinction; people of exceptional character, whose fortitude, largeness of spirit and greatness of soul leave one humbled. The armed forces also have the others -- the liars, petty tyrants, place-hunters, opportunists, even, yes, the cowards and the brutes. By and large military service excludes or winnows out most of the latter, attracting and retaining far more of the former; it has a higher concentration of the finer types than any other walk of life that I know. But despite its best efforts, it has its share of moral weaklings and scoundrels.

Military sociology has at its core two powerful insights. First, military organizations reflect in many ways the societies from which they emerge. If a society condones brutality and lewdness, you will find soldiers beating prisoners and copulating with one another while their comrades take souvenir snapshots. If a society has no norm of chief executives accepting responsibility for their corporations` moral and financial failures, do not expect generals to line up to say: "It happened on my watch, and I therefore offer the secretary of defense my resignation." In some measure, societies get the militaries they deserve.

Second, to control the use of violence amid the terrors and hardships of war, armed forces must create unusual institutions, mores and habits. When the country sends men and women to war, it asks them to endure physical and mental misery -- heat, dust and hard labor on the one hand, separation from home, boredom and fear on the other. Government equips these men and women with devastating weapons, and even when it attempts to limit their use of force, it must give them great discretion. Unless subjected to thorough training, relentless discipline and solid leadership, normal products of our society -- individualistic, hedonistic, often unreflective and rarely far-sighted -- will act badly. For that reason, Abu Ghraib reflects not merely the actions of a few sadists who somehow slipped through the net but a broader failure of military leadership.

It is up to the secretary of defense and our top generals to restore the situation, through legal processes, administrative action and their own qualities of leadership. One looks not only for courts-martial but for administrative dismissals and resignations. The vast majority of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have conducted themselves honorably and courageously, but let us not pretend that the failures here reflected only the misdeeds of an inexplicable few.

We civilians also have our lessons to learn. The first is that the costs of war extend beyond the caskets coming home to Dover and the broken bodies in Walter Reed, to the moral hazards imposed on young people dispatched to further American policy by force of arms. The second is the imperative of standing behind responsible civilian and military leaders when they insist on the highest standards of conduct for military personnel. Not long ago a Senate majority leader reproached the chief of staff of the Air Force for his service`s seemingly harsh treatment of a young officer who seduced the husband of one of her subordinates. Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, however, understood what Sen. Trent Lott did not, namely, that only a fragile wall of discipline and integrity separates honorable warriors from barbarians.

The third and hardest lesson is that the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib should cause us to look harder at ourselves. The military holds up a mirror to our society; the shadows are, at times, deeper, but fortunately the lights often gleam more brightly. Nothing makes that clearer than the tale of two Army specialists. Charles A. Graner Jr.`s evil leer at Abu Ghraib belonged to an American soldier. Pat Tillman`s quiet heroism on an Afghan battlefield did also. One faces trial, while the other, who forsook wealth and fame for a private soldier`s anonymity, lies in a patriot`s grave. We owe to the latter not only an honored memory but a sober appreciation of where each fits in the American story.

The writer is Robert E. Osgood professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University`s School of Advanced International Studies.

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NEWS ANALYSIS
Onus Now on Kerry`s Iraq Plan
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

May 25, 2004

WASHINGTON — President Bush offered Monday the most detailed explanation of his plan for moving Iraq from chaos to independence, increasing the pressure on his Democratic rival, Sen. John F. Kerry, to fill in an alternative vision for stabilizing the troubled country.

Bush did not offer any new initiatives — apart from a largely symbolic promise to tear down Abu Ghraib prison, where American soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners — or set a date for the withdrawal of American troops.

But he presented, step by step, moves for vesting sovereignty in a new Iraqi government and ending the American-led occupation.

The address clearly seemed aimed at what polls show is one of Bush`s principal threats in the election: the growing sense among Americans that he does not have a clear plan for success in Iraq.

In a statement, Kerry dismissed the speech as a rehash of Bush`s previous arguments.

"The president laid out general principles tonight, most of which we`ve heard before," said Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. "What`s most important now is to turn these words into action by offering presidential leadership to the nation and to the world."

But if anything, some analysts say, Bush`s recitation of what he called "the specific steps we are taking to achieve our goals" could increase demands for Kerry to offer more specifics of his own.

Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist who studies public opinion on national security, said Bush`s speech would "raise the bar" for Kerry and other critics to explain their plans. "It will be hard to identify something in [Bush`s speech] that is wrong-headed that will allow a critic to say, here`s a better way to do it," he said.

The speech seems unlikely to turn the tide in public opinion on Iraq — if only because no single address, or even any single event, has shown the power to win lasting backing for the war.

Feaver said Bush probably did not suggest a new direction that would convert those Americans who have "already concluded it is hopeless in Iraq." But he predicted it may help "stabilize" those who "want us to win and believe the U.S. can win," even if they fear America is not succeeding.

Still, Feaver, like other analysts, acknowledges that any gains Bush earns with this speech — and the five expected in the next few weeks — are likely to last only if they are reinforced by improvements in Iraq.

One overriding lesson of the last year was that American public opinion on the war has proved extremely sensitive to events. A series of reversals over the last several months — from the violence in Sunni Muslim-dominated Fallouja and the challenge from the militia controlled by radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr to the scandal at Abu Ghraib — has driven public confidence in the war to a low.

Three polls released hours before the president spoke underscored the erosion. By a ratio of nearly 2 to 1, a majority of Americans in a National Annenberg Election Survey said they did not believe that Bush had a "clear plan for bringing the situation in Iraq to a successful conclusion."

In an ABC/Washington Post poll also released Monday, nearly three-fifths of Americans said they disapproved of Bush`s handling of the war — the highest level the survey has ever recorded.

And in a CBS survey, nearly two-thirds of Americans said they believed America was on the wrong track, matching the highest number CBS has found since it began asking the question about 20 years ago.

In all three surveys, as well as a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Monday, Bush`s overall approval rating stood below the 50% mark usually considered the danger zone for an incumbent. Despite that, Kerry does not have a substantial lead over Bush; the ABC/Washington Post poll shows each with 46% of the vote if the election were today.

At the same time, Bush is facing a near-crisis of confidence over Iraq among many opinion leaders. On Sunday night, for example, retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the former commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Middle East and a former special envoy for Bush in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, said that Bush`s current policy in Iraq was headed for disaster.

"To think that we are going to, quote, stay the course — this course is headed over Niagara Falls," Zinni said on CBS`s "60 Minutes."

Over the last several days, conservatives such as William Kristol, publisher of the Weekly Standard, have been urging Bush to use greater force to eliminate Iraqi insurgents. Meanwhile, even several centrist Democratic analysts, such as James Steinberg, deputy national security advisor under President Clinton, have urged Bush to set a specific date for withdrawing American troops.

Faced with such criticism and doubts, Bush did not present any significant change of course in his policies Monday night. But he offered a very different tone from his nationally televised news conference in April, when he mostly stressed his resolve to succeed in Iraq and divulged few details of his plans.

By contrast, Monday`s speech focused on the particulars — from the path to the planned June 30 hand-over of power to an interim Iraqi government to the road map for elections to pick a permanent government and ratify a constitution next year.

And although Bush struck the notes of resolve that have become a trademark of his speeches on Iraq, he also seemed more determined than usual to court those critics who see him as rigid or uncompromising.

He offered praise for collaboration (stressing the role of U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in identifying the interim government) and flexibility (touting the coalition`s determination to use different military tactics against different threats). Bush also displayed a more conciliatory tone in his other major Iraq initiative on Monday: the release, with Britain, of a draft United Nations resolution establishing the legal framework for the government Brahimi is assembling.

Disputes over elements of the draft seem inevitable with the nations originally critical of the war, especially France and Russia, diplomats say. One point of contention will be France`s call to establish a clear cutoff date for the presence of foreign troops in Iraq unless the new Iraqi government asks for them to stay.

But overall, governments critical of the war in Iraq have been "pleasantly surprised" by the draft, one senior European diplomat in Washington said.

"It is an effort," said the diplomat. "It may not be quite 100% of what we need. But it is truly an effort."

By reaching out at least partially to estranged allies, the proposed U.N. resolution seems designed to blunt another principal charge against Bush`s Iraq policy: the allegation by Kerry and others that the U.S. is bearing too much of the burden because the president has alienated too many other nations.

These subtle mid-course corrections may not help Bush much if conditions do not improve in Iraq itself. But they show that the president is not waiting for a decisive change in Iraq to try to alter the terms of debate at home. And they may compel Kerry to demonstrate the same flexibility in adjusting his plans to a rapidly shifting landscape in the war that has come to dominate the presidential race.

*

Times staff writers Maggie Farley at the United Nations and Mary Curtius in Washington contributed to this report.



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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Judge Who Issued Chalabi Search Warrant Beset by Death Threats
By Edmund Sanders
Times Staff Writer

May 25, 2004

BAGHDAD — The anonymous telephone calls started Thursday, just hours after the raid on Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi`s home and office.

"We`ve hired 100 professional assassins to kill you," a man told Judge Zuhair J. Maliky on Sunday morning. "We are collecting information about you and buying weapons right now."

As he nervously ran his fingers over a strand of green prayer beads, Maliky — the chief investigative judge of Iraq`s Central Criminal Court and the man who had issued the search warrant — said he had received more than a dozen death threats.

"I stopped counting," he said.

In an interview, the U.S.-appointed judge staunchly denied that the United States would have access to any evidence collected, including computers, documents and weapons.

Maliky said he had heard reports that aides to Chalabi — a onetime U.S. ally who is now an outspoken critic of the occupation — were suspected of having passed intelligence to Iran. He insisted that those allegations were not part of his investigations and were not a motivation behind the raid.

"This is purely an Iraqi investigation," the judge said. "People are trying to use it to exert political influence. But we are simply investigating some Iraqis accused of violating ordinary Iraqi laws."

Maliky said the investigations involved five separate cases and at least 15 people accused of kidnapping, torture, fraud and theft of government property. Neither Chalabi nor his party, the Iraqi National Congress, is a target of the probes, the judge said. However, he has issued 15 arrest warrants for employees or associates of the INC.

One of Maliky`s investigations involves a former Chalabi appointee to the Finance Ministry, Sabah Nouri, who was arrested in March after auditors discovered that tens of millions of dollars were unaccounted for following the adoption of a new Iraqi currency. Among other allegations, Nouri was accused of illegally detaining bank tellers he had accused of stealing the money.

Another investigation involves the recent kidnapping of a Baghdad cardiologist who said he recognized some of his captors as INC employees before he was blindfolded and tortured for ransom.

"We have no political aims," Maliky said about the investigations. "We are just trying to enforce the law."

The much-publicized raid on Chalabi`s house has thrown the 38-year-old Maliky into the center of a mounting political storm that is testing the delicate balance of power in Iraq`s evolving government.

The U.S.-backed Governing Council condemned the raid, which it characterized as an insult to one of its leading members. In a statement, the council questioned whether there had been enough evidence to raid Chalabi`s house.

But Maliky said Iraq`s new judiciary should be free to pursue justice, no matter where it leads.

"The Governing Council claims they want to create a free, democratic Iraq," the judge said. "But is there to be immunity for members of the council? Saddam Hussein had immunity. But all the immunity has ended. Nobody is above the law."

Dara Noureddine, a council member and fellow judge, said the council did not intend to condemn Maliky.

"The judge should be free to issue any order he wants," Noureddine said. "The council has no right to interfere with the judge`s job."

But Noureddine said council members were disturbed by the raid on Chalabi`s house and the aggressive manner in which police had executed the order. Chalabi alleged that Iraqi police, backed by U.S. soldiers, had broken down doors, smashed furniture and stolen money and food.

Noureddine said council members were skeptical that evidence or suspects would be found at Chalabi`s house and believed that the judge should have consulted with members before issuing the order.

Chalabi "is a member of the Governing Council," Noureddine said. "He should be treated with respect."

Maliky said he had reason to believe that suspects had been staying in Chalabi`s house. After the Governing Council came forward to support Chalabi, a handful of Iraqis, including one council member and the chief judge of the court, offered their support to Maliky, he said.

But over the weekend, the judge faced mounting criticism. One Iraqi newspaper quoted Chalabi backers accusing Maliky of being a Baathist supporter who had signed the arrest warrant for radical cleric Muqtada Sadr, whose militia has been clashing with U.S. troops in southern Iraq.

Maliky said his family had been enemies of Hussein`s regime for decades, and he denied involvement in the Sadr case. A court official confirmed that another judge had signed the Sadr arrest warrant.

Maliky said he had been a private lawyer in Iraq, unable to get a government job because an uncle had opposed a previous regime and was killed in 1968.

"I didn`t arrive in Iraq on an American tank," he said, referring to Chalabi`s return to Iraq with U.S. forces last year. "I didn`t oppose the Saddam Hussein regime from five-star hotels in London and Washington. I didn`t take money from the U.S."

Maliky vowed not to be intimidated, but he said he had contacted the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to request additional security.

"I could be killed today, tomorrow or any day," he said. "That is something that every man in Iraq faces. But a judge should not be scared or subject to any other person. At least I know my son will be able to say proudly, `I am the son of Zuhair.` "

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COMMENTARY
Chalabi`s Long, Costly Charade
Robert Scheer

May 25, 2004

Can it get any more bizarre? Only a few weeks before Washington`s long-promised hand-over of the keys to Iraq, we discover that the lackey the Pentagon only recently had in mind to manage this very valuable property for the United States is suspected by us of being a world-class con artist and, worse, a spy for America`s enemies in Iran.

Nobody is speaking on the record yet, but U.S. intelligence officials are making it clear to a variety of preeminent news sources that Ahmad Chalabi, a longtime darling of the neoconservatives who dragged the U.S. into this war, not only fed Western intelligence sources false information about Saddam Hussein`s Iraq but is accused of having passed on U.S. secrets to Iran, possibly through his security and intelligence chief, who is now a fugitive.

"This is a very, very serious charge," Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on Sunday, noting that his Senate Intelligence Committee will be investigating it. "There were a number of us who warned this administration about [Chalabi]…. But the fact is, there were some in this administration, some in Congress who were quite taken with him."

We might start investigating which Bush official arranged for this hustler — already on the lam for a decade from major banking fraud convictions in Jordan — to sit behind First Lady Laura Bush during this year`s State of the Union speech. Was the Secret Service watching her purse?

Too harsh? Not by a long shot. The CIA had stopped using Chalabi as a source in the mid-1990s after his political organization of exiles was accused of deception and incompetence. However, over the last four years, Chalabi was shamelessly resurrected inside the Beltway by neoconservatives, including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and other Bush officials who were leading the campaign to invade Iraq.

Granted more than $33 million in taxpayer money over that four-year period — funding that was cut off only days before Iraqi police backed by U.S. troops raided his home and office last week — Chalabi was the key window into Iraq for the White House, as well as top reporters such as the New York Times` Judith Miller. She mined him for a long string of now-discredited front-page scoops on Iraq`s much-touted weapons of mass destruction. Chalabi is now suspected of having "gamed" the intelligence agencies of eight nations using phony or tricked-up sources and documents, according to intelligence sources cited in the Los Angeles Times.

Yet even as post-invasion searches and interrogations proved Chalabi`s hoary claims completely wrong, and even as Chalabi continued his longtime practice of cozying up to the ayatollahs in Iran during frequent visits to Tehran, the Bush political appointees in charge of Iraq allowed Chalabi to run wild. Chalabi and his family and cronies have been granted control over Iraq`s banking system and the crucial de-Baathification process, as well as the upcoming trial of Saddam Hussein. The result? At least seven Chalabi aides are wanted on charges of blackmail, fraud and other crimes.

So now we can watch a familiar drama unfold as the United States turns on a lout whom it tried to sell as Iraq`s George Washington.

But being a wily survivor, Chalabi apparently decided that after embarrassing his Beltway backers so badly on the question of Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction and realizing that he was about as popular as the occupation itself, he had better make some new friends. Now he is playing the role of a populist Moses to President Bush`s Pharaoh, chanting in Baghdad last week to "let my people go." He says his aides are innocent of spying for Iran but won`t turn themselves in because "there is no justice in Iraq. There is Abu Ghraib prison."

So was Uncle Sam played for a sucker by Iran, the fulcrum of what the president has called the "axis of evil"? Was the U.S. maneuvered into unseating Iran`s hated enemy, Hussein, whom Washington backed in the 1980s against Iran`s holy warriors? We`ll see as the scandal unfolds.

But even if this outrage proves true, it is unlikely that anyone high up will be held responsible for coddling Chalabi. After all, nobody of any stature has yet been held accountable for the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the prison torture scandal or the poor planning for the occupation. Certainly not President Bush, who is touring the nation bragging that the obvious disaster in Iraq is actually a great victory for the free world.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Sacred Shia site damaged in Najaf fighting

Agencies
Tuesday May 25, 2004

The Guardian
One of the most sacred Shia sites in Iraq was today damaged in clashes between US forces and fighters loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

After the battle in the holy city of Najaf, during which at least nine fighters were killed, angry crowds gathered to inspect the damage to the Imam Ali shrine.

Al-Jazeera television showed a torn veil covering the door to the inner shrine, and damage to the wall above it. The pictures also showed several casualties lying on the floor of the mosque compound.

The inner gate of the shrine, leading into the tomb of Imam Ali Ibn Abu Talib, appeared to have been hit by a missile. Witnesses said the shrine had been hit by rockets or mortars, although it was not clear which side had fired them.

Ahmad Shebani, Mr Sadr`s representative at the shrine, said five or six missiles had hit the building. There was no immediate comment from the US military.

The latest incident, which is likely to increase anti-US feeling among Iraq`s Shia majority, comes a few weeks after the vast gilded dome of the shrine was damaged during fighting.

Supporters of Mr Sadr today accused the US of firing mortars at the mosque. The US command in Baghdad said it was investigating reports of damage.

Imam Ali was the Prophet Muhammad`s cousin and son-in-law, and is the most revered saint among Shia Muslims.

Fighting in Najaf and other Shia cities south of Baghdad has caused concern among Shia Muslims throughout the world, who fear damage to sacred sites.

US officials say they have been careful to avoid damaging shrines, and have accused Mr Sadr of violating the protected status of holy places by using them to store weapons.

Mr Sadr launched an uprising against US-led forces in early April after action was taken to stop his outspoken opposition to the occupation of Iraq. The US military closed Mr Sadr`s newspaper, arrested a key aide and announced a warrant for his arrest in connection with the April 2003 murder of a rival Shia cleric.

Residents described the latest fighting in Najaf as some of the fiercest since battles erupted there last month.

Explosions and gunfire were heard around the city`s Revolution of 1920 Square and the cemetery, a warren of paths and tombs offering numerous hiding places for rebels armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

In nearby Kufa, at least 11 people were killed in early morning fighting, hospital staff said.

There was also violence in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, today, when a car bomb exploded outside a hotel close to the Australian embassy. At least five Iraqis were wounded - including a 10-year-old boy, who was critically hurt - according to the US military.

Iraqi police said they believed the car bomber may have been targeting the embassy, with the device detonating prematurely. The Australian government said its troops in Iraq were investigating, and it was too early to tell whether the embassy had been the target.

The latest bloodshed came just hours after the US and Britain presented their long-awaited blueprint for a post-occupation Iraqi government to the UN security council.

The French foreign minister, Michel Barnier, today said that the draft resolution needed improvements, and expressed the hope that France would "be listened to" in the next phase of talks over Iraqi sovereignty.

Mr Barnier did not point out specific weaknesses in the Anglo-US proposal, but told a press conference: "This resolution needs improvement ... we want to work on the credibility of this resolution."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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From AxisofLogic.com

Critical Analysis
Either You are With Us or Against Us: A Discourse on Terrorism
By Manuel Valenzuela, Contributing Editor
May 23, 2004, 22:31





The War Culture: New Manuel Valenzuela Article coming Tuesday, May 25

This Article first published January 20, 2004



Without justice, there can be no peace. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it�. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter� Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love� Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed�. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it
--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.
- John Milton

If you are a terror to many, then beware of many.
--Ausonius

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
--Abraham Lincoln

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
--Mahatma Gandhi



January is a month in which we celebrate one of the most respected world personalities of modern times, Dr. Martin Luther King. He was one of those few select human beings endowed with certain unalienable gifts that throughout the annals of history changes the world for the better, assisting in the evolution of civilization and helping to unravel the evils of the day for the betterment of humanity. Dr. King was a monument to what all human beings should aspire towards. Yes, he had his faults, he was human after all, but his undaunted courage in the face of tremendous obstacles helped lift the dormant spirits of millions of marginalized Americans and opened a new dawn of hope to this nation�s fractured society.

The exploits of Dr. King cannot be underestimated, and his teachings, speeches and philosophies should be made mandatory learning material for all people of this country. He was a visionary and a prophet, both a hope to millions and a threat to the few powerful elite. With the help of his army of supporters he changed the fabric of society, the belief structure of a nation growing up and the opening of goals and dreams once thought impossible to reach. Dr. King was a true American Patriot.

Under constant threat of death he rose and faced down the barrels of the invisible guns pointed at him. Under constant threat of imprisonment he tore open the bars of oppression and subjugation. Facing a government and a society not willing to unhinge the chains of quasi-enslavement he walked proudly through the streets of America, raising his voice so all could hear, demanding change, equality and justice not through the threat of violence but through the power of peace. To the end Dr. King, in circumstances not one of us could imagine, knowing death could strike him down at any moment, continued preaching his philosophies, sacrificing himself during times that were most likely under extreme duress so the rest of us could one day walk side by side in his dream. Today, we are all better women and men as a result.

Yet if Dr. King were living in today�s environment of terrorism and suspicion, of enemy combatants and evildoers, under the ever watchful eye of Bush and his marauding maniacs, he could very well be caged like an animal down in Guantanamo. When the Bush mantra is "either you are with us or against us," Dr. King would certainly be seen as a threat to the establishment and to the Bush Administration. Dr. King�s philosophy of change through non-violent means is the sword that pierces the dragon�s breast, the kryponite that weakens the powerful establishment. No weapon is stronger than non-violent revolution; no army can withstand its force. In today�s world of eviscerated democracy and perpetually-diminishing rights and freedoms, however, Dr. King would most inevitably be persecuted, as he was in his day, though to a much greater extent.

Any perceived threat to the establishment and to Bush gets the well-thought out, exploitative marketing propaganda campaign designed to make enemies of anyone not in the administration�s pockets. Labeled "unpatriotic," "terrorist sympathizer," "treasonous," "enemy combatant" or as "cavorting with the enemy" those who do not follow Bush�s idea of how the nation and the world are run are subjected to a public relations blitzkrieg not seen since the days of McCarthyism. Those who refuse to lie to the American public or who refuse to cover up the plethora of Bush lies, distortions and deceptions are scorned, smeared and trashed. The fine-tuned propaganda campaign to debase the opposition has penetrated into the minds of the masses. September 11 unleashed the perfect mechanism by which to silence anyone with contrary views to Bush and his cabal of crusaders. This allowed the administration to do anything and everything it wanted.

If Dr. King were alive today, in the same capacity as before his death, awakening and inspiring, educating and leading, it is not far fetched to believe that Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft would have labeled him any of the vast names designated under the fictitious "war on terror" designed for the opposition. Dr.King would never be allowed to question authority, the government�s perpetuating downward spiral that is ruining this country, the Leviathan�s ever-increasing power and control of the nation, the military-industrial complex�s maximizing profit motives by seeking perpetual war and death, the energy/oil oligarchy�s insatiable thirst for the world�s oil nor Bush himself. He would have never been allowed to stir the oceans of ignorance, in the end creating tidal waves of enlightenment and discontent as people minds were made free from the grip of brainwashed diatribe.

In Bush�s world, Dr. King would be a terrorist. If you are not with us then you are against us. To question us is to be unpatriotic, even treasonous. To not blindly follow Bush and his failure of leadership, integrity or honor is to be an "enemy combatant."

In Bush�s worldview, where the battle is between the forces of good (the US) versus evil (anyone else who is not with us) and between the Empire and Barbarians, many historical figures who dared question those in power would be labeled "terrorists," many undoubtedly to be disappeared and sent to Guantanamo. Those figures who dared question authority, the evils of the elite, the exploitation of Empires, established dogma and civilization�s ills would today be rotting in cages, sent to suffer brutal repercussions at the hands of the nation that espouses and demands human rights onto to world.

One man�s freedom fighter is another�s terrorist. Take, for example, the case of Jesus Christ. Jesus grew up under the exploitative hands of the Roman Empire, its proctors, along with corrupt and gluttonous Jewish high priests who had turned the Temple into a debauched market of greed. He grew up ever mindful of Roman occupation, exploitation and subjugation of his people. When he finally decided to speak his mind and try to embolden people into not accepting what had been placed at their feet he became the political activist that he was. He spoke of peace, love and forgiveness, of the need to give, share and empathize.

He called for change, at all levels of society, seeking justice and equality, honor and salvation. He criticized the high priests for their corrupt ways and trashed the Temple market in a rage of anger. He was a champion to the poor and less-fortunate, the downtrodden and the hopeless. He offered passion and hope, confidence and a better way of life.

Christ became a freedom fighter to the masses, a terrorist to the Romans and the high priests. If he were preaching the same philosophy today, fighting the Pax Americana instead of ancient Rome, what label would Bush place on him? Jesus changed the world, his teachings, powerful and necessary, continue to be taught to this day, though hardly listened to anymore. His philosophies, much needed for our survival, were corrupted by the church in the 2000 years since his death. Freedom fighter and activist, seeking change through peace, non-violence, love and equality, crucified by those at the top, those with the power that saw him as a threat to their continued existence and as an example for future agitators.

What were the prophets of the Old Testament if not activists seeking a betterment of people and society? They too were freedom fighters, yet in their day to go against those in control and power meant certain death. Seeking justice, equality, freedoms and rights meant persecution, just as before, just as now. The freedom fighters who brought down communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980�s were heroes, but if they did the same to Bush today they would be hung for treason.

The French resistance who fought the Germans, the Jewish resistance that clashed with Nazis in ghettos, those who fought in the American War for Independence and the French Revolution, would they all be terrorists today? Would Martin Luther, Galileo and Darwin be labeled "terrorists" under the Bush definition even though they revolutionized the world through their actions? We romanticize freedom fighters in movies or theatres, be it William Wallace in Braveheart, Joan of Arc, Les Miserables, Gladiator, Michael Collins, The Patriot, Schindler�s List and so on. In Hollywood, to fight for freedom, survival and the rights of your people is glamorized and accepted. In Bush�s bubble and brainwashed world, it is castigated and annihilated.

India presents us with another great human being in Gandhi that would today likely be considered some form of "terrorist." Gandhi espoused non-violent remedies to troubles afflicting his country and people at the hands of the British Empire. He organized, helped awaken hundreds of millions, mobilized a new movement that through peace brought the British to their knees, and eventually out of India. Yet he was a man fighting the system, fighting for justice and equality, freedom and rights. A greater freedom fighter has not existed. Yet in today�s world, where Bush decides who is and who isn�t, Gandhi might be persecuted and jailed, caged and beaten, treated as a terrorist. One man transformed an entire nation, and left behind the keys to human survival in his teachings. But he fought the powerful, the entity in control, much like Jesus or Dr. King, and suffered their same fate.

Real terrorists do exist, Osama bin Laden being the most prominent, destroying 3000 lives in order to fight the evils of the Great Satan. But to hundreds of millions around the world, bin Laden and Al-Qaeda represent a new breed of freedom fighter that struggles against the vast expansive and exploitative grip of American Imperialism. We in this country need to understand why so many people espouse such sympathy and admiration for bin Laden and his kind. Only then can we understand what drives them to slam hijacked planes into tall buildings.

We need to understand the role the US government, military and Leviathan play in the decimation of millions of lives through the various mechanisms imposed to assure the spoils of Empire. To hundreds of millions, we are the terrorists through the actions of our government, and this has only been amplified through Bush�s policies of death, destruction and suffering. Bin Laden fights us because of our economic and military exploitation around the world that causes misery and torment to billions. He attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon for this reason, seen as symbols of the methods by which the US subjugates billions of people worldwide. The roots of terrorism must be understood before we unleash the whirlwind that will spread even more seeds of hatred around the world. The so-called war on terror must focus on the root causes of terrorism and not its branches.

If you pull out the root the branches cannot flourish, they cannot bloom. If you fight the branches the roots do not die, they only spread. This is why the war on terror is destined to fail, lasting into perpetuity, killing thousands of our loved ones and robbing us of the vast amounts of money needed to rebuild our people and our land. This is the reason Bush must be defeated in November, because to re-elect him would mean the continuing and never-ending war on terror, the enactment of the draft, and the continued usurpation of both our wages and our loved ones to the military-industrial complex and the Leviathan.

The war on terror can be won, but only if we pull it out from its roots, devoting a new philosophy of peace, non-violence, communalism, assistance, education, and openness to the billions of souls living in misery, endemic poverty, disease, suffering and lack of opportunity, understanding their cultures and their needs, their reasons for hating us and their need for a life worth living. In most instances, the US and its policies are to blame; our actions create reactions which come back to haunt us.

Bush is falling directly into bin Laden�s trap, creating entire waves of new recruits, helping transform the Middle East into a fundamentalist enclave ready to erupt. With every Muslim death, usurpation of their lands and futures, ill treatment of their people, continued poverty of their lives and support for the atrocities of the Israeli government against the Palestinians by Bush the hatred only intensifies, the fire only rages, searing higher into the air with each act of humiliation. This is no way to fight a war that cannot be won by the use of the sword being plunged into the belly of misery and hopelessness. But in Bush�s world, terrorism must be made perpetual in order to satisfy the insatiable hunger of the Leviathan and the oligarchy. There is method to Bush�s madness.

The more "terrorists" are created the more wars will be fought meaning increased levels of profiteering, imperialism, resource allocation, people subjugation and the greater the excuses will become to instill fear into an already paranoid American public. The so-called war on terror is nothing more than a vicious cycle that is designed to make war endless, terrorism ceaseless, profit everlasting and power omnipotent. It is a way to control the American people into acquiescing to every dictate Bush seeks on his way to robbing us all of our freedoms, rights and democracy and of the nation we once knew to be true.

If terrorists are to be pursued, captured and killed, then we must also unleash our full fury and might and go after all kinds of terrorists, not just Muslim fundamentalists. I am talking about those people who without remorse or apathy pollute and pillage our world, our bodies and our minds. I am referring to those who rob us blind, stealing our life savings and our wages. Environmental and financial terrorists, those living among us, should also see the wrath of the war on terror. Do these individuals not terrorize when they release pollutants and toxins into the only air we can breathe? Do they not terrorize when they poison our water, our food and our bodies? Do they not terrorize the world when they spew and leave barren forests and oceans? Is that not terrorism? After all, they kill hundreds of thousands of people every year, many more times than bin Laden and his fanatical followers. Don�t the Kenny Boy (at one point W�s best friend) Lay�s of the world terrorize when they rob millions of their life savings, basically enriching themselves at the expense and misery of millions? Are these people, such as those at Enron, not terrorists? They severely affect the lives of millions, altering their ways of life, forcing many to suffer agony and stress at the thought of the impotence they now find themselves in.

What defines a terrorist? Who defines one? Is the military-industrial complex (MIC) a terrorist because it lives off of people�s death, maiming and suffering? That is exactly what bin Laden does, and he�s labeled a terrorist. Why not the MIC? Building instruments of death, knowing that your products will kill and maim and cause pain and suffering, should in many instances label you a terrorist. After all, you are spawning and furthering terror, are you not? You are perpetuating murder of human beings and violence among us.

Is the Leviathan to be considered a terrorist entity? It pillages and exploits both workers and consumers, after all. It ruins lives, kills hundreds of thousands through its products and pollutants, and does everything in its power to rob power from workers. It destroys our planet, is warming our globe, uttering in a new era of human death and suffering.

Should our own government be labeled a "terrorist government?" It is quite apparent that it terrorizes the world, indeed, has been doing it for many decades, affecting billions of lives through its economic, military and financial apparatuses, ruining lives, making misery endemic, poverty perpetual, opportunity non-existent and exploitation all-encompassing. Our government has financed, supported and fostered hundreds of despots, dictators and monarchs that have laid waste to hundreds of millions of lives. Is this considered "terrorism?" If to cause so much suffering and ruination is considered terrorism, then we are guilty. There are many reasons why we are hated throughout the globe, and it is time we become aware of what our government does to billions of humans in our name. It is not pretty, and it is not right.

If Bush were on the losing side of the war on terror, might he be labeled a terrorist? He has unleashed mass murder and suffering onto the world, after all, killing so many thousands and injuring so many more. Throughout the planet he is considered the most dangerous man in the world, the gravest threat to world peace. Does this make our President a terrorist? Does his support for the dehumanization of Palestinians by Israel make him a terrorist? To dehumanize is to terrorize, as is the unleashing of harsh collective punishment onto an entire people. He has been responsible for the death of at least 10,000 Iraqis in a war that we all know was unjustified, based on lies, deceptions and dishonor. If history were not written by the winners and those in power might he be labeled a terrorist? Might he be tried in the Hague for crimes against humanity? Might he be labeled: Wanted: Dead or Alive?

At home, Bush has made worse the lives of millions of Americans through his callous disregard for the people in his quest to enrich his friends in the Leviathan. Three million jobs have been lost, worker rights have all but disappeared, healthcare benefits only the elite and the corporations, education gets worse and worse, poverty keeps increasing and our loved ones are being sent to his illegal war to die, return maimed or psychologically fractured for the benefit of the powerful. His administration terrorizes us with incessant calls of fear, of boogie men ready to strike. Every fear factor orange terrorizes, creates paranoia and erodes America more every time. Is this not terrorism? To many, this would be considered the work of a terrorist. To us, he is called the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

Terrorism can take many forms; it can hide underneath many masks. To side with power might give you immunity to continue your reign of terror; to fight it makes you a target and a threat. Those in power judge who is and who isn�t, for their benefit they determine and label, accuse and persecute. The books of history are full of terrorists, of freedom fighters and those in between, their titles decided more by the victors than the truth. We live in dangerous times, from threats both here and abroad, with enemies known and unknown, those dressed in clear sight and those hiding behind masks of innocence. Today our most cherished historical figures, those who sought better ways of living for all by fighting the system through peace, non-violence and love would be labeled "enemies of the state," treasonous individuals fighting against those in control, those who decide what it and what isn�t. They would be called terrorists.

It is in times such as these that we must rise and challenge those notions of good versus evil, black versus white, waking up from our conditioned minds to see the reality that has been thrust upon us. The veil of ignorance must be lifted, the shades of gray must make way. A collective introspection of what is happening in the world today must be applied. For the end result soon approaching, which few dare speak, but that reality wants to warn, is that soon you and I might find ourselves being called "terrorists," caged like animals, made to disappear, for the simple God-given right and freedom to oppose, judge, debate and discuss what Bush is doing under our name.

The winds of totalitarianism are fast approaching, and the day when we can speak our mind in opposition to what our government is doing will soon erode, gone like the many rights and freedoms that no longer exist. To oppose and question authority, to fight against the injustices and the exploitation, to try and awaken millions to what is slowly happening to them might mean that we are stripped of our rights and freedoms, pursued and persecuted, and, in the end, silenced. Threats to the establishment have never been accepted, and, with so much power in Bush�s claws of despotism, this will continue to be the rule rather than the exception.

For in the end, freedom fighters and true patriots are but terrorists to those in power, and, in many cases, real terrorists continue walking our steel-glass canyons and concrete jungles, robbing us of all we have, polluting our sickened bodies, raping and pillaging our land and water, heating up the planet, killing those we love and cherish, sending our sons and daughters to fight for profit and firing, exploiting and ruining our ever-worsening lives and the country we have grown to respect.

As always with words and semantics, the definition of terrorism lies within those who are led to believe and those who refuse to be misled. The key is understanding deep inside yourself what you believe to be true, of going beyond what corporate and governmental brainwashing and conditioning makes you think is right. Wiping clean the fiction that has enveloped us for three years, throwing it down the pipes of sewage and realizing that we are being lied to is our only hope of returning to what we once were. Only you can decide, based on what your hearts and minds tell you, who is what, what is who and how to proceed along the path to the truth. Only then can a full discourse of the word "terrorism" and its meaning be completed and the fear that we have been living under erased.

© Copyright 2004 by AxisofLogic.com





Manuel Valenzuela, 29, 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]

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U.N. SUCCESS CRUCIAL: President insists U.S. won`t back down, pins hopes on diplomatic efforts
- Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Despite the growing chaos in Iraq and the recent barrage of bad publicity about the war there, President Bush indicated Monday that he was willing to pay almost any price to implement his vision of the country`s future.

In his speech to the nation, Bush reasserted previously announced positions and cast the fight against Iraqi insurgents as the central battle in the war against terrorism.

Earlier in the day, U.S. diplomats introduced a resolution in the U.N. Security Council that reaffirms supreme American military control over Iraq, even after the scheduled June 30 transition to a nominally sovereign national government.

Bush`s don`t-give-an-inch stance is almost certain not to produce immediate progress, the president himself conceded.

"There`s likely to be more violence before the transfer of sovereignty and after," he said. "The terrorists and Saddam loyalists would rather see many Iraqis die than have any live in freedom. But terrorists will not determine the future of Iraq."

Bush`s confidence in the eventual outcome depends in large part on whether U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi succeeds in his attempts to cobble together a coalition government for Iraq that can win at least a modicum of public support and keep the country from exploding.

Bush is "on a bit of an autopilot, hoping Brahimi will pull a rabbit out of his hat," said Frederick Barton, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and co-author of a Pentagon-commissioned study of Iraq last year.

Seeking fresh U.N. support "is the right decision at the wrong time, because it`s months late," Barton added.

Financial help wanted

The administration`s draft resolution submitted to members of the Security Council would grant U.N. approval of the U.S. plan to transfer nominal sovereignty to an Iraqi government whose composition is expected to be decided jointly by Brahimi and U.S. diplomats. The resolution also requests that countries assist financially in the reconstruction of Iraq and contribute troops to the U.S.-led force.

The resolution would give the interim Iraqi government control of a fund into which oil revenues are deposited, currently controlled by U.S. and British officials. A U.N. panel would monitor use of the fund.

The resolution attempts to cast the transition in Iraq as complete -- it mentions the word "sovereignty" 12 times -- but it limits Iraqi self- control by giving the U.S.-led occupation forces the continued freedom to act at will.

Like previous U.N. resolutions on the subject, the draft does not mention the American troops directly, merely stating that the council "reaffirms the authorization for the multinational force under unified command."

The draft text makes the Iraqi security forces clearly subservient to the American command, adding: "The multinational force shall have authority to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq."

But Brahimi`s negotiations in Iraq are going slower than expected, with members of the Iraqi Governing Council, the 25-seat body hand-picked by U.S. administrators last year, openly opposing his attempts to choose a new government of technocrats who are not beholden to political factions.

U.N. officials acknowledged Monday that Brahimi might not be able to meet his deadline of May 31 for choosing a new government.

Brahimi steps up efforts

"I know he is intensifying his efforts with a view to finishing by the end of the month, but I don`t think anyone is in a position to predict whether or not it will be done by then," said Fred Eckhard, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Critics say U.N. diplomats are being undermined by Bush`s insistence on maintaining military control of Iraq.

"Bush is using the United Nations for its fig leaf of credibility," said Phyllis Bennis, an analyst at the Institute of Policy Studies, a liberal Washington think tank. "This is not something that`s viable.

"A viable U.N. strategy would have to be based on ending the occupation. The problem is finding Iraqis who have grass-roots support who are willing to risk that public support by jumping into bed with Brahimi."

Bennis added that "many Iraqis see Brahimi as far too close to the Americans, so anybody who joins any new Iraqi government could find it very dangerous" -- a reference to the scores of Iraqis who have been killed by the guerrillas because they are seen as collaborators with the occupation.

The U.S. draft is widely expected to win Security Council approval, perhaps with a few tweaks and minor changes to appease France and Germany, which are pushing for the mandate of the multinational force to expire in January after democratic elections are held in Iraq.

Despite similar concerns, the council approved U.S.-sponsored resolutions in May and November of last year that effectively endorsed the U.S.-led occupation, quieting the acrimony produced when Bush ordered the Iraq invasion despite the opposition of most council members.

In his speech Monday, the president signaled that he views any U.S. retreat as tantamount to capitulation to barbarism, saying, "The terrorists` only influence is violence, and their only agenda is death."

Bush repeated his oft-criticized attempts to suggest that America`s enemies in Iraq are linked to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"Americans have seen the flames of September the 11th, followed battles in the mountains of Afghanistan, and learned new terms like `orange alert` and `ricin` and `dirty bomb,` " Bush said. "And now the families of our soldiers and civilian workers pray for their sons and daughters in Mosul and Karbala and Baghdad.

`They seek total control`

"Our terrorist enemies have a vision that guides and explains all their varied acts of murder," he added. "They seek to impose Taliban-like rule, country by country, across the greater Middle East. They seek the total control of every person, and mind, and soul, a harsh society in which women are voiceless and brutalized. They seek bases of operation to train more killers and export more violence. ... They seek weapons of mass destruction, to impose their will through blackmail and catastrophic attacks."

But critics say the real issue is Bush`s failed policies in Iraq, not the global war against Islamic extremist groups.

"This is all a smokescreen to hide the fact that the United States is losing the war in Iraq," Bennis said. "It has nothing to do with Sept. 11."

A pressing question for the White House is whether the Iraq mess keeps causing Bush to lose support on the campaign trail -- and whether Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, can successfully use it to attack the president.

"The situation on the ground is precarious, and this administration doesn`t have a plan," said Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat who now is a Kerry campaign adviser. Wilson was embroiled in a controversy after his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, had her cover blown when she was apparently outed by White House officials last year.

"Bush is pushing ahead on a hope and a prayer, with recycled rhetoric," Wilson said. "But neither Bush`s speech nor the resolution changes the fact that the Iraqi people believe that they are being occupied by a foreign power, which they are, and they are resisting against it.

"My sense is we`re getting pretty close to being too late to change anything."

E-mail Robert Collier at [e-mail].

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Bush grasps for an Iraq plan
-
Tuesday, May 25, 2004

THE BUSH administration is moving on several fronts to extricate itself from the lethal morass it created in Iraq.

A draft resolution unveiled by the United States and Britain at the United Nations on Monday seeks to bring the international body into a major supportive role when an interim Iraqi government assumes sovereignty at the end of June.

It would have the U.N. Security Council endorse the plan for Iraq`s political transition to democracy, and approve creation of a multi- national force to maintain security and stability for the first year or longer. The Coalition Provisional Authority overseeing the occupation will "cease to exist" after next month.

This push to make the United Nations a major player in Baghdad coincides with the first of a series of speeches by President Bush, starting last night at the Army War College in Pennsylvania.

The president had little new to announce in his speech. It raised at least as many questions as answers about his administration`s plan for an interim government -- and it did not offer a timeline or even a plausible exit strategy for a withdrawal of U.S. troops.

If anything, the main purpose of the speech seemed to be to try to reassure Americans that Iraq is less than the disaster it has become since Bush declared the invasion a success and significant fighting at an end more than a year ago.

The moral underpinning of the administration`s effort in Iraq also has been severely damaged by revelations of the abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners by American military jailers and interrogators -- a scandal still under investigation.

Complicating the administration`s hope of salvaging its program of Iraqi political reform is the blowup of its once close collaboration with former exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, whose home and political offices were raided last week by Iraqi police backed by U.S. soldiers.

Though long subsidized by our government and considered a potential leader of the proposed new democracy, Chalabi now is suspected of spying for Iran. Members of his Iraqi National Congress are accused of a string of kidnappings and robberies. Most disturbing is the spectacle of the Bush administration, in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, being guided by phony "intelligence" furnished by the Chalabi camp about Saddam Hussein`s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Despite the handover of sovereignty in little more than a month, U.S. troops are expected to stay on for an extended period to help provide security, even when and if substantial U.N.-sponsored forces arrive.

President Bush steadfastly refuses to admit the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, even after its stated purposes have been discredited and promises of postwar stability and prosperity have come up empty. Bush still needs a better defined plan -- and more allies -- to get out of this mess created by his own administration`s hubris.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/05/25/E…
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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Tuesday, May 25, 2004
War News for May 25, 2004



Bring ‘em on: Turkmen politician assassinated in Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, four wounded in rocket attack near Balad.

Bring ‘em on: Eighteen Iraqis killed in fighting in Sadr City.

Bring ‘em on: US convoy attacked near Fallujah.

Bring ‘em on: Oil pipeline ablaze near Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqis wounded in car bombing at Baghdad hotel.

Bring ‘em on: Continued fighting in Najaf, Imam Ali mosque damaged by mortar fire.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqis killed, 14 wounded in fighting near Kufa.

Bring ‘em on: Mortar attacks reported in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Another hotel in Baghdad bombed; casualties are reported.

Iraqi judge gets death threats. “As he nervously ran his fingers over a strand of green prayer beads, Maliky — the chief investigative judge of Iraq`s Central Criminal Court and the man who had issued the search warrant — said he had received more than a dozen death threats.”

Another blunder. “Security sources said there was no information about the extent of damage to the mausoleum of Imam Ali in Najaf. It was hit by six rockets apparently fired by U.S. forces fighting against Shiite gunmen holed up in the holy city.” Here comes another shitstorm.

US moves to recognize private militias. “A senior allied official said Monday that the Americans were engaged in delicate negotiations with several of the country`s main militias to disband and integrate them into the security forces. The official said the Americans hoped to announce an agreement with the militias as early as this week. But it is not clear, with so few weeks left before the transfer of sovereignty, whether the Americans will have the leverage to disarm the militias. The danger is that on June 30 the Americans will hand over power to an Iraqi administration that will not have a monopoly on the use of armed force, in an environment that many fear could set the stage for sectarian and ethnic warfare as the country moves toward what are intended to be democratic elections. As that date approaches, the Americans are quietly allowing some of these armed groups to flourish and, in some cases, have even helped recreate them.”

Wartime president, my ass. “The US-led war in Iraq, far from countering terrorism, has instead helped revitalise al-Qaeda, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think-tank warned today. The London-based body argued in its annual Strategic Survey 2003/2004 that the deadly train bombings in Madrid in March showed that Osama Bin Laden`s terror network ‘had fully reconstituted’. It also predicted the Islamic group would step up its anti-Western attacks, possibly even resorting to weapons of mass destruction and targeting Americans, Europeans and Israelis while continuing to support insurgents opposing the US-led occupation of Iraq.”

Coalition of the disillusioned. “Poland wants to "significantly reduce" its military presence in Iraq after next January, its defence minister said today. ‘After January 30, after the parliamentary elections, we want to significantly reduce our presence,’ Jerzy Szmajdzinski told the private radio station Zet.”

Iraqi reaction to Lieutenant AWOL’s speech. “Iraqis expressed little faith in American promises after months of occupation which many said had delivered only violence, a lack of basic services and a scandal over the inhumane treatment of prisoners by the U.S. military. ‘He lies. We don`t believe anything Bush says. The Americans have not done a thing for Iraqis. And now he promises to hand over power to Iraqis in a democracy after handpicking the people in the Governing Council,’ Haidar Majeed, a trader, said on Tuesday.” I can`t wait to read what River has to say.

A few days ago Eschaton posted a story about 2,000 missing pages from the copy of MG Taguba’s report that was provided to congressional investigators. Atrios wondered if the media would pick up on this story. Well, we may not hear much about this in the United States, but the Borneo Bulletin is all over the story!

Informed Comment has a guest editorial posted today entitled "America`s Incompetent Colonialism" by Keith Wapentaugh. It`s well worth reading.

Commentary

Editorial: “It`s regrettable that this president is never going to admit any shortcomings, much less failure. That`s an aspect of Mr. Bush`s character that we have to live with. But we cannot live without a serious plan for doing more than just getting through the June 30 transition and then muddling along until the November elections in the United States. Mr. Bush has yet to come up with a realistic way to internationalize the military operation and to get Iraq`s political groups beyond their current game of jockeying for power and into a real process of drafting a workable constitution.”

Analysis: “In order to truly persuade critical swing voters, Mr. Bush requires a very different message than he does when trying to persuade the rest of the world to help create a stable Iraq. So when he recast his objectives for Iraq in last night`s televised speech, it was supposed to satisfy two audiences.”

Analysis: “To understand how bad our reporting on Iraq has been, all one has to do is read Seymour Hersh`s spectacular uncovering of the Abu Ghraib humiliation. Where were the so-called ‘embedded’ journalists in Iraq? (As Studs Terkel suggested, the United States was ‘in bed with journalists.’) Were they simply writing down what our generals announced while riding Humvees through Baghdad? Looks that way. “

Casualty Reports

Local story: Pennsylvania soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Illinois Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Idaho soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: US soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Florida soldier wounded in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 2:49 AM
Comments (10)

[Joerver]

Das wäre ein Hammer. Der Iran hat Chalabi und die Pentaqgon Falken dazu benutzt die USA zu manipulieren um den Irakkrieg zu führen.
Dadurch wäre der Iran den lästigen Rivalen Saddam los und würde durch die Shiiten Einfluß auf den Irak erhalten. Etwas zu abenteuerlich.
So dumm kann auch Bush nicht sein.

US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war

· Inquiry into Tehran`s role in starting conflict
· Top Pentagon ally Chalabi accused
Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday May 25, 2004

The Guardian
An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi`s Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday.

Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.

According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions.

The CIA has asked the FBI to investigate Mr Chalabi`s contacts in the Pentagon to discover how the INC acquired sensitive information that ended up in Iranian hands.

The implications are far-reaching. Mr Chalabi and Mr Habib were the channels for much of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons on which Washington built its case for war.

"It`s pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi."

Larry Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at the state department, said: "When the story ultimately comes out we`ll see that Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history. They persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy."

Mr Chalabi has vehemently rejected the allegations as "a lie, a fib and silly". He accused the CIA director, George Tenet, of a smear campaign against himself and Mr Habib.

However, it is clear that the CIA - at loggerheads with Mr Chalabi for more than eight years - believes it has caught him red-handed, and is sticking to its allegations.

"The suggestion that Chalabi is a victim of a smear campaign is outrageous," a US intelligence official said. "It`s utter nonsense. He passed very sensitive and classified information to the Iranians. We have rock solid information that he did that."

"As for Aras Karim [Habib] being a paid agent for Iranian intelligence, we have very good reason to believe that is the case," added the intelligence official, who did not want to be named. He said it was unclear how long this INC-Iranian collaboration had been going on, but pointed out that Mr Chalabi had had overt links with Tehran "for a long period of time".

An intelligence source in Washington said the CIA confirmed its long-held suspicions when it discovered that a piece of information from an electronic communications intercept by the National Security Agency had ended up in Iranian hands. The information was so sensitive that its circulation had been restricted to a handful of officials.

"This was `sensitive compartmented information` - SCI - and it was tracked right back to the Iranians through Aras Habib," the intelligence source said.

Mr Habib, a Shia Kurd who is being sought by Iraqi police since a raid on INC headquarters last week, has been Mr Chalabi`s righthand man for more than a decade. He ran a Pentagon-funded intelligence collection programme in the run-up to the invasion and put US officials in touch with Iraqi defectors who made claims about Saddam Hussein`s weapons of mass destruction.

Those claims helped make the case for war but have since proved groundless, and US intelligence agencies are now scrambling to determine whether false information was passed to the US with Iranian connivance.

INC representatives in Washington did not return calls seeking comment.

But Laurie Mylroie, a US Iraq analyst and one of the INC`s most vocal backers in Washington, dismissed the allegations as the product of a grudge among CIA and state department officials driven by a pro-Sunni, anti-Shia bias.

She said that after the CIA raised questions about Mr Habib`s Iranian links, the Pentagon`s Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) conducted a lie-detector test on him in 2002, which he passed with "flying colours".

The DIA is also reported to have launched its own inquiry into the INC-Iran link.

An intelligence source in Washington said the FBI investigation into the affair would begin with Mr Chalabi`s "handlers" in the Pentagon, who include William Luti, the former head of the office of special plans, and his immediate superior, Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defence for policy.

There is no evidence that they were the source of the leaks. Other INC supporters at the Pentagon may have given away classified information in an attempt to give Mr Chalabi an advantage in the struggle for power surrounding the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30.

The CIA allegations bring to a head a dispute between the CIA and the Pentagon officials instrumental in promoting Mr Chalabi and his intelligence in the run-up to the war. By calling for an FBI counter-intelligence investigation, the CIA is, in effect, threatening to disgrace senior neo-conservatives in the Pentagon.

"This is people who opposed the war with long knives drawn for people who supported the war," Ms Mylroie said.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

[Joerver]

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[Haulong]

Das Pentagon ist mal wieder dabei, etwas zu konstruieren. Die müssen sich damit nur beeilen, bevor sie komplett aus dem Irak vertrieben wurden.

[Joerver]

Es war zwar bekannt, dass Chalabi ein Betrüger und Bankrotteur ist und von den Neocons dafür vorgesehen war Saddam zu ersetzen.

Dass er aber auch im Dienst der Iranis stand und für die ein Doppelspiel spielen sollte, ist m.E. zu weit hergeholt.

Dass er sich nicht nur an den Geldern aus dem Pentagon bereichert hat, sondern auch versucht hat durch Mittelsmänner an lukrative Aufträge im Irak heranzukommen, ist auch schon vor einiger Zeit aufgeklärt worden.

Auch seine Betrügereien bei der Währungsumstellung sind glaubhaft, dass er alte Dinar zweimal umgetauscht hat.

Nur die Geschichte, dass der Iran mit seiner Hilfe geplant hat, die USA in das Irakabenteuer zu treiben um dadurch Saddam loszuwerden und mit der Machtübernahme der Shiiten auch die Macht im Irak zu übernehmen, halte ich für ein Produkt der Fantasie.

[Joerver]

Wolfowitz to Star in Bananas Re-Make
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HOLLYWOOD (IWR News Parody) - Woody Allen today announced that Paul Wolfowitz will star as Fielding Mellish in the re-make of his comedy Bananas. This time the story will take place in the fictitious Middle Eastern country of Saddam Marcos.

[Joerver]

Published on Tuesday, May 25, 2004 by the Niagara Falls Reporter
Bush-Cheney War the Worst Disaster in American Foreign Policy?
by Bill Gallagher


"The course is heading over Niagara Falls."
-- Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, describing the course of the war in Iraq to CBS`s "60 Minutes."

DETROIT -- It`s hard to imagine the mess in Iraq and the Middle East could be any worse. It`s a bloody tragedy so awful and so misguided our enemies couldn`t have planned it any better, and it`s looking more and more like some of them did.

The way we are waging the war in Iraq, it is unwinnable and President Bush`s notion of "staying the course" is madness. The administration has no "clear strategy" for Iraq and the White House is only hoping to minimize the political damage enough to slip through another election.

And it`s that political strategy that makes the war and occupation senseless and unwinnable. Ending the insurgency, countering the terrorists the invasion and occupation inspired, restoring some semblance of stability and order and preventing civil war after the turnover of power will require substantially more than the 130,000 troops now in Iraq.

Since the Bush twins and other privileged people their age are not flocking to Army recruitment centers to sign up for the great crusade for democracy, the Pentagon will have to put more Reservists on active duty and may need to reinstate the draft.

But that`s not going to happen, especially in an election year, so we have no other reasonable choices. We should just declare victory, saying, "We got rid of Saddam," cut our losses and get the troops home as quickly as possible. The United Nations may play a peacekeeping role, but we can`t count on that.The worst foreign policy disaster in American history will only get worse with Bush and his henchmen trying to justify their failed policies and save their worthless political hides. They have been so wrong on so many critical issues for so long, they simply have no credibility.

Now, at long last, their arrogance, stupidity and incompetence are taking a big political toll. In order to stay in power, Bush and company will support the continued military-corporate occupation of Iraq to save face.

The mess they`ve created will take decades to repair, if it can be repaired. A painful, embarrassing exit makes more sense than adding to the horrible costs of this war of choice.

More than 10,000 Iraqis are dead and nearly 800 Americans have been killed. We have spent $200 billion dollars in Iraq while 40 million Americans have no health insurance. We have built unprecedented resentment toward America around the world and insulted friends and allies.

Iraq is in chaos and people in many regions are living in brutal, lawless turmoil. Bombings, assassinations and kidnappings are daily events. Revelations about the torture of Iraqi detainees and homicides in prison grow worse.

We were promised the war would help democracy blossom in Iraq. Instead, we have a new crop of terrorists, as Osama bin Laden sits in his cave, smiling, thinking to himself, "This is wonderful. I couldn`t have asked for anything better."

Ahmed Chalabi, the father of regime change in Iraq, the source of so many weapons-of-mass-destruction lies and longtime darling of the neocon warmongers, is now an avowed enemy, suspected of funneling U.S. intelligence secrets to Iran.

Chalabi was, until recently, the main man the Bush administration relied on in shaping policies toward Iraq. Over the years, U.S. taxpayers have pumped $27 million into the coffers of Chalabi`s Iraqi National Congress and he`s been our principal conduit for intelligence information about Saddam Hussein`s Iraq. He sat behind Laura Bush for the State of the Union address. No individual had more influence in shaping the administration`s premises and policies toward Iraq and planning for the post-Saddam Iraq. Chalabi promised American forces would be welcomed warmly and treated as great liberators.

With the unflinching support of Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputies Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, along with Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, Chalabi`s views were considered the last word on anything relating to Iraq.

Feith, who`s a Perle acolyte, set up the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon, a little group that did its own intelligence-gathering to do end runs around the CIA and the Defense Department`s own analysts.

The mission was simple. Find anything that would establish a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Nothing existed, but Chalabi provided some unfounded claims that Feith would relay to Dick Cheney, who would then brand the lies with "We know with certainty" and go on the talk shows and propagate the crap.

The fact that Chalabi is a convicted bank swindler, notorious liar and raging egomaniac didn`t matter. He was telling the boys just what they wanted to hear.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell made his infamously inaccurate presentation to the United Nations, one of the most dramatic claims he made was that Iraq had developed mobile laboratories to produce biological weapons.

The source for that phony claim is widely believed to be an engineer with links to the Iraqi National Congress. Powell recently noted on "Meet the Press" that "it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading."

No one else in the administration, so far, has had the decency to admit the deception. Powell is too discreet to name names, but nothing comes out of that group without Chalabi`s participation and approval.

To add to his resume of lies and thievery, Chalabi may soon include treacherous spying. U.S. military forces and Iraqi police raided Chalabi`s Baghdad office, looking for evidence that he may have been slipping sensitive security information to Iran and that the Iranians were using him to spread bogus intelligence.

A defense intelligence agency source is quoted in several reports as saying, "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein."

That does make sense, especially for the Iranians. They get rid of the despised Saddam and the United States does the deed for them and suffers the consequences of being burdened with the occupation. Saddam is gone, the United States is hated, Iran is happy and Chalabi gets to make more money.

The new images of American troops torturing Iraqi prisoners further inflame people there and throughout the Middle East.

I recently spoke with Dr. Hussein Ibish, Director of Communications for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

He said President Bush`s rhetoric contributed to the mentality displayed by the military police in the prison. He said Bush`s continuous lumping of all those who oppose the American presence confused the guards.

"It conflates innocents with criminals, moderates with extremists, progressives with fundamentalists, casting an entire culture and an entire faith as the enemy," Ibish said. Ibish, a native of Lebanon, said the soldiers` behavior reflected attitudes increasingly found in mainstream channels.

Ibish argued, "The hatred in Abu Ghraib is inextricably linked with hatred increasingly fostered by some elements of our media, especially talk radio." He pointed to Jay Severin, a popular Boston radio talk-show host, who said of Arabs, "We should kill them."

Ibish said anti-Arab sentiments are tolerated, especially when spewed by evangelical preachers who support President Bush and represent his essential political base. Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson can denigrate Muslims and still get invitations to the White House. Rev. Franklin Graham, Billy`s son, who delivered the prayer at Bush`s inauguration, called Islam "a very wicked and evil religion." You know all those Revs. will have choice seats at the Republican National Convention.

The Bush alliance with these radical fundamentalists is also manifested in our policies toward Israel. Remember, the war in Iraq was supposed to bring greater opportunities for peace in the region. But who on earth could possibly say the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is better because of the invasion?

Palestinian terrorists murder a pregnant woman and five children. A 3-year-old Palestinian girl is shot to death in a Gaza camp under Israeli attack. The conflict gets worse every day. The Bush administration, which for the longest time simply ignored the issue, now plunges into the fray with an approach that will never work.

Again, buying into the arguments of the neocons, American policy toward the conflict has become indistinguishable from the positions of the Sharon government and the Likud Party in Israel.

As the Israeli army literally plows through the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, the president signs on to Sharon`s views without any consultation with the Palestinians or recognition of innumerable UN resolutions and the positions of our allies in Europe. Amnesty International is challenging the Sharon argument that the destruction of the homes of the Palestinians in Gaza is militarily necessary, calling the evictions and house demolitions "a flagrant form of collective punishment" and saying that they "violate a fundamental principle of international law."

The extreme evangelicals, the types the president`s political brain Karl Rove nurtures, are hung up on this Armageddon-End-Times attachment to the Holy Land and figure their tickets to heaven are better assured with a Bush-friendly government in Jerusalem. This strange religious and political alliance is a far more important driving force in the situation there than issues of justice, decency and hope for lasting peace.

Consider this: Bush`s policy in the Middle East -- get rid of Saddam, occupy Iraq, exploit its resources, agree with anything Ariel Sharon wants, say nothing critical of the Saudis, who are the philosophical and financial backers of bin Laden -- will provide us with a more spectacular Armageddon than Hollywood will offer this summer.

Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News.

©2004 The Niagara Falls Reporter

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[Joerver]

raqis Say U.S. Soldiers Steal During House Raids
Tue May 25, 2004 10:17 AM ET

By Luke Baker

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Besides the prisoner-abuse scandal, there is another, more pervasive problem Iraqis say they suffer daily at the hands of U.S. troops -- theft of money and other property during aggressive American raids.

Over the past 14 months of occupation, U.S. forces have carried out literally thousands of raids on homes across the country, routinely seizing money, jewelry and other property from Iraqis suspected of "anti-coalition activities."

Items are generally confiscated on suspicion they could be used to finance attacks against U.S.-led forces, and the U.S. military says it has had some success in cutting off funding for insurgents via the policy.

But Iraqis say the raids often target the wrong people, are carried out in an aggressive, even destructive manner and complain that lifetime savings, precious jewelry and family heirlooms are regularly stolen in the process.

Adel Alami, a lawyer with Iraq`s Human Rights Organization, says the majority of the cases his group deals with involve Iraqis seeking compensation for lost property and cash.

"It`s a huge problem, almost everyone has something to say about gold, money and other valuables going missing and they don`t believe they`ll ever get them back," he told Reuters.

Last year, Wajiha Daoud, an 80-year-old widow, had her house in a middle-class neighborhood of old Baghdad raided by U.S. troops who said they had "high-level intelligence" that the home was a safe house for Saddam Hussein loyalists.

During the raid, which lasted around 30 minutes, the woman and her family, who live across the street, were kept outside.

"When we went back in, the house was half-destroyed," said her son Musadaq Younis, an English-speaking computer technician.

"All the furniture was slashed with knives, tables and chairs were broken and the windows smashed. They didn`t need to break down the front door -- I told them I had the key."

SAVINGS GONE

But that was not the worst. When Younis` sister arrived she immediately rushed upstairs to a small cabinet and found it empty -- $5,000 in cash, gold and other jewelry, including her wedding ring, were missing. "She went white," said Younis.

The family filed a claim against the U.S. military -- a complex process that took nearly three months to get a reply. In response, the military said the raid was justified and no compensation was owed. The officer who commanded the raid told Younis: "My soldiers aren`t thieves."

Being comfortably well-off and employed, the impact of the loss on the family was not too great, but for hundreds, if not thousands of other Iraqi families, raids on their homes can prove devastating, socially and financially.

"Confiscation and theft during raids is rampant," said Stewart Vriesinga, a coordinator for Christian Peacemaker Teams, a non-profit group that documents abuses in Iraq.

"Soldiers don`t seem to understand the Iraqi custom of not using banks -- a lot of people keep fairly substantial sums of money at home. A soldier from Kentucky or wherever sees that and thinks the person must be up to no good, so he takes it.

"We sure don`t know how much money has been taken from (Iraqis)...but it`s enough to have serious socio-economic consequences," he told Reuters.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition said he was aware of Iraqi complaints of theft during raids and said some U.S. soldiers had been disciplined for "inappropriate conduct." But he said the problem was "very rare, extremely rare."

"We`re aware of it... But there`s also the possibility of Iraqis making malicious claims," said Captain Mark Doggett.

Doggett said when are items are confiscated, a receipt is always given. If the owner is eventually found to be innocent, items can be recovered, he said. But many people who have had property confiscated say no receipts were written.

Vriesinga estimates that in nine out of 10 raids, the home owners raided are innocent, but suffer huge consequences.

"If the husband is hauled off as a suspect, the family has lost its breadwinner and often lost its savings and cash as well," he said, citing a recent Red Cross report which referred to up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees being innocent.

If Iraqis file complaints, it comes down to a case of the Iraqi suspect`s word against the American soldier`s, he said.

"If there`s any doubt, then it`s assumed the Iraqi is lying -- the Americans are creating enemies by the score."

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

Exit Chalabi: The diplomatic art of dumping friends
Husain Haqqani IHT
Tuesday, May 25, 2004

WASHINGTON The fall from grace of Ahmad Chalabi, known until recently as America`s best friend in Iraq, is being described as an error of judgment belatedly corrected. But this is not an isolated incident of the United States making a mistake in its choice of overseas friend, nor of deserting him.

The United States has embraced numerous characters of dubious integrity, from President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines to the shah of Iran, only to be accused by these erstwhile allies of abandoning them when the going gets rough. While they are friends, the United States claims they are "good guys." When it dumps them, it feels compelled to blame them for some evil action.

Pakistan`s late dictator, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, suggested that the United States was unable to give assistance to people in developing countries "on the basis of mutual respect"; Americans, he said, did not know how to be "friends, not masters." Perhaps the Chalabi affair will prompt some thinking in Washington about how not to choose a "bad" friend in the first place, and how to avoid giving the impression that its allies have duped the United States. Washington also needs to figure out a way of cutting ties with undesirable allies without deepening the impression that America does not stand by its friends.

The shah of Iran, restored to the throne in 1953 as absolute monarch in a CIA-backed coup, complained in his last days that he was overthrown through American machinations. Marcos, backed for long years by the United States despite his corrupt and authoritarian regime, felt the same way when his regime collapsed in 1986. Panama`s dictator, Manuel Noriega, went from being a paid U.S. intelligence asset to an outlaw - he is currently serving a prison term in Florida for drug trafficking. The Bush administration supported and defended Ahmad Chalabi, no questions asked, right up to the recent decision to cut off his funding, followed by accusations of secret links with Iran.

In an imperfect world, America has to support some leaders who do not meet its criteria for honest, democratic leadership. Chalabi, however, was not the unsavory ruler of a strategically important country. He was an exile adopted as a friend by a U.S. faction because he provided it with arguments that advanced their strategic vision. But even if the intention behind the neoconservative vision for war in Iraq - the creation of an Arab democracy - was noble, its Iraqi architect, Chalabi, was far from an above-board ally. A nation like the United States, which claims a moral purpose in the world, cannot afford to let ends justify the means.

When allegations about Chalabi`s integrity first surfaced, his backers should have at least qualified their support for him. While insisting on seeing a world of gray in terms of black and white, they chose to whitewash Chalabi`s record. His lack of support among Iraqis was glossed over. The inability to verify his intelligence was ignored. And no one in the U.S. government or the U.S. media adequately questioned Chalabi`s past financial dealings.

This unqualified support for Chalabi until the recent break with him reflects a major problem in American relations with the world. The United States does not have sufficient nuance in its friendships, nor does it seem to know how to distance itself from friends it no longer needs.

Ideally, America`s friends abroad should share America`s proclaimed values. But when the United States is forced to join hands with unsavory characters for strategic reasons, it should not become their unquestioning advocate. In international relations, there are many categories between friend and rogue.

Husain Haqqani is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He served as adviser to Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and as Pakistan`s ambassador to Sri Lanka.


Copyright © 2004 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

May 25, 2004
Presidential Race Remains Close
Bush approval at 47%
http://www.gallup.com/content/?ci=11800

by David W. Moore


GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey of American voters finds little change in the past two weeks in either the presidential contest or presidential job approval. The race for the White House remains a virtual tie, with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry receiving 49% and President George W. Bush 47% support among likely voters. More Americans disapprove (49%) than approve (47%) of the president`s job performance. About 8 in 10 likely voters (but 7 in 10 registered voters) say their votes are firm and will not change before Election Day.

The poll, conducted May 21-23, shows Kerry enjoying a slight advantage among registered voters, 48% to 46%, but well within the poll`s margin of error. There has been little change in the presidential contest during the month.

Presidential Election 2004:
Bush vs. Kerry Trial Heat
among likely voters

With independent Ralph Nader in the race, Kerry receives 47% and Bush 46% support among likely voters, while Nader gets 4%. Among registered voters, the pattern is similar: Kerry 46%, Bush 44%, and Nader 6%.

Presidential Election 2004:
Bush vs. Kerry vs. Nader Trial Heat
among likely voters

When asked if their decision was firm, or could they change their minds, the vast majority of both Kerry and Bush supporters indicate a firm decision. Overall, 42% of likely voters are firmly for Kerry, 40% firmly for Bush, with an additional 7% of voters for each candidate indicating that their support could change by Election Day. Another 4% of likely voters express no opinion.

Presidential Election 2004:
How Firm the Vote
percentage of likely voters
May 21-23, 2004

In the 16 states that Gallup classifies as "purple" or competitive -- states won by either Bush or former Vice President Al Gore in 2000 with less than a five percentage-point margin -- Kerry leads Bush among registered voters by five percentage points, 50% to 45%. Among the red states (won by Bush in 2000 by a margin of five percentage points or more), Bush leads Kerry by eight points, 51% to 43%. In the blue states (won by Gore by five points or more), Kerry leads Bush by 17 points, 55% to 38%.

Presidential Election 2004:
Trial Heats in Red, Blue, and Purple States
among registered voters
May 21-23, 2004

With Nader in the race, the purple (competitive) states are dead even, 44% each for Bush and Kerry, with Nader getting 7%. In the red states, Bush leads Kerry by six points, and in the blue states, Kerry leads Bush by 17 points. The red states include more voters, thus helping to neutralize Kerry`s larger lead in the blue states compared with Bush`s lead in the red states.

Presidential Election 2004:
Trial Heats in Red, Blue, and Purple States
among registered voters
May 21-23, 2004

Bush Approval Steady

Bush`s approval at 47% is a point higher than what Gallup measured two weeks ago, though the increase is not statistically significant. This remains among the worst job approval ratings of the Bush presidency.

George W. Bush’s Job Approval Rating
October 2003 -- Present

The 47% approval of Bush includes 28% who approve strongly, while the 49% disapproval includes 37% who disapprove strongly.

Bush Job Approval
by strength of feeling
May 21-23, 2004

Survey Methods

Results are base on telephone interviews with 1,002 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted May 21-23, 2004. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.

Results based on likely voters are based on the subsample of 579 survey respondents deemed most likely to vote in the November 2004 general election, according to a series of questions measuring current voting intentions and past voting behavior. For results based on the total sample of likely voters, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points. The "likely voter" model assumes a turnout of 50% of national adults, consistent with recent presidential elections. The likely voter sample is weighted down to match this assumption.

For results based on the sample of 883 registered voters, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

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Eine andere Geschichte. Chalabi soll eine neue Legende gestrickt werden. Er die US-Marionette soll seine Unabhängigkeit von den USA beweisen, damit er bei seinen Landsleute ankommt, denn er hat keinerlei Beziehungen zum Irak, außer dass er dort geboren wurde.
Auch diese Geschichte ist äußerst dünn, denn er ist ziemlich verhaßt bei den Irakern.
Als nächstes fehlt dann noch ein Putschversuch von Chalabi, um Saddamnachfolger zu werden.


Who is Ahmed Chalabi?
by Michel Chossudovsky

www.globalresearch.ca 21 May 2004

The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO405D.html

On the 20th of May, US forces raided the Baghdad home of the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) Ahmed Chalabi. The media in chorus, without further investigation, described the raid as an effort to silence Chalabi`s condemnation of the US-led occupation:

"My house was attacked... We avoided by a hair`s breadth a clash with my guards. I am America`s best friend in Iraq. If the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home, you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people." ( Press Conference in Baghdad quoted in the Independent, 20 May 2004)

The reports pointed to "a changed relationship" between Chalabi and the Coalition. "It`s a stunning reversal!." Washington has decided "to drop its backing for Mr Chalabi and to distance itself from him".

Chalabi is said to have been plotting against the US by putting together "a sectarian Shiite faction" to apparently destabilize to the "UN sponsored" transitional government which is slated to take office on July 1st.

According to press reports, Chalabi was the target of a US government investigation "into whether he betrayed American intelligence secrets to foreign governments, including Iran."

He is also accused of hiding the records of the oil for food program and for having "exaggerated" the threat of weapons of mass destruction, in intelligence transmitted to the Coalition in the months leading up to the war. In other words, he is said to have tricked US intelligence into believing there were WMDs. Where he got this intelligence is not mentioned. Chalabi returned to Kurdish held Northern Iraq in February 2003 after 45 years in exile and the INC did not have an active network inside Iraq, which would have enabled it to gather intelligence on WMDs

Puppet without Strings

From one day to the next, the puppet is presented as "pulling the strings" and maneuvering behind the scenes against the US led coalition.

The official explanation, as conveyed by the press reports, simply does not make sense.

Up until the 18th of May, Chalabi was still on the Pentagon`s payroll receiving a modest monthly allowance of $355,000 (more than 4 million dollars a year).

His job was described as "intelligence gathering." Two days later his house is raided. According to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, cutting his pocket money was part of the "natural evolution" towards democracy in Iraq:

"That was a decision that was made in light of the process of transferring sovereignty to the Iraqi people... There has been some very valuable intelligence that`s been gathered through that process that`s been very important for our forces, but we will seek to obtain that in the future through normal intelligence channels." (quoted in the Financial Times, 21 May 2004)

On the 18th of May, they cut his money and the following day they raid his office?

A puppet does not turn against his master, particularly when key members of his staff, including his main advisers and spokesmen, are US appointees who report directly back to the Pentagon.

Who is Ahmed Chalabi?

Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Council are a creation of the CIA.

Chalabi is an Iraqi emigré, handpicked by US intelligence.

He left Iraq and moved to the US with his family at age 13. He holds a US passport.

Chalabi returned to Iraq barely one month before the war. He had not set foot in Iraq since his childhood.

On April 6 2003, US troops escorted him to Nasiriya, where he established, with the support of the US military, the so-called Free Iraqi Forces, a paramilitary army of some 600 fighters.

Since his return to Iraq, he has been a leading figure of the US sponsored Iraqi Governing Council.

Chalabi may have some degree of controlled "independence", but he remains a US sponsored "intelligence asset". Key members of his staff, report to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

The press reports seem to suggest a "blowback". Our trusted ally has gone against us.":

Washington`s longtime ally who was once favored by the Pentagon brass to be Iraq`s post-war leader.

The Iraqi National Police and American military police hauled away computers, documents, and a "valuable Koran" from his office, according to Chalabi, a senior member of Iraq`s Governing Council and head of the Iraqi National Congress.

In an angry letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director George Tenet, the Boston law firm that represents Chalabi, Markham & Read, said a large contingent of police and armed plainclothes Americans ransacked the INC`s offices and Chalabi`s nearby home, ripping computers from their sockets and smashing doors.

"They marauded his office and disrespected his family," attorney John J. E. Markham II told the Globe by telephone. He said Chalabi believed the US-led coalition had launched a vendetta against the INC leader because "he is starting to distance himself from the folly of [Paul] Bremer," the top US administrator in Iraq.

Yesterday`s raid appeared to be the climax of a relationship gone bad, in which grievances on both sides have mounted during the past year`s difficulties in Iraq. Pentagon officials relied on Chalabi and the INC heavily before the war to assess both Saddam Hussein`s weapons capabilities and the chances of success of a US-led war. (Boston Globe, 21 May 2004)

Propaganda Ploy

Following the Gulf War, the CIA assigned a public relations firm the Rendon Group: "to help organize, advise, and stage-manage the Iraqi opposition... " In fact, the Rendon Group created the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and its leader Ahmed Chalabi from scratch,--i.e. from a virtually nonexistent entity into a US sponsored political proxy, which would faithfully serve US interests. "Were it not for Rendon,"a State Department official remarked, "the Chalabi group wouldn`t even be on the map.". (See Michel Chossudovsky, War Propaganda and the Capture of Saddam Hussein, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO312B.html , December 2003)

In fact, the Rendon Group even chose the name of the INC:

"At the helm of the INC is Ahmed Chalabi, a US-trained mathematician who fled from Jordan in 1989 in the trunk of a car after the collapse of a bank he owned. He was subsequently charged and sentenced in absentia to 22 years in prison for embezzlement. Back home in Iraq, he`s referred to by some as the so-called limousine insurgent and is said to hold little actual standing with the Iraqi public. Shuttling between London and DC, Chalabi hasn`t been in Iraq for over years, and draws "more support on the Potomac than the Euphrates," says Iraq specialist Andrew Parasiliti of the Middle East Institute in Washington DC.

With funding first from the CIA throughout the 1990s and more recently the Pentagon, Rendon managed the INC`s every move, an INC spokesperson acknowledges, even choosing its name, coordinating its annual strategy conferences, and orchestrating its meetings with diplomatic heavy hitters, such as James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. Not that the Rendon Group was the first purveyor of psy-op tactics for promoting US foreign policy in the region. In fact, some of the most impressive spin maneuvers and disinformation campaigns occurred during the Gulf War in 1991, the lessons of which are particularly pertinent as the US again gears up (See Ian Urbina, This War Brought to You by Rendon Group, Asia Times Online, 12 November 2002, http://www.gvnews.net/html/Shadow/alert3553.html ).

Since the Gulf War, The Rendon Group has been involved in several core disinformation operations. It worked closely with its British partner Hill and Knowlton, which was responsible for the 1990 Kuwaiti incubator media scam, where Kuwaiti babies were allegedly removed from incubators in a totally fabricated news story, which was then used to get Congressional approval for the 1991 Gulf War. A fabricated statement by a "Kuwaiti nurse" was presented to the US Congress, who claimed to have seen Iraqi soldiers removing the babies from the incubators, looting the maternity ward and killing the babies. It turned out that the "nurse" was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington. Her statement, had been commissioned by the Rendon Group. (See Financial Times, 15 July 2003)

The Office of Strategic Influence (OSI)

When Donald Rumsfeld created his propaganda outfit called The Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) in the wake of September 11, 2001, the Rendon Group (TRG), was hired by the OSI as a core consulting firm.

It was to provide the public relations and psych-ops input in support of the Bush administration`s "war on terrorism". It was also entrusted with a media and PR campaign to discredit the Baathist regime in the Middle East, demonize Saddam Hussein and build an Iraqi opposition.

When the OSI was officially disbanded, following pressures from the US Congress, several of its activities were transferred to The Office of Special Plans (OSP) created by Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. (The OSP was subsequently also disbanded).

Several of the OSP`s specific propaganda operations were outsourced to the private sector. The Rendon Group, which had created Ahmed Chalabi, remained one of the key PR firm on contract to the Pentagon.

The "Liberation of Baghdad" media spin and the staged pulling down of the statue of Saddam on Fardhus square on April 8th was in all likelihood the work of a private PR consulting firm on contract to the Pentagon. Members of the INC had allegedly been brought in for a media staged event. (for further details, see The pulling down of the Statue was a staged media event, 11 April 2003 http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NYI304A.html , See also Michel Chossudovsky, Killing the "Unembedded Truth" by Michel Chossudovsky, 11 April 2003, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO304B.html ).

In the wake of the war, Rendon supported the creation of the INC`s daily newspaper Al Mu`tamar, which played a key role in releasing the story of Saddam`s capture. A (former) staff member of the Rendon Group, Francis Brooke, who is now Chalabi key adviser, was behind the "opposition media" in Baghdad from the beginning of the US led occupation, including TV and news print (including the Al Mutamar project).

Was the Raid on Chalabi`s home a Staged Event?

Was the raid on Chalabi`s home part of a staged event, which sought to present a US sponsored puppet as a legitimate figure of the Iraqi opposition?

While there is no proof, there are several pieces of contradictory information, which cast serious doubt on the official version of events.

Chalabi is accused of "betraying American intelligence secrets to foreign governments, including Iran," In other words, the US is accusing him of entering into secret negotiations with Iran:

"The State Department and CIA, have recently expressed deep concern about a surge in recent intelligence alleging that the INC and Chalabi have been passing on potentially dangerous information to officials in the government of Iran. Though Chalabi has never made any secret of his cordial relations with top Iranian officials�one of his aides claimed that Chalabi had held discussions with most top Iranian officials over the last six months�Bush administration officials say the latest intelligence indicates he may have been supplying the Iranians with information on U.S. security operations in Iraq that could �get people killed.� (MNSBC, 20 May 2004)

Visibly these accusations are fabricated, because the people who are making decisions for Chalabi with regard to Iran, are Pentagon appointees. Chalabi cannot move without his US appointed advisers.

Francis Brooke, who is Chalabi`s right hand man has close ties with National Security Council Chairman Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. He has played a central role in Chalabi`s intelligence undertakings including his links to Iran.

Formerly with the Rendon Group, Brooke is on contract in Baghdad with BKSH and Associates, which is controlled by Charles R. "Charlie" Black, Jr., a leading Republican political strategist and lobbyist, with close ties to Reagan, Bush Senior and Bush Junior.

BKSH is using Chalabi and the INC to "open doors" into Iraq on behalf of US corporations.

Following the raid on Chalabi`s home, Francis Brooke said that "Mr. Chalabi had never shared any secret information with the Iranians." The fact of the matter, is that Chalabi was used by US intelligence to lead a secret US mission to Tehran and the man behind that mission was "our man in Baghdad" Francis Brookes:

Brooke, who was traveling with Chalabi, ... was so warmly received wherever he went in Tehran that journalists who met with Chalabi were intrigued. They noted that Iranian officials ­ from the departments of security and foreign affairs, the Revolutionary Guards and the presidency ­ were even more interested in Brooke than in the INC leader himself.
A young Iranian journalist who asked a Foreign Ministry official just back from a meeting between Brooke and a senior Iranian National Security official whether Chalabi�s PR consultant had indeed delivered a letter from the US administration to the Iranian leadership said that the Foreign Ministry man replied: �All I can say is that he (Brooke) is an important person who knows many secrets. We believe he is in contact with Washington decision-making circles. We therefore have to use the opportunity of his being in Tehran to convey our point of view to the Bush administration vis-a-vis the war on Iraq ­ especially since the US government has closed off all other avenues open to us.� (Ali Nourizadeh, Frances Brooke, the man behind the new Iran-US entente on Iraq. Daily Star, 22 March 2003)

In other words, it was not Chalabi who brokered a deal with the Iranians but the Pentagon`s appointee, Francis Brooke.

New Image

The raid on Chalabi`s home creates the impression that Chalabi is no longer a figurehead controlled by the US, but a person of political moderation who speaks his own mind.

The Bush Administration is acutely aware that for Chalabi to continue performing the role of an "effective puppet", he needs a new image, which presents him to public opinion in Iraq and the Middle East not only as "independent" but anti-American.

Chalabi is still a puppet. He cannot move without the consent of the Pentagon.

With mounting resistance, the US cannot reasonably install a political proxy and expect Iraqis to rally behind him.

Whether this strategy will succeed is doubtful and this is one of the main reasons behind the US decision to dump the Iraqi Governing Council.

In Iraq, Chalabi is still viewed for what he is, a creature of the CIA.

Whether he plays a direct role in the political transition remains to be seen.

Whether he integrates a transition government or not, or whether that transition government will actually be formed by July 1st, Ahmed Chalabi will continue to perform an important role on behalf of his US sponsors.

He constitutes a go-between in the shady dealings of channeling of foreign investment into Iraq, meaning the confiscation of the country`s wealth by a handful of corporations.

In this context, he is used as a bridge, between selected Iraqi business collaborators and US companies. His adviser Francis Brookes acts on behalf of BKSH and Associates, controlled by Charles R. "Charlie" Black, Jr. and BKSH acts on behalf of major US investors into Iraq.

In turn, Chalabi`s nephew Salem Chalabi runs a law firm called the Iraqi International Law Group (IILG). (The Guardian 24 September 2003). The IILG was set up in July 2003 �to provide foreign enterprise with the information and tools it needs to enter the emerging Iraq and to succeed�, according to its website. �Our clients number among the largest corporations and institutions on the planet,� (quoted in Brian Whitaker, Zionist Settler Joins Iraqi to Promote Trade, http://www.world-crisis.com/more/30_0_1_0_M13/ )

But it turns out that the IILG based in Baghdad is in fact a proxy for a Washington based law firm, Zell, Goldberg & Co, "which claims to be `one of Israel`s fastest-growing business-oriented law firms".

In turn, Zell, Goldberg and Co is the Israeli affiliate of the FANDZ International Law Group. (http://www.fandz.com/ ). Now it just so happens that FANDZ is a partnership between Marc Zell and Department of Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith, who, while on leave from the company, reports directly to Paul Wolfowitz and Don Rumsfeld.

"The FANDZ INTERNATIONAL LAW GROUP was established in 1999 with the formation of Zell, Goldberg & Co. and its alliance with Feith & Zell, P.C" http://www.fandz.com/html/fandz.html

In other words, in the complex web of political puppets, law firms and public relations consulting outfits, all roads lead up the ladder to the Pentagon`s highest ranks.

Chalabi has not been dumped. Quite the opposite. He now emerges with a brand new anti-American image, which contributes to confusing public opinion. He remains America`s Number One "intelligence asset" in Baghdad, serving a central role in the economic colonization of Iraq.

The ultimate objective of the US led occupation is to confiscate Iraq`s resources including its oil wells and gain full control over the national economy.

Faced with mounting popular resistance, that desperate process can only be undertaken under the smokescreen of an illusive national sovereignty.

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[Joerver]

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"President Bush still says Iraq has weapons of mass destruction we never found. It sounds like he is back on those drugs he never did." —Craig Kilborn

"You know what really makes this embarrassing? The other day the president said the leaders in Iraq are `ready to take off the training wheels.` That`s what he said, `take off the training wheels.` Then he goes out and falls off his bicycle. And they wonder why the rest of the world doesn`t take us seriously." Jay Leno


"President Bush fell off his bicycle this weekend. What`s really sad, it was a stationary bike." Jay Leno

You might be a right wing republican if ...you believe evolution is "just a theory" but professional wrestling is real.

[Joerver]

Es ist ehrenwert, dass die NYTimes ihre Berichterstattung über die Zeit des Irakkrieges und davor berichtigt und die Artikel aussiebt, die Falschmeldungen gestreut haben.
Anderseits ist es eine Schande für ein solch renommiertes Blatt zuzugeben zu müßen, dass sie auf billige Propaganda hereingefallen sind.
Noch eine größere Schande ist es für die Regierung, die diese Artikel zu verantworten hat.

May 26, 2004
FROM THE EDITORS
The Times and Iraq

Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq`s weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.

In doing so — reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation — we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.

Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.

On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists were trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts have never been independently verified.

On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." Knight Ridder Newspapers reported last week that American officials took that defector — his name is Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri — to Iraq earlier this year to point out the sites where he claimed to have worked, and that the officials failed to find evidence of their use for weapons programs. It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers.

On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of Iraq`s nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged from power: "The first sign of a `smoking gun,` they argue, may be a mushroom cloud."

Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.

On April 21, 2003, as American weapons-hunters followed American troops into Iraq, another front-page article declared, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert." It began this way: "A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq`s chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said."

The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons to Syria and had been cooperating with Al Qaeda — two claims that were then, and remain, highly controversial. But the tone of the article suggested that this Iraqi "scientist" — who in a later article described himself as an official of military intelligence — had provided the justification the Americans had been seeking for the invasion.

The Times never followed up on the veracity of this source or the attempts to verify his claims.

A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here, is online at nytimes.com/critique. Readers will also find there a detailed discussion written for The New York Review of Books last month by Michael Gordon, military affairs correspondent of The Times, about the aluminum tubes report. Responding to the review`s critique of Iraq coverage, his statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of such intelligence reporting.

We consider the story of Iraq`s weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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[Joerver]

May 26, 2004
Tracing a Civilian`s Odd Path to His Gruesome Fate in Iraq
By JAMES DAO

his article was reported by James Dao, Richard Lezin Jones, Christine Hauser and Eric Lichtblau and was written by Mr. Dao.

Nicholas E. Berg had a distinctive strategy for soliciting work for his communications tower company: conduct free spot inspections, then offer to fix any problems. Where others went sightseeing, he went climbing and inspecting. Where others wrote postcards, he inventoried towers, from Texas to Africa.

By late last year, Mr. Berg, 26, had turned his sights on Iraq. An adventurous entrepreneur and religious Jew, Mr. Berg had a passionate belief in capitalism`s power to transform poor nations. He really believed, friends and relatives said, that he could help rebuild that war-shattered country one radio tower at a time.

It was a vision that almost immediately aroused suspicions. In January, the Iraqi police, thinking Mr. Berg might be an Iranian spy, briefly detained him while he was touring towers near the south-central city of Diwaniya.

"Isn`t this starting to read like a mystery novel," he wrote to his friends and family following his Diwaniya adventure.

Two months later, Mr. Berg would not be so lucky. Late on the evening of March 24, the Iraqi police in Mosul, apparently thinking Mr. Berg a spy, a smuggler or a terrorist, detained him while he was traveling to visit two business contacts.

This time, he remained in an Iraqi jail for 13 days while the Federal Bureau of Investigation checked and rechecked his story. When he was released on April 6 — one day after his family filed suit demanding his release — Iraq was being swept by insurgent violence singling out foreign contractors.

On April 10, the day Mr. Berg planned to return home, he disappeared. On May 8, American troops found his body near a highway overpass in Baghdad. The Central Intelligence Agency has said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to Al Qaeda, is probably the man seen beheading Mr. Berg in a ghastly videotape.

Mr. Berg`s detention in Mosul has raised sharp questions about whether American officials did enough to get him released as quickly as they could have. Mr. Berg`s family contends he had planned to leave Iraq on March 30, which might have enabled him to avoid the anti-Western kidnappings and killings of April.

"Were it not for Nick`s detention, I would have had him in my arms again," Mr. Berg`s father, Michael, wrote in a letter in support of a demonstration by an antiwar group last week. In the letter, Mr. Berg blamed the Bush administration more than terrorists for his son`s death.

But the many unexplained details of Mr. Berg`s final days, combined with the uncommon details of his unconventional life, have also prompted furious speculation on the Internet and talk radio about Mr. Berg himself. Some have argued that he was a spy for Israel or the C.I.A., or that the video of his murder was staged by pro-American forces to arouse anger toward Iraqi insurgents. Some have asserted that he had ties to the very Qaeda militants who are believed to be responsible for his death.

He was, after all, traveling alone, without a translator or a bodyguard, in a lawless land whose language he barely understood. He carried books about Iran and kept a detailed inventory of Iraqi communications towers. He was shown in the beheading video wearing orange clothing, which, to some, looked like the jumpsuits worn by prisoners held by the American military.

Adding to the mystery, both the Iraqi police and the American military deny responsibility for Mr. Berg`s detention. The Iraqi police contend they promptly turned Mr. Berg over to the American military, an assertion Mr. Berg later confirmed in e-mail home. But American officials assert he remained in the custody of Iraqi police for the entire 13 days.

American law enforcement and intelligence officials have strenuously rejected the conspiracy theories. Mr. Berg was detained because his activities seemed suspicious, and once those suspicions were dispelled, he was released, they said. They are convinced, they said, that Mr. Berg was just a freelancing businessman with a high tolerance for risk, whose naïveté and idealism blinded him to Iraq`s treacherous corners.

"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time," an F.B.I. official said.

To Mr. Berg`s friends and family, there was nothing odd or mysterious about his wanderings in Iraq. He was just being Nick: a bright, fearless, iconoclastic man who saw himself as a modern-day Prometheus, bringing progress to a downtrodden nation. And like Prometheus, his friends say, he was punished for his good deeds.

"I`m sure that throughout the entire ordeal, he felt no fear," a close friend, Luke Lorenz, said of Mr. Berg`s final hours. "I doubt that he thought they would hurt him. He really believed in the goodness of people. That if they took the time, they`d like him."

"When I see him sitting there in the video, it doesn`t seem any different than when I`d see him anywhere else," Mr. Lorenz, 28, said. "Taking it all in."

Mr. Berg, the youngest of three children, grew up in a comfortable community of split-level houses in West Whiteland Township, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia.

By high school, he was a prolific inventor. Among his favorite gadgets was the "truth detector," a palm-size box wrapped in duct tape that flashed lights when its wires were attached to a finger.

One summer, the police detained Mr. Berg and some friends, suspecting they had used the device to open garage doors. Mr. Berg became so animated in explaining his invention that a police officer put him in handcuffs until a detective checked out his story, friends recalled.

When he was a teenager, a teacher gave him an old bike. He proceeded to strip away all but the 10th gear — the hardest. He christened the bike Ulysses and crisscrossed the steep hills of Pennsylvania and New York, riding as far as Georgia one summer.

"He didn`t do much to fix it," Mr. Lorenz said, "as if he wanted to make things harder for himself."

He attended Cornell University, distinguishing himself in engineering courses, a faculty adviser said. But his defining semester came in a small Ugandan village, where he spent the spring of 1998 in an exchange program. There he was exposed to poverty he had never imagined, friends said. He turned his inventiveness to good use, fashioning a brick-making machine to help villagers stabilize mud huts. In letters, he described schemes to help the Ugandans market mushrooms and make bricks from indigenous materials.

"He was shaken by his experience," a friend, James Wakefield, 52, said. "He had nothing but a pair of pants, a shirt and boots when he came home. He gave away his clothing."

Friends say Mr. Berg`s Africa experience made him impatient with traditional academics. He left Cornell at the end of 1998, despite being on the dean`s list and having only one year left, school officials said.

He spent the next two years searching for ways to transform his Africa ideas into a practical plan, studying at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania before transferring to the University of Oklahoma in Norman in the fall of 1999.

In Oklahoma`s construction science program, he began testing designs for paper bricks that snapped together like Lego blocks, believing they could be manufactured inexpensively in undeveloped countries.

"He didn`t seem willing to sit around and wait to be spoon-fed stuff," said William W. McManus, an associate professor of construction science at Oklahoma. "He was always pushing on his own."

In Oklahoma, Mr. Berg`s e-mail password was obtained by an associate of Zacarias Moussaoui. Mr. Moussaoui, who is awaiting trial on charges of assisting the Sept. 11 plot, attended flight school in Norman in 2001, but it is not clear that he ever met Mr. Berg.

F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Berg in 2002 and came away convinced that he had either shared the password with someone who passed it on to Mr. Moussaoui or that the password had been stolen from him. The F.B.I. cleared Mr. Berg of having links to terrorist groups, officials said.

In Oklahoma, Mr. Berg also began learning about communications towers. As a youth he had loved climbing; he built a three-story treehouse in his backyard and in college was an avid rock climber. In 2000, he quit his studies in Norman and for more than a year wandered across Oklahoma and Texas working as a freelance contractor replacing lights, painting girders and fixing cables hundreds of feet above the ground.

By 2002, he had returned to the Philadelphia area and formed his own tower company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, using as a motto, "Man is more than fire tamed." Through cold calls and free spot inspections, he had built a client list of 50 companies by 2003.

Jay Shur, of WCHE-AM in West Chester, Pa., received one of those cold calls and was surprised by Mr. Berg`s youth when they met. "I thought he would have been a little bit older," Mr. Shur said. "He knew exactly what to do, when to take charge."

As his business grew, Mr. Berg began plotting ways to resume his work in developing nations. With the help of the American Jewish World Service, he visited Kenya for two weeks in March 2003, working on water projects and pledging to return in the summer of 2004.

But it was Iraq that loomed large in Mr. Berg`s imagination. While traveling to Kenya, he wrote e-mail fondly describing some Texans "rushing toward the action" in Baghdad as the American-led invasion was getting under way, even as other Westerners were fleeing with "sweaty hands."

Back in Pennsylvania, Mr. Berg defended the invasion, arguing that it had ousted a brutal dictator. And he argued that Americans had a moral obligation to help rebuild the shattered country. In part, friends said, he saw a business opportunity. In December 2003 he attended a convention in Virginia on rebuilding Iraq. Government officials and private contractors at the convention encouraged businesses to join in the reconstruction.

But his feelings were heavily influenced by his Judaism and his moral beliefs, friends said. Mr. Berg was raised in a secular Jewish household but became increasingly religious after college, studying the Torah and learning to keep kosher. He seemed particularly attracted to the Hebrew concept of tikkun olam — healing the world through social action.

"He went to Iraq to see if he could combine his professional skill with his desire to heal the world," said Ruth W. Messinger, the former Manhattan borough president who leads the American Jewish World Service.

His views differed sharply from those of many of his friends and his father, a retired high school teacher who actively opposed the war. But though his parents and friends warned him of the dangers of Iraq, they were not surprised when he decided to go.

"Nick was real good at recognizing physical danger; it`s part of the job," Scott Hollinger, the foreman for Prometheus Methods, said. "He didn`t do too well at recognizing human danger because he never thought anybody was going to hurt him."

In late December, he flew to Israel and crossed by land into Iraq via Jordan. For the next month, Mr. Berg operated in Iraq much the same as he did in the United States: touring the countryside, usually by taxi, inspecting towers and building a database, he told friends.

One trip took him to Abu Ghraib, the neighborhood outside Baghdad that is now famous for its prison complex. Another took him north to Mosul. He also made contact with an Iraqi businessman, Aziz al-Taee, who had lived in Philadelphia for 20 years before returning to Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Mr. Taee, who owned electronic equipment stores in Philadelphia, pleaded guilty in 1994 to selling plastic vials that were used by crack dealers. Mr. Berg told friends that he found Mr. Taee "very competent" and that the two planned to create a company called Babylon Towers.

"The fact alone that he and I are just now sitting in a free and open Internet shop is unbelievable to most Iraqis," Mr. Berg wrote to friends in January.

Mr. Berg went home in February but returned to Iraq in March, expressing confidence about getting work from the Harris Corporation, a company based in Florida that had a $96 million contract to rebuild Iraq`s media industry. Jan Bosman, the regional program manager in the north for the Iraqi Media Network, said Mr. Berg went to his office in Mosul in late March looking for work. Mr. Bosman said Mr. Berg seemed casual about the security situation in the country, traveling by taxi and staying in local hotels.

On March 24, while traveling to meet some business contacts, Mr. Berg was stopped at an Iraqi checkpoint near Mosul. "We were afraid for his life," the police chief, Mohammad Barhawi, said in an interview. "And we had suspicions about him. So we turned him over to the coalition forces."

Mr. Barhawi said the Iraqi police took Mr. Berg to its headquarters and handed him over immediately to coalition forces in an operations room inside the same compound, where the American military police have a liaison office.

He asserted that Mr. Berg was in Iraqi hands for "minutes," but American officials contend that Mr. Berg remained in Iraqi police custody the entire time he was detained.

During his detention, Mr. Berg was interviewed three times by F.B.I. agents who asked whether he had ever built a pipe bomb, what he was doing in Iraq, why he had gone to Iran, Mr. Berg told friends and his family later. He had never been to Iran but was carrying a book about Iran and some Farsi language materials, he wrote.

Mr. Berg also told friends that while he was in jail, other prisoners chanted "Isralein," apparently believing he was an Israeli. (He had an Israeli stamp in his passport.) American soldiers ordered the Iraqi guards to put him in a separate cell near political and war criminals from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, Mr. Berg wrote.

By then, Mr. Berg`s parents, who had expected their son to return home on March 30, had become frantic. They contacted the State Department and were interviewed by the F.B.I., which corroborated Mr. Berg`s statements in Iraq. The F.B.I. then recommended that Mr. Berg be released, F.B.I. officials said.

But when Mr. Berg was not immediately released, his parents filed a lawsuit on April 5, asserting that the American military was violating their son`s civil rights. He was released the next day, April 6.

Mr. Berg`s family contends that the swift release of Mr. Berg after the filing of the lawsuit proved that the American military had controlled their son`s detention all along.

Upon his release, Mr. Berg sent e-mail saying he planned to catch a flight home from Jordan on April 10. He disappeared soon after that.

The next time Mr. Berg was seen publicly was on the grisly video showing his beheading. On the video, a masked man refers to the humiliation of Muslim prisoners at Abu Ghraib, prompting some to speculate that Mr. Berg was dressed in orange to simulate Muslim prisoners held there and at Guantánamo Bay.

Though Mr. Berg`s Moussaoui connection has fueled speculation that F.B.I. agents would not allow him to be released out of concern that he had links to terrorists, officials in Washington deny that.

"What was this guy doing there in the first place?" an F.B.I. official said. "It`s not as if Iraq suddenly turned hostile."

Such comments anger Mr. Berg`s friends, who say he went to Iraq in part because he thought American officials and corporate leaders wanted American entrepreneurs to help rebuild the country.

"They can keep looking for a conspiracy, but they won`t find anything at all," said Douglas Strickland, 25, a close friend.

Mr. Strickland and other friends have created a Web site devoted to Mr. Berg`s memory, www.nickberg.org, and are raising money for a memorial fund to support the kind of work he did overseas.

Last week, Mr. Strickland and a friend cleaned out Mr. Berg`s one-bedroom apartment in West Chester, Pa. They found electronic devices, handwritten notebooks, prototype bricks, maps of the Middle East and Africa, and an American flag made of red and white duct tape on blue cloth. On the wall was a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that struck Mr. Strickland as typically Nick.

In it, Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, are surveying a field of virgin snow. "It`s like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on!" Hobbes says. "It`s a magical world, Hobbes ol` buddy," Calvin replies. "Let`s go exploring."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Siehe #16838.
Das sind die Artikel der NYTimes, deren Wahrheitsgehalt zweifelhaft ist und war.
Nach meiner Ansicht sind mehr Artikel dieser Art veröffentlicht worden. Diese nicht aufgeführten Artikel sollen aber an folgenden Tagen berichtigt worden sein.

FROM THE EDITORS
The Times and Iraq: A Sample of the Coverage

The following is a sampling of articles published by The Times about the decisions that led the United States into the war in Iraq, and especially the issue of Iraq`s weapons:

The alleged Iraqi terrorist training camps, and Al Qaeda connection:
• October 26, 2001: Czechs Confirm Iraqi Agent Met With Terror Ringleader
• November 8, 2001: Defectors Cite Iraqi Training for Terrorism
The accounts of the terrorist training camp have not subsequently been verified.

On the subject of the meeting in Prague, a Times follow-up cast serious doubt:
• October 21, 2002: Prague Discounts An Iraqi Meeting

The hidden weapons facilities:
• December 20, 2001: Iraqi Tells of Renovations at Sites for Chemical and Nuclear Arms
According to Knight Ridder News, this scientist was taken back to Iraq earlier this year for a tour of sites where he worked. None of the sites showed evidence of illegal weapons activity.
• Follow-up: January 24, 2003: Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against Iraq

The aluminum tubes:
• September 8, 2002: U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest For A-Bomb Parts
• September 13, 2002: White House Lists Iraq Steps To Build Banned Weapons
• January 10, 2003: Agency Challenges Evidence Against Iraq Cited By Bush
• January 28, 2003: Report`s Findings Undercut U.S. Argument
For a discussion of this coverage by Michael R. Gordon, chief military correspondent of The Times, see this letter from April 8, 2004.

The Iraqi scientist and destruction of weapons:
• April 21, 2003:Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert
Follow-ups:
• April 23, 2003: Focus Shifts From Weapons To the People Behind Them
• April 24: U.S.-Led Forces Occupy Baghdad Complex Filled with Chemical Agents
• July 20, 2003: A Chronicle of Confusion in the Hunt for Hussein`s Weapons

The "biological weapons labs":
This is one example of a claim that was quickly and prominently challenged by additional reporting
• May 21, 2003: U.S. Analysts Link Iraq Labs to Germ Arms
The story left the impression that the Administration claims represented a consensus, because we did not know otherwise. By June 7, however, the same reporters, having dug deeper, published a front-page story describing the strong views of dissenting intelligence analysts that the trailers were not bio-weapons labs, and suggesting that the Administration may have strained to make the evidence fit its case for war. (Last Sunday, Mr. Powell conceded that the C.I.A. was misled about the trailers, apparently by an Iraqi defector.)
• June 26, 2003: Agency Disputes C.I.A. View on Trailers as Weapons Labs

Raising doubts about intelligence:
Following are examples of stories that cast doubt on key claims about Iraq`s weapons programs, and on the reliability of some defectors.
• October 9, 2002: Aides Split on Assessment of Iraq`s Plans
• October 24, 2002: A C.I.A. Rival; Pentagon Sets up Intelligence Unit
• March 23, 2003: C.I.A. Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports
• July 20, 2003: In Sketchy Data, Trying to Gauge Iraq Threat
• September 28, 2003: Agency Belittles Information Given By Iraqi Defectors
• February 1, 2004: Powell`s Case a Year Later: Gaps in Picture of Iraq Arms"
• February 7, 2004: Agency Alert About Iraqi Not Heeded, Officials Say
• February 13, 2004: Stung by Exiles`s Role, C.I.A. Orders a Shift in Procedures
• March 6, 2004: U.S., Certain That Iraq Had Illicit Arms, Reportedly Ignored Contrary Reports
• July 26, 2004:Ex-Inspector Says C.I.A. Missed Disarray in Iraqi Arms Program
• May 22, 2003: Prewar Views of Iraq Threat Are Under Review by C.I.A.
• Feb. 2, 2003: Split at C.I.A. and F.B.I. on Iraqi Ties to Al Qaeda

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May 26, 2004
IRAQI GOVERNMENT
Scientist Jailed by Hussein Is Favored for Premier`s Post
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, May 25 — An Iraqi Shiite nuclear scientist who broke with Saddam Hussein over the country`s nuclear weapons program has emerged as a leading candidate to become the country`s first prime minister when sovereignty is restored at the end of June, American and Iraqi officials said Tuesday.

The officials said Dr. Hussain al-Shahristani, a science adviser to the Iraqi government who spent years in Abu Ghraib prison for defying Mr. Hussein and objecting to the weapons program, was the kind of nonpolitical figure being sought by both the United Nations and the Bush administration.

The selection of Dr. Shahristani, if it becomes final, could also break a long and bitter impasse among Iraq`s various ethnic and religious factions over who will be governing Iraq from June 30 to the time of Iraq`s first elections, planned for early next year.

Administration officials say that until a caretaker government is formed, there can be no final negotiations on a United Nations Security Council resolution aimed at conferring legitimacy on the Iraqi government and on a multinational force led by American commanders.

In a separate development on Tuesday, a difference of perspectives emerged between the United States and Britain over exactly how much power the new Iraqi government would have over its own security forces and over the multinational forces.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said Tuesday that Iraqi leaders would have an effective veto, not only over their own participation in military operations, but also over American operations aimed at insurgencies in places like Falluja, a center of resistance activity. In saying so, Mr. Blair went further in emphasizing Iraq`s authority over military affairs than any American official had.

"If there`s a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Falluja in a particular way, that has got to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government," he said at a news conference in London. "That`s what the transfer of sovereignty means."

But in Washington on Tuesday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declined to say there would be any veto by the Iraqis, emphasizing instead that there would be consultations before any military action.

"Obviously we would take into account whatever they might say at a political or military level," Mr. Powell told reporters at the State Department. "And to make sure that that happens, we will be creating coordinating bodies, political coordinating bodies and military-to-military coordinating bodies so that there is transparency with respect to what we are doing."

Still, American and British officials insisted that there was not a material difference in the two positions. Iraqi objections would in most cases block a major military action by the United States, the officials said, but the United States under some circumstances — like pursuing a known terrorist — would override Iraqi objections.

"Instead of imagining vetoes or hypothetical conflicts," a British official said, "we should be looking at what the Iraqi defense minister is saying, which is that the decisions will be taken through consultation and partnership."

The search for a prime minister and other top aides in the caretaker government has been led by Lakhdar Brahimi, a United Nations special envoy, and Robert D. Blackwill, President Bush`s envoy in Iraq.

A senior administration official said from Baghdad that no final decision had been made on the top jobs in the government but that Mr. Blackwill and Mr. Brahimi were closing in on their choices.

"We`re down to a handful of names for each of the positions, and in some cases a smaller number than that," the official said.

Other people close to the process said Dr. Shahristani had recently emerged as a compromise choice for prime minister among various groups, including the dominant Shiites and rival factions among the Kurds, Sunnis and others.

"Shahristani is a really good choice," said an Iraqi familiar with the selection process. "He was head of Iraq`s nuclear program when Saddam gathered them all in a room and told them they were going to build a bomb. In that meeting, Shahristani said no, and he spent 10 years in Abu Ghraib."

He escaped into exile in London at the time of the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, and from there led a relief group that assisted Iraqi refugees.

Another advantage of selecting Dr. Shahristani, according to various officials, is that he is considered a devout but moderate Shiite and is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most respected Shiite cleric in Iraq.

Mr. Brahimi and Mr. Blackwill are said to have been trying to make sure that the job of prime minister, the most important post in the new caretaker government, is filled by a Shiite.

For the largely ceremonial post of president, Bush administration officials have said the United States favors Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister of Iraq. Mr. Pachachi is a Sunni who has little popular following but has won respect for his work in the American-picked Iraqi Governing Council.

There will be two vice presidents, also in largely ceremonial posts, and a cabinet of up to 26 members that is expected to include both nonpolitical leaders and also representatives of various constituent groups.

The uncertainty and difficulties over setting up a caretaker government — with only five weeks to go before self-rule is established — has created confusion at the Security Council and even among some Iraqi leaders, who charge that the United States has not committed itself to full sovereignty at all.

The confusion over the precise nature of Iraqi control over Iraq`s military and over the actions of foreign forces after June 30 has also pervaded the debate at the United Nations Security Council, where the United States and Britain submitted a draft resolution on the issue on Monday.

French, German, Russian and Chinese envoys are all demanding that Iraqi sovereignty be more explicitly laid out than what was outlined in the resolution, according to United Nations diplomats.

A European diplomat said the American-British draft needed to spell out the issues of authority over security and also Iraqi authority over oil revenues, finances and the running of ministries.

Also needing to be clarified, European and United Nations diplomats said, is the extent to which American military officers or contractors will be immune from prosecution by Iraqi courts.

A senior diplomat from a country on the Security Council complained recently that the United States needed to provide consistent signals about Iraqi sovereignty. As an example, he said Mr. Powell`s recent statement that the United States would pull its forces out if asked after June 30 was at odds with Mr. Bush`s statement that the United States would persevere and not allow itself to be driven from Iraq.

"It`s a complete contradiction," the diplomat said.

Patrick E. Tyler contributed reporting from London for this article, and Warren Hoge from the United Nations.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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A wounded American soldier lay on the hood of a Humvee on Tuesday in Baghdad as she was moved after a missile attack on an Iraqi police station. The missiles were fired from a nearby apartment building.
May 26, 2004
BAGHDAD
A Routine Burst of Chaos Leaves a G.I. Wounded
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 25 — A homemade missile launcher propped up in an apartment window let forth a volley, and an American soldier lay moaning and bleeding, grasping for her life.

The scene repeats itself so often in the Iraqi capital these days that it hardly goes remarked upon, particularly when the soldier, like nearly 4,700 other soldiers since combat operations began, is only wounded.

But in the chaotic minutes that followed the rocket attack on the Sadoon Police Station on Tuesday, the many strands of the war raging between the guerrillas and Americans seemed to run together.

The unidentified American soldier, a young military police officer, was carried from the gate by her four comrades, nervous, jittery men whose fear seemed to throb in their eyes. The wounded soldier writhed in her own blood and shrieked, her voice climbing and ebbing suddenly as if she had run out of breath.

"Hold on, we`ll be there in 10 minutes," one soldier said, lifting her onto the hood of their Humvee as a crowd of Iraqis gathered and the police waved their guns.

The soldiers gripped their rifles and gritted their teeth, and the Humvee rolled slowly forward. They steadied the soldier`s splayed body on the bouncing vehicle.

In the madness, it was not even certain that the American was the target. The 10-story apartment building from which the missiles were fired, and which stood next to the Iraqi police station, offered a clear shot at the Green Zone, the heavily guarded American compound just across the Tigris River.

The missiles were fired at 4:15 p.m., setting off a series of loud booms that echoed through the Baghdad streets.

One of the missiles hit a water tank atop the Sadoon Police Station, the explosion tearing into the American soldier who was on guard duty on the roof. Another arced toward the Green Zone, crossing one of the main thoroughfares, then the Tigris, and landed just shy of the compound`s high cement walls.

Two other missiles went their own ways, flying off to uncertain destinations in the teeming streets.

When the attack had ended, the Iraqi police found the empty missile launcher in the elevator well of the apartment building`s fifth floor. It was a jury-rigged contraption, made of metal tubes and wires and welded onto a steel frame. The missiles, the police said, probably came from one of the country`s many unguarded ammunition dumps. As American soldiers have discovered time and again, some of the deadliest weapons used against them cost no more than a few dollars to make.

"We were all surprised about the same thing," said Navra Nissan, 23, who lives on the fifth floor. "We were all wondering how it happened, and nobody knows."

Ms. Nissan`s response is the typical one given by Iraqis after an attack on American soldiers. Nobody knows or, if they do, they aren`t saying.

But the Iraqi police at the station here seemed to put considerable credence in the denials, if only because of the character of the neighborhood itself, called Bataween. It is a mixed neighborhood, with a large Christian population. It is just a few blocks from the statue of Saddam Hussein that was pulled down on the day that Baghdad fell to the Americans. The police said the area had never known an attack.

"If I had seen it, I would have reported it," said Khansa Abed, 22, who was sitting with her two nieces when she heard the explosions. "It`s a residential area. They shouldn`t do that here. This is not a battlefield."

But this city has changed much in the 15 months since the American soldiers arrived. Even neighborhoods that welcomed the troops at the fall of Saddam Hussein now come out to cheer when they die. Some said they had heard talk of leaflets warning neighbors of an attack against the police station. There was no way to know.

The Iraqi police, nearly all of them sporting American-supplied Glock pistols, said a group of insurgents had hid their homemade missile launcher inside a "swamp cooler," an appliance popular with many Iraqis that blows air cooled by water. The insurgents lugged their gadget up the five flights, parked it next to the window, set the timer and ran off.

Residents said the insurgents probably set up the launcher just after lunch, when most Iraqis were sleeping off the afternoon heat.

"Everyone was asleep," said Hamid Abdul, 65. "We heard the explosions. We closed the door and hid in our front room. We thought we were being attacked."

In a way, they were. When the missiles flew forth from their perch on the window, someone, either the Americans or the Iraqi police, opened fire, spraying the apartment with gunfire. The pockmarks from the bullets dotted the walls around the fifth-floor window. Someone threw a smoke grenade, sending up a cloud of opaque gas.

Ibrahim Abdullah, 45, said he was sitting on his balcony when he saw one of the missiles hit the top of the police station.

"There was an American soldier on the roof," he said.

Within minutes of the attack, and as the Humvee rolled down the street with the soldier on its hood, a Black Hawk helicopter appeared in the sky, displaying a large Red Cross on its side, circling Bataween`s crowded warrens for a place to land. An Iraqi policeman fired over the heads in the crowd. The helicopter disappeared behind a row of buildings.

"Get back!" an American soldier screamed.

Later in the day, a spokesman for the First Cavalry Division said the soldier had suffered shrapnel wounds to her leg and that she had lost her right arm from the forearm down. He did not give her name.

Ayad Salman, the ranking Iraqi officer at the station, directed his men back to their posts. Mr. Salman seemed a tired man, his face drawn, perhaps by the loss of too many friends. He tried to lead a visitor into a conversation about his country`s future which, for him, seemed only dark.

"What do you think?" Mr. Salman asked, Kalashnikov rifle in hand. "I think Iraq needs 10 years, and then there will be peace.

"Because in 10 years, finally, all the Iraqis will be dead," he said.

Ian Fisher contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 25, 2004
Q&A: Full Sovereignty for Iraq?

From the Council on Foreign Relations, May 25, 2004

How much authority can Iraq`s interim government exercise?

President Bush said May 24 that the interim Iraqi government taking over for U.S-led occupying authorities on June 30 will be a "government of Iraqi citizens" with "full sovereignty." It will, he said, run the day-to-day affairs of Iraq`s 26 ministries, prepare the country for national elections by January 2005, and help U.S. forces create Iraqi security services that will eventually take responsibility from foreign troops. But whether that amounts to "full sovereignty" is open to question. "We are essentially ceding legal authority to an interim government to be named with limited competency and questionable legitimacy," says Lee Feinstein, senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy and international law at the Council on Foreign Relations.

What is "sovereignty"?

There is no single legal definition. It is usually defined in political terms, says Jose E. Alvarez, professor of international law at Columbia University. Black`s Law Dictionary defines sovereignty as "the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power by which any independent state is governed." The definition adds that it is "the power to do everything in a state without accountability, to make laws, to execute and to apply them, to impose and collect taxes and levy contributions, to make war or peace, to form treaties of alliance or of commerce with foreign nations, and the like." The modern concept of sovereignty includes three basic components: international political sovereignty, legal sovereignty, and de facto sovereignty, says Noah Feldman, a law professor at New York University and a former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Which of these aspects of sovereignty will the interim government have?

Based on Bush`s speech and a U.S.-British draft U.N. Security Council resolution submitted May 24, it appears Iraq will have the first two components of sovereignty but not the third, some experts say. The interim government will be able to enter into relationships with other nations and receive foreign ambassadors in Baghdad. It will also be officially recognized as the legal government of the Iraqis. But the de facto sovereignty of the new government will be severely curtailed by the continuing presence of 138,000 U.S. forces in Iraq and the inability of the new Iraqi government to defend itself against armed challenges. In addition, it appears that the government can`t make laws or long-term international agreements before January 2005, when a national election for a transitional assembly is scheduled. U.S. officials have said the interim government won`t have these powers, and the U.N. resolution and President Bush`s May 24 speech were silent on the issue. "We are creating a situation in which the legal authority is in one place and the power is elsewhere," Feinstein says.

What is President Bush`s plan for Iraq?

In his May 24 speech, President Bush outlined a five-step plan for the Iraqi transition to self-government. The speech contained no new details, but it summarized planning that has been under way since April by Bush administration officials and U.N. Special Envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi. The five steps are:

* Hand over authority to a sovereign Iraqi government chosen by the United Nations on June 30. Create a national council of Iraqis that is representative of the country`s religious and ethnic diversity. The council would have only advisory powers.
* Help establish stability and security. No date was given for the transfer of security responsibilities to the Iraqis or for the pullout of U.S. troops.
* Continue rebuilding Iraq`s infrastructure. The United States has already committed some $18.4 billion to Iraqi reconstruction and will continue to control these funds after June 30. Control of Iraqi oil revenues will pass to the interim government, but spending will be monitored by a U.N.-established international board.
* Encourage more international support through a new U.N. Security Council resolution and other initiatives.
* Move toward free, national elections. The first election--for a 275-member Transitional Assembly--is scheduled to take place by January 2005. After that, the Iraqi people will write a new constitution. A vote for a permanent government is scheduled to take place by December 2005.

How will the United Nations select members of the new government?

Via a process of consultation. Brahmin has met with political figures, civic leaders, religious authorities, members of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), and other Iraqis, and is compiling a list of candidates. He has also conferred with L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), and Robert D. Blackwill, an aide to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Brahimi is expected to consult U.N. Security Council members, Arab leaders, and others before disclosing his choices in order to ensure that they are widely acceptable. Brahimi is expected to name the government in the last week of May or early June.

How many Iraqis is Brahimi choosing?

Thirty--a president, two vice presidents, a prime minister, and 26 ministers. A key job for these officials will be preparing for the January 2005 elections. After that vote, the elected government will begin drafting a new constitution.

Will most Iraqis have a say in the choice?

No. As a result, some observers worry that the appointed government will command little public respect. U.S. and U.N. officials agree that true legitimacy won`t be achieved until Iraq has an elected government. "The key thing, I think, is going to be not when they have a sovereign appointed government, but when they have a sovereign elected government," Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told Congress May 18. "The administration is hoping that this interim government buys time for two elections, one in the United States and one in Iraq," Feinstein says.

How is power distributed among the top four posts?

President Bush said the prime minister will be the chief executive and the president will be the head of state--a largely ceremonial position. Iraq`s population is approximately 20 percent Arab Sunni, 20 percent Kurdish, and 60 percent Shiite. As a result, a Shiite is expected to serve as prime minister, and the other three posts will be divided among the three groups.

Will the leaders be technocrats or politicians?

Brahimi initially suggested that members of the caretaker government ought to be nonpartisan technocrats rather than political figures who could use government posts to position themselves for next year`s elections. But Iraqi politicians and U.S. officials balked; it now appears politicians will serve in the interim administration. "We think there`s probably a place for some politicians and people who are not necessarily technocrats. ... They have a stake in Iraqi society," said Marc Grossman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, in congressional testimony May 13. Grossman said Bremer and Blackwill are in close contact with Brahimi to "make sure he understands our views on this issue."

Which politicians are under consideration?

One name often mentioned for president is Adnan Pachachi, 80, a Sunni who served as foreign minister before the Baath Party came to power in 1968. Names floated for the vice president posts include Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and Shiite leader Ibrahim Jafari, a medical doctor and leader of the Islamist Da`wa Party. Da`wa is a Shiite movement active in Iraq since the 1960s that sought Saddam Hussein`s overthrow and was brutally rooted out by his regime. Brahimi is reportedly considering a wide range of candidates for the powerful prime ministerial slot.

What will the U.S. role be after June 30?

The United States will still have a major presence in Iraq. U.S. officials are finalizing plans for a massive American embassy of some 1,000 Americans. It will be located in the heavily fortified "Green Zone"--where the CPA is located--in the center of Baghdad. Some 200 Americans and other foreign nationals will continue to work in Iraqi ministries as advisers, Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone, the State Department`s coordinator for the Iraq transition, said May 19. Some 135,000 U.S. soldiers will remain to provide security and continue fighting foreign terrorists and local insurgents. Additional U.S. forces may be added if the violence in Iraq intensifies, said General John P. Abizaid, commander of American forces in the Middle East, in congressional testimony May 19. "This is not going to be a light American footprint," says Marina Ottaway, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Is violence in Iraq likely to increase after June 30?

It`s unclear, but some U.S. military officials are predicting that it will. General Abizaid said May 19 he thought "the situation will become more violent" after the June 30 handover "because it will remain unclear what`s going to happen" between then and the end of the year. President Bush also said the violence could increase.

When will the Iraqi security forces be ready to secure the country?

Abizaid said it might take until April 2005 before U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces are fully functioning. There are currently some 200,000 Iraqis working with the U.S.-led coalition on security matters, but the majority has not been trained. "We are not going to hand off security on 1 July writ large across the country to the Iraqi security forces," Lieutenant General Walter Sharp, director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress May 18. By July 1, he said, "we`ll have approximately 10 percent of the total required Iraqi police academy-trained, and another 20 percent trained by the shorter three-week program that our military does throughout the country." President Bush, in his speech, did not give a specific date.

What limits will exist on Iraqi authority after June 30?

The draft U.N. resolution "endorses the formation of a sovereign interim government" to take office by June 30 that "would assume the responsibility and authority for governing a sovereign Iraq." But that government won`t have full command of its own armed forces and won`t be authorized to expel U.S. and other forces without U.N. Security Council approval, experts say.

Which laws will be in effect after June 30?

U.S. officials say the laws jointly approved by the CPA and the IGC will remain in effect unless they are amended. As it stands now, the post-June 30 interim government will not have the authority to change laws, but the future elected government will. Among the laws that U.S. policymakers say will remain in force until elections in 2005 is the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) or interim constitution. "It [the constitution] cannot be amended except by a transitional government, which would be in place with the election of a 275-person assembly in January," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said May 18. Neither President Bush`s speech nor the draft resolution mentioned the TAL. However, the White House fact sheet that accompanied Bush`s speech states that it will still apply.

How much authority will Iraqis have over their military?

The draft U.N. resolution is also ambiguous on this issue. It says that the multinational force and the Iraqi government will draw up "arrangements ... to establish a partnership between the multinational force and the sovereign interim government of Iraq and to ensure coordination between the two." Iraqi troops may be able to refuse commands from the American military with which they disagree. But U.S. officials have made clear that Iraqis will have no command authority over U.S. forces. The TAL states that Iraqi forces will fall under the command of the multinational force--and therefore under U.S. command.

Can the interim Iraqi government ask U.S. forces to leave?

It`s unclear. According to the draft resolution, it can ask but U.S. forces do not have to comply. It says the transitional government of Iraq can ask the Security Council to "review" the mandate of the multinational force in Iraq at any time, but the Security Council must make the final decision--and both the United States and Britain have a veto. On the other hand, Secretary of State Colin Powell said May 25 that that U.S. and allied troops will remain in the country only with the consent of the interim Iraqi government.

The resolution also states that the multinational force will have the "authority to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq including by preventing and deterring terrorism." It does not give an end date for foreign troops in Iraq, only saying that the U.N. Security Council will review the troops` mandate in one year.

What is the rationale for refusing to grant the interim government broader authority?

U.S. officials say that because the interim government is unelected, it will lack sufficient legitimacy to make laws and enter into long-term agreements with foreign governments. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq, favors early elections and has insisted that the power of the unelected government be strictly limited. Some experts say U.S. officials` main concern is about the degree of control they will have over the transition process. They "believe they are going to do it better themselves," Feinstein says.

Are arguments over the resolution expected at the United Nations?

France, Germany, and Russia have said that the new Iraqi government should be given wide powers over its own affairs and that the multinational force be given a timetable to leave. The draft resolution appears to fall short on these issues, so there may be some diplomatic wrangling. Some experts predict, however, that arguments will be muted and the U.S. text will prevail. "The U.N. is risk-averse after the breakdown [over the Iraq war] last March ... and I think they will paper over their differences," Feinstein says. On May 24, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer signaled that compromise on the resolution was likely. "I think here there really is broad agreement. A consensus is producible, possible, and desirable," he told the Associated Press. But whether the new resolution will encourage other nations to send additional troops remains unclear. In an interview with The New York Times May 19, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder signaled that he will oppose sending NATO and German troops to Iraq even after the new resolution wins U.N. approval.

-- by Sharon Otterman, staff writer, cfr.org

Copyright 2004

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[Joerver]

Seitdem Jerry Cotton pensioniert ist, läuft auch beim FBI nichts mehr rund.
Wenn es nicht so ernst wäre für die Betroffenen, könnte man sich amusieren.

May 26, 2004
Spain Had Doubts Before U.S. Held Lawyer in Madrid Blasts
By SARAH KERSHAW and ERIC LICHTBLAU

PORTLAND, Ore., May 25 — Days after the train bombings in Madrid last March killed 191 people, the Spanish authorities, unable to find a match with a set of fingerprints found on a plastic bag full of detonators, sent the Federal Bureau of Investigation a digital copy, hoping the bureau could find what they could not.

The F.B.I. quickly and confidently found a match to a Portland-area lawyer, setting in motion a chain of events that led the authorities in the United States to link the wrong man to those fingerprints, tie him to Islamic terrorists, arrest him on a material-witness warrant, jail him for 14 days, drop the entire case on Monday and then face withering questions about how the investigation could have gone so wrong.

Court records unsealed Tuesday showed that the Spanish authorities had raised questions about the F.B.I.`s fingerprint match to the lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, 37, weeks before his May 6 arrest. Yet F.B.I. officials were so confident of a match they described as "100 percent," the court papers show, that they never bothered to look at the original print while they were in Madrid on April 21, meeting with Spanish investigators.

The F.B.I. was relying on the digital copy that was sent to them after the bombings, returning to view the original last weekend only after the Spaniards had linked the print to an Algerian national. The F.B.I. then aggressively pursued its case against Mr. Mayfield.

F.B.I. officials could not provide an estimate of how often digital matching of fingerprints was used, but they said it was not a rarity.

The April 21 meeting was held after "it became apparent that the preliminary findings of the forensic science division of the Spanish National Police concluded that the fingerprints were not consistent with those of the F.B.I. laboratory," according to an affidavit in support of the arrest warrant.

At the end of the meeting, F.B.I. officials concluded, the Spaniards "felt satisfied" with the F.B.I.`s analysis.

An F.B.I. official said Tuesday that the use of a copy of the fingerprint — rather than the original — was allowed by lab guidelines. "It was absolutely acceptable to examine a digital image," the official said. "No rules were broken, no policies or procedures violates with this particular review."

But the official said the question of how and when copies should be used will be reviewed by the bureau in light of the Mayfield episode. "We`ll be looking at the effect of the digital imaging on degradations, if there is any," the official said. "That is one of the thing we`ll be looking at."

In making their case to a federal judge in Portland for arresting Mr. Mayfield, a Muslim convert, F.B.I. investigators said their reasoning for the arrest went beyond the fingerprint match, according to the affidavit. Mr. Mayfield had represented a terrorism defendant in a custody case, telephone records showed a "telephonic contact" on Sept. 11, 2002, between his home and a phone number assigned to Pete Seda, the director of a local Islamic Charity, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, who is on a federal terrorism watch list.

The Mayfields denied having any contact with Mr. Seda, Mr. Mayfield`s lawyers said, and said they had never heard of him. The affidavit also said that Mr. Mayfield`s law firm, a family and immigration law practice in Beaverton, Ore., advertised in a "Muslim yellow page directory," which was produced by a man who had business dealings with Osama bin Laden`s former personal secretary. The yellow pages directory was administered by "Jerusalem Enterprises, Inc.," which was registered to Farid Adlouni, a Portland resident whom the documents said was "directly linked in business dealings" with Wadih El Hage, the former bin Laden secretary who was convicted by a New York federal court of conspiring to murder U.S. citizens.

And finally, the affidavit said, Mr. Mayfield was seen driving from his home to the Bilal mosque, his regular place of worship. That mosque, said officials with the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, had been under surveillance, but the F.B.I.`s mention of his attendance at the mosque as a justification for his arrest infuriated Muslim groups.

"I`d be surprised if there`s a mosque in the country that hasn`t come under scrutiny these days," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington. "It becomes the whole Kevin Bacon game — no Muslim is more than six degrees away from terrorism."

Thomas H. Nelson, a friend of Mr. Mayfield`s who represented Mr. Mayfield before his case was turned over to Steven T. Wax, the federal defender for Oregon, said of the affidavit: "This stuff is so unsubstantial I think the only reason it was in there was to inflame the grand jury. I think this was intentionally inflammatory and it`s outrageous. It doesn`t belong in a court document, and it`s a slap in the face of every Muslim in the nation."

But as Muslim groups attacked the F.B.I. for its handling of the Mayfield case and accused it of ethnic profiling, bureau officials said that his status as a Muslim had nothing to do with the case against him.

"The people in the lab looking at the fingerprint had no idea what Mr. Mayfield`s background was," said an F.B.I. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "That had absolutely no role in any of this."

F.B.I. officials said the error was the result of using a poor digital copy of the original fingerprint taken from a bag at the scene of the Madrid bombing. The F.B.I. said Tuesday its lab in Quantico, Va., had begun look at its procedures in this case and others, and the official said that review would focus most closely on the propriety of using fingerprint copies. New guidelines may emerge from that review, and the F.B.I also plans to bring in outside experts to review the issue.

Officials said it was difficult to assess the damage that the incident could do to the F.B.I. and the reputation of its lab, which has already come under fire in recent years. "We certainly take this very seriously, but that larger question of what impact this will have is a very difficult one. I don`t think we can answer that," the official said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 26, 2004
The F.B.I. Messes Up

The Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation ought to hang their heads in shame over the mistaken arrest and jailing of a Muslim lawyer in Oregon who was supposed to be a material witness in the Madrid train bombing case. The arrest turned out to be based on a faulty fingerprint identification by F.B.I. "experts." That finding was ultimately retracted when more careful Spanish investigators concluded that the fingerprint had actually been left by a different man. Federal authorities apologized for the error and the unjustified jail time, but they still have a lot of explaining to do. The case smacks of a rush to judgment based on flimsy evidence. Clearly fingerprint analysis is not the gold standard it is cracked up to be. The method itself is not foolproof, and the analysts who provide the final judgment sometimes make the wrong call.

The fiasco started when the Spanish police sent the F.B.I. digital photographic images of some partial latent fingerprints taken from a plastic bag found in a van linked to the Madrid bombings. An automated searching system compared the images with millions of prints on file and came up with possible matches. F.B.I. analysts made the final judgment that a print submitted from Spain was identical to prints on file for Brandon Mayfield. Three F.B.I. examiners considered the match to be a "100 percent identification" of Mr. Mayfield. A court-appointed examiner agreed.

Shortly thereafter, the Spanish authorities cast doubt on that judgment, but the Justice Department sought Mr. Mayfield`s detention anyway, based on the F.B.I.`s insistence that it had identified the right man. Investigators offered other evidence that appeared to cast suspicion on Mr. Mayfield. He had represented a man in a custody dispute who later pleaded guilty to conspiring to help Al Qaeda fight American forces in Afghanistan. He had attended a local mosque and placed ads for his law practice in a publication whose owner was linked to terrorists. A phone call was made between his home and the number of the local director of an Islamic charity who was suspected of terrorist ties abroad. All that now looks coincidental.

The F.B.I. blames its error on an image of substandard quality sent by the Spanish police. But it is shocking that the F.B.I. would initially express certitude based on one partial print. The United States attorney in Portland insists that religion had nothing to do with the investigation because Mr. Mayfield was not under suspicion when the F.B.I. first analyzed the prints. But the decision to lock up Mr. Mayfield was clearly influenced by his Muslim ties. It is sobering evidence that the current legal crackdown on suspected terrorists can yield injustice for those who are innocent.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 26, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Bush and Kerry Tilt
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

George Bush and John Kerry disagree on almost every issue, with one crucial exception: they compete to support a myopic policy that is unjust, that damages our credibility around the world and that severely undermines our efforts in Iraq.

It`s our Israel-Palestine policy, which has become so unbalanced that it`s now little more than an embrace of the right-wing jingoist whom Mr. Bush unforgettably labeled a "man of peace": Ariel Sharon.

American presidents have always tried to be honest brokers in the Middle East. Truman, Johnson and Reagan were a bit more pro-Israeli, while Eisenhower, Carter and George H. W. Bush were a bit cooler, but all aimed for balance.

President Bush tossed all that out the window as he snuggled up to Mr. Sharon. Mr. Bush gazes admiringly as Mr. Sharon responds to terrorist attacks by sending troops to bulldoze Palestinian homes and shoot protesters, and he dropped President Clinton`s intensive efforts to reach a peace deal. Prof. Michael Hudson of Georgetown University describes present Middle East policy as "a bumbling incompetence, running here or there but doing nothing consistently."

Our embrace of Mr. Sharon hobbles us in Iraq even more than those photos from Abu Ghraib. Iraqis (in contrast with, say, Kuwaitis) genuinely sympathize with the Palestinians, and everywhere I`ve been in Iraq ordinary people have asked me why Americans provide the weapons Mr. Sharon uses to kill Palestinians.

One lofty aim of the Iraq war was to achieve a Middle East peace. But as retired Gen. Anthony Zinni told the Center for Defense Information this month: "I couldn`t believe what I was hearing about the benefits of this strategic move — that the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad, when just the opposite is true, the road to Baghdad led through Jerusalem. You solve the Middle East peace process, you`d be surprised what kinds of other things will work out."

As for Mr. Kerry, he has generally been sensible on the Middle East. But in recent months he has zigged and zagged away from his record (he used to oppose the Middle East fence, for example) to plant his own wet kisses on Mr. Sharon. It`s too bad he doesn`t have the leadership to acknowledge what 50 former U.S. diplomats wrote in an open letter to President Bush last month:

"You have proved that the United States is not an evenhanded peace partner. . . . Your unqualified support of Sharon`s extrajudicial assassinations, Israel`s Berlin Wall-like barrier, its harsh military measures in occupied territories, and now your endorsement of Sharon`s unilateral plan are costing our country its credibility, prestige and friends. This endorsement is not even in the best interests of Israel."

Indeed, my guess is that Mr. Sharon has done more to undermine Israel`s long-term security than Yasir Arafat ever did. Mr. Sharon`s actions have knocked the legs out from under Palestinian moderates and have bolstered Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Mr. Sharon means well — he wants to stop terrorism — but his policies have led Palestinians to turn to Islamic extremists rather than secular nationalists. Now even the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist group, has found God and quotes from the Koran.

Particularly in a new age when terrorist attacks could use W.M.D. to kill perhaps thousands at a time, Israel can achieve safety only through a peace agreement with the Palestinians. A model is the unofficial Geneva accord of last October, reached between courageous Israelis and Palestinians — the very people we should be supporting.

In contrast, Mr. Sharon and Mr. Arafat both display a bloodstained obduracy, suggesting that they might as well have been twins separated at birth. They should be exiled together to some modern St. Helena. Both are hurting their own people by undercutting moderates on the other side.

So let`s hope that Mr. Kerry zags again, giving us a meaningful choice on Middle East policy. Mr. Bush`s break from the usual U.S. role of honest broker is one of his most serious foreign policy errors, and we owe it to Israel as well as to ourselves to fix it.

"Israelis are far more critical of Israeli policy than Americans are," noted Edward Walker Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt. "If your good friends won`t tell you that something`s wrong, they`re not very good friends."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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[Joerver]

Bei dieser Meldung habe ich Schwierigkeiten nicht zynisch zu werden.
Wem würde sowas nützen?

washingtonpost.com

U.S. Warns Of Al Qaeda Threat This Summer
Agents in Country Said To Be Planning Attack

By Susan Schmidt and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A01

Federal officials have information suggesting that al Qaeda has people in the United States preparing to mount a large-scale terrorist attack this summer, sources familiar with the information said yesterday.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III intend to hold a joint news conference this afternoon to discuss the threat and to ask Americans to watch for several suspected al Qaeda operatives who may be in the country, officials said.

The concerns are driven by intelligence deemed credible that was obtained about a month ago indicating an attack may be planned between now and Labor Day.

That information dovetails with other intelligence "chatter" suggesting that al Qaeda operatives are pleased with the change in government resulting from the March 11 terrorist bombings in Spain and may want to affect elections in the United States and other countries.

"They saw that an attack of that nature can have economic and political consequences and have some impact on the electoral process," said one federal official with access to counterterrorism intelligence.

Intelligence and law enforcement officials are trying to strengthen security at the presidential nominating conventions this summer in Boston and New York. They are also concerned about the possible targeting of other prominent events, starting with the World War II Memorial ceremony Saturday in the District, the Group of Eight summit June 8-10 in Sea Island, Ga., and the Summer Olympic Games in August in Athens.

Federal officials have been discussing raising the national threat level between now and Jan. 21, the day after the presidential inauguration, although Homeland Security Department officials said yesterday that no such announcement is scheduled.

The Justice Department and the FBI plan to ask for the public`s help today in locating several suspected terrorist sympathizers, including some whose names have not been made public before.

The bureau probably plans another public push to find Aafia Siddiqui, 32, a Pakistani woman who has a doctorate in neurological science and has studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University in the Boston area, as well as in Houston.

The FBI also could seek help locating a man Siddiqui has been linked to, Adnan G. El Shukrijumah. He is a suspected al Qaeda member who spent time in Florida, and his name has come up in interrogations of captured al Qaeda lieutenant Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

In April, an FBI bulletin to law enforcement agencies warned of possible truck bombs. A source familiar with the government`s threat discussions said yesterday that truck bombs are a primary concern.

"I`m more worried than I was at Christmastime," said one senior U.S. intelligence official, comparing the "election threat" to the canceling of specific airline flights around the holidays. He said the U.S. government is convinced there are as yet unidentified al Qaeda operatives residing in the United States, waiting for the word to launch plots.

"They are here, and there are indications they are preparing" attacks, said the official, whom government policy bars from being named.

Another FBI bulletin, issued last week, urged law enforcement officials to be on the alert for possible suicide bombers. Officials were urged to take note of people dressed in bulky jackets in warm weather, clothing smelling of chemicals or trailing electrical wires, and they warned that potential bombers may be dressed in uniform or even disguised as pregnant women.

Within the past three weeks, members of the House and Senate intelligence committees have received briefings from the CIA and the FBI on what the CIA counterterrorism center has termed the "election threat." The members have asked the agencies for more specific, follow-up briefings, including an assessment of al Qaeda`s presence in the United States, congressional sources said.

One counterterrorism official said al Qaeda still aims to carry off an attack that would kill large numbers of people, and is aiming at modes of transportation such as airlines and ships. Anything less than a spectacular attack, such as a suicide bombing, would appear weak to al Qaeda`s financiers, according to the counterterrorism official.

President Bush has said two-thirds of al Qaeda`s pre-Sept. 11, 2001, leadership has been killed or captured. But CIA Director George J. Tenet has said many established terrorist groups that previously did not work together are making a concerted effort to undermine the United States.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com

General Is Said To Have Urged Use of Dogs

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A01

A U.S. Army general dispatched by senior Pentagon officials to bolster the collection of intelligence from prisoners in Iraq last fall inspired and promoted the use of guard dogs there to frighten the Iraqis, according to sworn testimony by the top U.S. intelligence officer at the Abu Ghraib prison.

According to the officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, the idea came from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who at the time commanded the U.S. militarydetention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was implemented under a policy approved by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top U.S. military official in Iraq.

"It was a technique I had personally discussed with General Miller, when he was here" visiting the prison, testified Pappas, head of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and the officer placed in charge of the cellblocks at Abu Ghraib prison where abuses occurred in the wake of Miller`s visit to Baghdad between Aug. 30 and Sept. 9, 2003.

"He said that they used military working dogs at Gitmo [the nickname for Guantanamo Bay], and that they were effective in setting the atmosphere for which, you know, you could get information" from the prisoners, Pappas told the Army investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, according to a transcript provided to The Washington Post.

Pappas, who was under pressure from Taguba to justify the legality and appropriateness of using guard dogs to frighten detainees, said at two separate points in the Feb. 9 interview that Miller gave him the idea. He also said Miller had indicated the use of the dogs "with or without a muzzle" was "okay" in booths where prisoners were taken for interrogation.

But Miller, whom the Bush administration appointed as the new head of Abu Ghraib this month, denied through a spokesman that the conversation took place.

"Miller never had a conversation with Colonel Pappas regarding the use of military dogs for interrogation purposes in Iraq. Further, military dogs were never used in interrogations at Guantanamo," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq.

Pappas`s statements nonetheless provide the fullest public account to date of how he viewed the interrogation mission at Abu Ghraib and Miller`s impact on operations there. Pappas said, among other things, that interrogation plans involving the use of dogs, shackling, "making detainees strip down," or similar aggressive measures followed Sanchez`s policy, but were often approved by Sanchez`s deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, or by Pappas himself.

The claims and counterclaims between Pappas and Miller concern one of the most notorious aspects of U.S. actions at Abu Ghraib, as revealed by Taguba`s March 9 report and by pictures taken by military personnel that became public late last month. The pictures show unmuzzled dogs being used to intimidate Abu Ghraib detainees, sometimes while the prisoners are cowering, naked, against a wall.

Taguba, in a rare classified passage within his generally unclassified report, listed "using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees" as one of 13 examples of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" inflicted by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib.

Experts on the laws of war have charged that using dogs to coerce prisoners into providing information, as was done at Abu Ghraib, constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions that protect civilians under the control of an occupying power, such as the Iraqi detainees.

"Threatening a prisoner with a ferocious guard dog is no different as a matter of law from pointing a gun at a prisoner`s head and ordering him to talk," said James Ross, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch. "That`s a violation of the Geneva Conventions."

Article 31 of the Fourth Geneva Convention bars use of coercion against protected persons, and Common Article Three bars any "humiliating and degrading treatment," Ross said. Experts do not consider the presence in a prison of threatening dogs, by itself, to constitute torture, but a 1999 United Nations-approved manual lists the "arranging of conditions for attacks by animals such as dogs" as a "torture method."

But Pappas, who was charged with overseeing interrogations at Abu Ghraib involving those suspected of posing or knowing about threats to U.S. forces in Iraq, told Taguba that "I did not personally look at that [use of dogs] with regard to the Geneva Convention," according to the transcript.

Pappas also said he did not have "a program" to inform his civilian employees, including a translator and an interrogator, of what the Geneva Conventions stated, and said he was unaware if anyone else did. He said he did not believe using force to coerce, intimidate or cause fear violated the conventions.

Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who commanded the prison guards at Abu Ghraib`s cellblocks 1A and 1B until Nov. 19, when Pappas assumed control, said in an interview that Navy, Army and Air Force dog teams were used there for security purposes. But she said military intelligence officers "were responsible for assigning those dogs and where they would go."

Using dogs to intimidate or attack detainees was very much against regulations, Karpinski said. "You cannot use the dogs in that fashion, to attack or be aggressive with a detainee. . . . Why were there guys so willing to take these orders? And who was giving the orders? The military intelligence people were in charge of them."

Taguba never interviewed Miller or any officer above Karpinski`s rank for his report. Nor did he conduct a detailed probe of the actions of military intelligence officials. But he said he suspected that Pappas and several of his colleagues were "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib."

In a Feb. 11 written statement accompanying the transcript, Pappas shifted the responsibility elsewhere. He said "policies and procedures established by the [Abu Ghraib] Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center relative to detainee operations were enacted as a specific result of a visit" by Miller, who in turn has acknowledged being dispatched to Baghdad by Undersecretary of Defense Stephen A. Cambone, after a conversation with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Cambone told lawmakers recently that he wanted Miller to go because he had done a good job organizing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and wanted Miller to help improve intelligence-gathering in Iraq.

Some senators, however, have noted that the Bush administration considers Guantanamo detainees exempt from the protections of the Geneva Conventions, and wondered if Miller brought the same aggressive interrogation ideas with him to Iraq, where the conventions apply.

When asked at a May 19 Senate hearing if he and his colleagues had "briefed" military officers in Iraq about specific Guantanamo interrogation techniques that did not comply with the Geneva Conventions, Miller said no.

He said he brought "our SOPs [standard operating procedures] that we had developed for humane detention, interrogation, and intelligence fusion" to Iraq for use as a "starting point." He added that it was up to the officers in Iraq to decide which were applicable and what modifications to make.

But Pappas said the result of Miller`s visit was that "the interrogators and analysts developed a set of rules to guide interrogations" and assigned specific military police soldiers to help interrogators -- an approach Miller had honed in Guantanamo.

After calling the use of dogs Miller`s idea, Pappas explained that "in the execution of interrogation, and the interrogation business in general, we are trying to get info from these people. We have to act in an environment not to permanently damage them, or psychologically abuse them, but we have to assert control and get detainees into a position where they`re willing to talk to us."

Pappas added that it "would never be my intent that the dog be allowed to bite or in any way touch a detainee or anybody else." He said he recalled speaking to one dog handler and telling him "they could be used in interrogations" anytime according to terms spelled out in a Sept. 14, 2003, memo signed by Sanchez.

That memo included the use of dogs among techniques that did not require special approval. The policy was changed on Oct. 12 to require Sanchez`s approval on a case-by-case basis for certain techniques, including having "military working dogs" present during interrogations.

That memo also demanded -- in what Taguba referred to during the interview as its "fine print" -- that detainees be treated humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

But Pappas told Taguba that "there would be no way for us to actually monitor whether that happened. We had no formal system in place to do that -- no formal procedure" to check how interrogations were conducted. Moreover, he expressed frustration with a rule that the dogs be muzzled. "It`s not very intimidating if they are muzzled," Pappas said. He added that he requested an exemption from the rule at one point, and was turned down.

In the interview transcript, Taguba`s disdain for using dogs is clear. He asked Pappas if he knew that after a prison riot on Nov. 24, 2003, five dogs were "called in to either intimidate or cause fear or stress" on a detainee. Pappas said no, and acknowledged under questioning that such an action was inappropriate.

Taguba also asked if he believed the use of dogs is consistent with the Army`s field manual. Pappas replied that he could not recall, but reiterated that Miller instigated the idea. The Army field manual bars the "exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind."

At least four photographs obtained by The Washington Post -- each apparently taken in late October or November -- show fearful prisoners near unmuzzled dogs.

One MP charged with abuses, Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, recalled for Army investigators an episode "when two dogs were brought into [cellblock] 1A to scare an inmate. He was naked against the wall, when they let the dogs corner him. They pulled them back enough, and the prisoner ran . . . straight across the floor. . . . The prisoner was cornered and the dog bit his leg. A couple seconds later, he started to move again, and the dog bit his other leg."

Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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An Iraqi anguishes near bloodstains inside the Imam Ali shrine after the site was hit by projectiles. At least eight Iraqis were killed in the U.S. offensive.
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Key Najaf Shrine Damaged in Fighting
U.S. Denies Firing on Imam Ali Mosque During Push Into Center of Holy City

By Saad Sarhan and Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A20

NAJAF, Iraq, May 25 -- As American troops took their fight with Shiite Muslim rebels to the center of the insurgent stronghold of Najaf on Tuesday, heavy projectiles damaged the facade of the Imam Ali shrine, among the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, a strike that could inflame anger against the United States.

U.S. military officers denied their forces caused the damage to the shrine, where blasts chipped a door frame that leads to the shrine`s inner sanctum and put a hole in a nearby wall. In Baghdad, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said rebels were the likely culprits, hoping "to provoke outrage so they could blame it on American forces."

In Najaf, a spokesman for the rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr blamed U.S. forces and appealed to Muslims to attack them. "Is it logical that a Muslim, Arab or Iraqi man can surrender to the infidel occupier?" said Qais Khazali, the spokesman. There were no reports of violence in other Shiite towns or mass reaction by the population of Najaf itself.

The question of who damaged the mosque has political as well as emotional significance. Several Shiite groups that oppose Sadr and either cooperate with or tacitly accept U.S. authority in Iraq would come under pressure to distance themselves from the Americans if U.S. forces were found to have caused the damage. Losing that support could cripple U.S. efforts to pacify Iraq.

To date, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the chief Shiite religious authority in Iraq, has avoided criticizing U.S. military moves against Sadr. But a word of opposition from Sistani, Iraqis say, would set off an explosion of anti-American sentiment among Iraq`s majority Shiite population.

On Tuesday, his office issued a statement that denied reports he had blamed damage to the shrine on Sadr. "We don`t have any information about which side targeted the holy shrine," the statement said.

The U.S. strike into the city center was part of an increasingly aggressive campaign to corner Sadr. For the past two days, infantrymen with the Army`s 1st Armored Division riding Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles have been penetrating deeper and deeper into Najaf, one of two adjacent cities where Sadr`s forces dominate the streets.

Sadr has defied U.S. demands to surrender and disband his militia, the Mahdi Army. The Americans have said they want him to stand trial in Iraqi courts for his alleged role in the April 2003 killing of moderate cleric Abdel Majid Khoie. Sadr`s arrest would take off the street a violent opponent to U.S. plans to transfer limited authority to a new Iraqi government on June 30.

During the past several weeks, U.S. troops have quelled Sadr-inspired uprisings in the towns of Kut and Diwaniya, while British forces have tamped down unrest in Basra and Amarah. U.S. forces have clashed inconclusively off and on for two weeks with Sadr`s forces in the sprawling Baghdad slum of Sadr City, named after the cleric`s late father.

Over the weekend, the Mahdi Army abandoned positions in Karbala, another Shiite holy city, where they had fought two weeks of tough battles against 1st Armored Division forces. On Tuesday, U.S. troops badly damaged the Mukhaiyam mosque in Karbala, which had been used by militiamen to store arms, according to images broadcast by al-Arabiya, a satellite television network.

The fighting in Najaf on Tuesday raged throughout the morning. At least eight insurgents were killed, three of them a few yards in front of the shrine`s outer wall, witnesses said. Others were killed after American troops trapped them in a pair of abandoned police stations. Shooting also erupted at a vast cemetery northeast of the shrine where guerrillas have hidden among the tombstones and fired on U.S. patrols on the city`s outskirts.

When combat subsided, a few hundred demonstrators gathered on the mosque grounds, wailed, wept, pounded their heads and shouted "Yes, yes, to Sadr! America is the enemy of God." Blood streaked the large courtyard.

Hussein Husseini, a Sadr representative, told reporters at the mosque that U.S. rockets fired from a plaza a few blocks from the shrine hit the structure and courtyard. A mob cut short his words and cursed and threatened journalists who were present.

"What is the limit?" asked Hamed Asadi, a religion student and Sadr supporter. "Is it when the Americans enter the shrine? I call on all the youths to protect the shrine from the Zionist enemy."

"We pray to God to give Sadr victory," said Qasim Zeini, a young guerrilla who shouldered a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "He is the only one who challenged the occupation."

Insurgent fighters say that in recent days they have been aided by sympathizers from other cities. "We didn`t call for anyone to come, but some people wanted to be in Najaf and fight the occupation forces. The resistance is not only in Najaf, but all over Iraq," said Fuad Turfi, a Sadr spokesman.

Farazdaq Mousawi, a Mahdi Army commander, said that most of his militia`s arms, including mortars and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, were looted from depots belonging to the ousted government of Saddam Hussein. "We get weapons from people all the time, too," he said. "What the Americans did today will increase resistance against them, and now more people will support us."

All around him, young masked fighters scurried from market stall to market stall and hid under awnings to avoid detection by U.S. air surveillance.

Many Najaf residents have continued to oppose Sadr, whose presence in the city has paralyzed tourism by pilgrims, a mainstay of the city`s economy. "The Mahdi Army brought ruin to the city. We pray to God to get rid of them and their leaders," said Hashim Abid Ali, owner of the Huda Hotel.

"We brought this on ourselves. What is happening is controlled by Iran," said Hussein Hasan, a student, echoing a common suspicion that Sadr is a tool of people in the neighboring Islamic republic who want to destabilize Iraq.

Ahmed Jasim, another resident, blamed rebel Sunni Muslims in central Iraq for a continuing flow of arms into the city. "They say they have brought food into the city, but in fact, they brought weapons," he said. "Farms surround Najaf. We don`t need any food."

In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded Tuesday, injuring five Iraqis and leaving the now-familiar sight of twisted, burning wreckage on a downtown street.

Later in the day, insurgents fired rockets from an apartment building toward a police station on Saadoun Street, one of Baghdad`s main thoroughfares. It missed the station, but hit a second structure where two U.S. soldiers were posted, wounding them.

For the second time in a week, saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline, key to the export of Iraq`s only significant foreign exchange earner. The conduit, which runs to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, was disrupted near the northern oil city of Kirkuk, according to oil executives in Baghdad. A similar explosion damaged a pipeline in the far south that takes crude to the Persian Gulf. In April, Iraq exported about 1.8 million barrels of oil a day. Both explosions will slow deliveries this month, U.S. officials said.

Williams reported from Baghdad.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Iraqi parents waited May 10 for news of a son detained at Abu Ghraib.
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Iraqis: Why Demolish Prison?
Some Support Idea of Turning Abu Ghraib Into a Museum

By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A17

BAGHDAD, May 25 -- Ghassan Abbas rolled his mustard-yellow prayer beads through his fingers as he sat Tuesday afternoon on a cushioned stool outside his tobacco shop in the eastern part of the capital and asked a practical question of President Bush, who in a televised speech Monday night proposed demolishing the Abu Ghraib prison.

Why get rid of a perfectly good prison?

"Abu Ghraib is the biggest one and can keep many detainees," Abbas said, shaking his head. "How can they demolish it?"

The 280-acre prison compound 20 miles west of Baghdad was notorious under former president Saddam Hussein and is now at the center of an embarrassing scandal for the U.S. military after a number of its soldiers were captured in photographs and on video beating and humiliating detainees there. But for some Iraqis, the prison is just a prison, not the symbol of death and torture and disgraceful conduct that Bush declared it to be in a speech from the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania on Monday night.

There has been no groundswell of support here for razing the facility. In fact, earlier this month, the Iraqi Governing Council discussed the possibility of turning part or all of it into a museum.

Interior Minister Sameer Shaker Sumaidaie, who is in charge of police and security in Iraq, said the building is not the problem.

"I can understand the rush to abolish Abu Ghraib," Sumaidaie said on Monday, but added, "I personally don`t think the building itself has a meaning positive or negative."

Sumaidaie said the stain of Abu Ghraib would be erased simply by making it more open and making the people who run it more accountable.

Rajaa Habib Khuzai, a member of the Governing Council, said demolishing the prison "will not change the impressions of the Iraqis about what happened at the jail.

"The coming generation should see what the Iraqi people suffered," she said. "The best thing is to make half of it a museum and remain the other half as a prison because the prison is so big and there is not need to demolish it and build a new one."

Nasir Chaderchi, another Governing Council member, also said the prison should remain as a symbol of what the Iraqi prisoners suffered.

Sentiment on a busy commercial street in the Karada district of the capital was mixed.

Kadhim Ali Jasim, a 29-year-old security guard at the Babylon Hotel, said he did not support demolishing the prison.

"I am with changing the staff and the rules of the prison and respect the Iraq man even if he was a criminal," he said, stopping for a moment to talk after buying a pack of cigarettes from Abbas`s tobacco shop. He added, "I don`t think they can change the staff and prison`s rules until we have a government."

Down the street, Wisam Majeed, 26, a trader, said he was in favor of tearing down the prison. "It is good to demolish it so the people can forget about Abu Ghraib prison and try to start all over again."

Isam Khalil, 32, an electronics equipment retailer, said that as long as the prison remains standing it "symbolizes scandals."

"The Americans defamed our country`s reputation, and they destroyed us," he said.

But Muhammad Hussein Abdul Rahim, 45, who owns an appliance shop on the same street, said Abu Ghraib was the best prison the world. "It is comfortable," he said. "It is built on a very big space and far from the city."

"They can change the staff," he said.

Seven U.S. soldiers with the 372nd Military Police Company have been charged with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. One soldier, Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, was sentenced to a year in prison last week for his role in taking a photograph of detainees and not stopping the abuse.

More than 3,000 detainees remain at Abu Ghraib, where the U.S. military held more than 7,000 prisoners at one point in the same cells where Hussein kept his enemies. He often ordered mass executions to quell prison unrest.

As part of an effort to reduce the prison population, the U.S. military`s top spokesman said on Tuesday that 580 to 600 prisoners would be released on Friday. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt also said the military would release more prisoners June 4.

In his speech Monday night, Bush said the United States would fund the building of a new prison after the June 30 deadline for handing over limited governing authority to the Iraqis and then, "with the approval of the Iraqi government," knock down Abu Ghraib. But he offered no time frame and did not say where the money would come from.

Special correspondents Huda Ahmed and Bassam Sebti contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Abuse by Outsourcing



Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A26

AMONG THE MANY disturbing aspects of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison is the involvement of private contractors in conducting interrogations. Contractors are playing a widening role in the military, and never more so than in the war in Iraq. Private-sector workers feed and house U.S. troops, maintain sophisticated weapon systems and provide security for the Coalition Provisional Authority. Their growing involvement, and the consequent blurring of military and private roles, was brought home horrifically in March with the murder and mutilation of four security guards employed by Blackwater USA.

But privatized interrogation is troubling on a whole new level. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Lt. Gen. Lance L. Smith said 37 contract interrogators were working for the military in Iraq. The revelation underscores the need for rigorous debate about their proper function in wartime, their position in the chain of command and the laws that govern their activities.

Interrogating prisoners is a sensitive function, one that needs to be conducted under clearly delineated rules by people who are properly trained and supervised and, if necessary, subject to punishment. As the country is learning, uniformed personnel don`t always meet those criteria. But private citizens are not appropriate for the job.

Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who investigated conditions at Abu Ghraib, testified that guards at the prison viewed the contractors as having "competent authority" to direct their activities. His report found that Steven A. Stefanowicz, a contract interrogator for CACI International Inc., an Arlington-based company, "clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse" and concludes that Mr. Stefanowicz and John Israel, a civilian interpreter, "were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses." Gen. Taguba recommended that Mr. Stefanowicz be reprimanded, fired and stripped of his security clearance.

While seven soldiers have been charged in connection with the abuses, however, the process appears to be notably slower as it applies to the private contractors, who are not subject to military discipline. The Taguba report has been complete for months, yet there is no indication that any prosecutorial activity was in the works before the abuses became public. It wasn`t until late last week that the Justice Department said it had opened a criminal investigation of a civilian contractor.

Congress presciently enacted the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act in 2000 in an effort to cover such crimes, but the law has scarcely been used and has significant gaps. For one thing, it applies only to U.S. citizens; Gen. Taguba said that two translators involved in abuses were from third countries. It also only applies to contractors working for the military -- not other government agencies. Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.) introduced a measure last week to close those loopholes.

Meantime, CACI`s contract with the Army is administered by the Interior Department and is so vaguely worded that it gave no indication the company would ultimately be called on to supply interrogators, according to Post reporter Ellen McCarthy; that arrangement is now under review. CACI executives have said they haven`t been notified of any charges; when the news of Abu Ghraib abuses broke, the company was reduced to downloading the Taguba report from the Internet. If this is the oversight that`s in place for contractors, it`s time to reassess whether military privatization has gone too far.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Great Wall of Unknowns

By Robert J. Samuelson

Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A27

The question about China`s economy is no longer what it will do to China but what it will do to the rest of the world. It may invigorate the global economy -- or destabilize it. We don`t know. Until recently, China`s movement away from a Stalinist and backward society was mainly a story about what kind of country it might become and what political role it would play in the world. Now China`s size and relentless economic growth (averaging 9 percent a year since 1978) have combined to create a global goliath. It`s having huge and barely anticipated economic spillover effects elsewhere.

Here, for doubters, is an excerpt from the Asian Development Bank`s annual economic report:

"[China] is the world`s biggest consumer of copper, tin, zinc, platinum, steel, and iron ore; second biggest of aluminum and lead; third largest of nickel. . . . It is now the world`s second-largest oil consumer [after the United States], and accounted for 35 percent of the global rise in oil demand in 2003." China also produces 50 percent of the world`s cameras and 30 percent of air conditioners and TVs, reports the ADB.

China`s thirst for oil contributed to the price jump to more than $40 a barrel. Just last week the Wall Street Journal reported that cement shortages in the United States threaten construction projects. It attributed the scarcities to China (so many ships are tied up in the China trade that U.S. cement imports are shortchanged).

The point is not that China`s economic expansion automatically harms everyone else. It doesn`t. In 2003 Chinese imports rose a hefty 41 percent. Asian countries particularly have benefited. They`ve become major suppliers of components (often assembled in China for re-export) and machinery. The point is that the very magnitude and speed of China`s growth have made it an unpredictable X factor in the world economy. Good and bad surprises will multiply -- unpredicted gains, losses, threats and opportunities.

China`s current outlook seems especially dicey. In 2003 the economy expanded by 9.1 percent, according to official statistics. Many economists think actual growth was much higher. The fear is that loose bank lending is leading to vast overinvestment in basic industries such as steel and aluminum. Nicholas Lardy of the Institute for International Economics in Washington reports the following: In 2003 China`s bank lending rose almost 3 trillion renminbi, or about 24 percent of gross domestic product, and investment rose 27 percent. Another possible danger is a runaway residential construction boom, driven by speculative purchases of apartment units around Beijing and Shanghai. Writes economist Andy Xie of Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong:

"The perception of instant riches has triggered massive purchases by local people with very limited income. Chinese banks lend on collateral [the apartments] and rarely check cash flow seriously. [But] many property buyers in China do not have the income to pay off their mortgages and need rental income to do so. However, the supply has severely depressed rental yields." Xie fears the worst. Borrowers will default, real estate prices will collapse and "many developers [will] leave buildings unfinished."

This could be too grim, however. Jonathan Anderson, chief Asian economist of UBS Securities in Hong Kong, thinks that worries of a "crash" -- a sharp fall of economic growth and millions of layoffs -- are overblown. China`s leaders are trying to tame the boom. They`ve raised banks` reserve requirements, which (in theory) ought to curb new lending. They`ve also instructed banks to restrict new loans for projects in potentially glutted industries such as steel and aluminum. Anderson expects a tolerable "soft landing" of slightly slower growth without a major economic or political crisis.

Whatever happens will reverberate elsewhere. A modest slowdown might be good for almost everyone. It could relieve price pressures on oil and other raw materials. A deeper slump would be less benign. "Of Japan`s increase in exports in 2003, close to 80 percent went to China," says economist Pieter Bottelier, former head of the World Bank`s office in China. "If you get a sudden leveling off, then maintaining Japan`s economic recovery will be harder." The same is true of some other Asian economies. The most dangerous possibility is that, facing a deep slump, China would try to export its way out of trouble. The result could be a flood tide of steel, cement, aluminum and consumer goods onto world markets that depresses production, jobs, prices and profits almost everywhere.

All we know for certain is that we really don`t know. With a country as big as China undergoing so much dramatic change -- moving from a "command and control" economy to a market system -- the chances that anyone has a complete picture of what`s going on are slim or nonexistent. In a smaller country, our ignorance wouldn`t matter much. But in China, it`s slightly terrifying.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Wieder ein supporter weniger für Bush.

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Five Points of Reality That Bush Overlooked

By Jim Hoagland

Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A27

Dear Mr. President:

Your speech Monday night carried stirring visions of the change you want to bring to Iraq and the Middle East. What it lacked was more important: a clear recognition of the ever-widening gap between those uplifting visions and the explosive conditions produced in Iraq by what has become a self-defeating U.S. occupation policy. Your words lacked the minimal dose of honesty a leader owes his nation in times of crisis.

I write as someone who has supported regime change in Iraq far longer than you or your aides. I have given your policies the benefit of the doubt in some measure because of my long-standing opposition to the genocidal rule of Saddam Hussein and my sympathy for the broader reform goals you enunciate for the region. The lack of realism in Monday`s speech and in the draft U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq that your administration presented a few hours earlier make such agnosticism next to impossible now.

Both documents betray a willingness to see the world as you would like it to be rather than as it is, and a readiness to hope that the gap goes unnoticed or unexamined. With all respect, sir, that is not leadership. Leaders address inconvenient reality and then seek explicit and reasoned support from the nation for dealing with it.

Your recent vacillation on policies -- unilateralist one day, U.N.-centered the next -- suggests you are letting yourself be pulled in different directions by putative allies and your aides in daily, desperate improvisation. By letting King Abdullah of Jordan and other Sunni leaders poison your view of what Shiite rule in Iraq would mean, you leave the impression that you had not thought through your promise of democracy for Iraq before going to war.

This steadily wavering image is at the core of the decline in your approval ratings. Americans stop supporting wars not because of body counts alone but because they become convinced their leaders do not know what they are doing. They then stop supporting the leaders.

Your talented speechwriters built this address around a five-step "plan." May I offer five realities I think you slighted but must still address if you are to dispel rising skepticism, including mine?

� The decision to concentrate power in the hands of the Coalition Provisional Authority rather than establish a provisional Iraqi government a year ago has had disastrous results. As Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and others have said, that step "turned an army of liberation into an army of occupation" resented across Iraq. Liberation was successful, and ousting Hussein was a justifiable action. Denying power to Iraqis once he was gone was not. You must face that.

� Continuing to insist that a real transfer of sovereignty will occur on June 30 to what is at this point an unknown and untested Iraqi leadership is damaging your credibility. That entity would have power over U.S. troops and actions in Iraq if your assertion were true. Tell the American people and the world what you really intend to happen.

� Abandon the pretense that all goes well in the mission of U.N. negotiator Lakhdar Brahimi, who has spent most of his recent mission in Baghdad hunkered down inside the U.S.-protected "Green Zone." Your aides let you tell the nation Monday night that Brahimi would announce an interim government "this week," even though Baghdad sources say his choice of a Shiite to be prime minister has run into serious opposition. Brahimi`s spokesman, Ahmed Fawzi, said on Monday that his boss is as much as a week behind his May 31 deadline. You should have known that before you spoke.

� NATO allies will not take up new burdens in Iraq while you are in the middle of a reelection campaign. Why would countries such as France and Germany risk that? Preemptive war may well be justified. But there are costs for firing the first shot. Accept the fact that you will now pay a price and proceed accordingly.

� Most important, move away from the obsession with secrecy that is a cancer at the center of your administration. Sept. 11, 2001, did change the world, and the Geneva Conventions do look outdated in places. Engage the nation and then the world in the debate about the changes -- and sacrifices -- that need to be made in fighting a war against terrorists. Don`t confine that discussion to secret memos and directives.

Those directives and your own great confidence in the paramilitary warriors of the intelligence world helped bring you the Abu Ghraib scandal. You need the nation`s engaged, informed support to rescue Iraq -- and yourself, Mr. President.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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The things Bush didn`t mention in his speech
The re-writing of Iraqi history is now going on at supersonic speed
By Robert Fisk

26 May 2004

I can`t wait to see Abu Ghraib prison reduced to rubble by the Americans - at the request of the new Iraqi government, of course. It will be turned to dust in order to destroy a symbol of Saddam`s brutality. That`s what President Bush tells us. So the re-writing of history still goes on.

Last August, I was invited to Abu Ghraib - by my favourite US General Janis Karpinski, no less - to see the million-dollar US refurbishment of this vile place. Squeaky clean cells and toothpaste tubes and fresh pairs of pants for the "terrorist" inmates. But now, suddenly, the whole kit and caboodle is no longer an American torture centre. It`s still an Iraqi torture centre, and thus worthy of demolition.

The re-writing of Iraqi history is now going on at supersonic speed. Weapons of mass destruction? Forget it. Links between Saddam and al-Qa`ida? Forget it. Liberating the Iraqis from Saddam`s Abu Ghraib life of torture? Forget it. Wedding party slaughtered? Forget it. Clear the decks for both "full (sic) sovereignty" and "chaotic events". This is, at any rate, according to Mr Bush. When I heard his hesitant pronunciation of Abu Ghraib as "Abu Grub" on Monday night, I could only profoundly agree.

But we`re in danger again of missing the detail. Just as the unsupervised armed mercenaries being killed in Iraq are being described by the occupation authorities as "contractors" or, more mendaciously, "civilians" - so the responsibility for the porno interrogations at Abu Ghraib is being allowed to slide into the summer mists over the Tigris river. So let`s go back, for a moment, to the long weeks in which the Department of Bad Apples allowed its jerks to put leashes around Iraqi necks, forced prisoners to have sex with each other and raped some Iraqi lasses in the jail.

And let`s cast our eyes upon that little, all-important matter of responsibility. The actual interrogators accused of encouraging US troops to abuse Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail were working for at least one company with extensive military and commercial contacts with Israel. The head of an American company whose personnel are implicated in the Iraqi tortures, it now turns out, attended an "anti-terror" training camp in Israel and, earlier this year, was presented with an award by Shaul Mofaz, the right-wing Israeli defence minister.

According to Dr J P London`s company, CACI International, the visit of Dr London - sponsored by an Israeli lobby group and including US congressmen and other defence contractors - was "to promote opportunities for strategic partnerships and joint ventures between US and Israeli defence and homeland security agencies".

The Pentagon and the occupation powers in Iraq insist that only US citizens have been allowed to question prisoners in Abu Ghraib - but this takes no account of Americans who may also hold double citizenship. The once secret torture report by US General Antonio Taguba refers to "third country nationals" involved in the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq.

General Taguba mentions Steven Staphanovic and John Israel as involved in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Staphanovic, who worked for CACI - known to the US military as "Khaki" - was said by Taguba to have "allowed and/or instructed MPs (military police), who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by `setting conditions` ... he clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse". One of Staphanovic`s co-workers, Joe Ryan - who was not named in the Taguba report - now says that he underwent an "Israeli interrogation course" before going to Iraq.

We know the Pentagon asked Israel for its "rules of engagement" in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Israeli officers have briefed their US opposite numbers and, according to the Associated Press, "in January and February of 2003, Israeli and American troops trained together in southern Israel`s Negev desert ... Israel has also hosted senior law enforcement officials from the United States for a seminar on counter-terrorism".

Staphanovic of CACI, who may also be Australian, was accused by Taguba`s army report of making "a false statement to the investigation team regarding ... his knowledge of abuses". Another outside interrogator, Adel Nakhla,who may be of Egyptian origin, was a witness to the "stacking" of naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib. John Israel "misled" investigators by denying he had witnessed misconduct and did not have "security clearance". Israel, according to Titan - two of whose employees were mentioned in Taguba`s report - works for one of the company`s "sub-contractors". Titan refused to name the "sub-contractor".

Why? Among the company`s former directors is ex-CIA director James Woolsey, one of the architects of the US invasion of Iraq, a friend of Ahmed Chalabi and a prominent pro-Israeli lobbyist in Washington. Dr London says CACI "does not condone or tolerate or endorse in any fashion (sic) any illegal, inappropriate behaviour on the part of its employees in any circumstances at any time anywhere".

But it is clear the torture trail at Abu Ghraib has to run much further than a group of brutal US military cops, all of whom claim "intelligence officers" told them to "soften up" their prisoners for questioning. Were they Israeli? Or South African? Or British? Are we going to let the story go?

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Bush speech alarms even war enthusiasts
- Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Washington -- Even the staunchest supporters of President Bush`s Iraq enterprise were less than cheered by his speech to the nation Monday night outlining the path forward, some describing the administration as being in a state of panic.

In particular, the neoconservatives who provided the intellectual argument that an invasion of Iraq could provide a template for democracy in the Middle East are expressing open alarm that this effort is dangerously off course.

"There`s no question the administration has been in total panic mode, and they don`t need to be, because Iraq is salvageable," said Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that has been a hotbed of support for the war. "But I think there is still so much indecision about what to do that it`s going to be hard for them to do the right thing."

Many administration hawks were drawn from the neoconservative intellectual ranks, notably deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the chief architect of the idea that the United States could make Iraq a democratic beacon.

Their dismay comes as some Republicans in Congress fear that Bush`s Iraq policy has become unhinged, given the relentless bad news coming out of Iraq: a multiheaded insurgency among Shiites and Sunnis, the assassination of the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the steady rise in U.S. casualties.

Others on the political right, as distinct from their more interventionist neoconservative colleagues, have begun openly attacking the administration. Wall Street Journal contributing editor Mark Helprin called Abu Ghraib "a symbol of the inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought." He asked why the administration was trying to occupy Iraq with current troop levels, "even as one event cascading into another should make them recoil in piggy-eyed wonder at the lameness of their policy."

Some of Bush`s supporters concede the administration has committed blunders over the past year. Many suggest a sharp change in course -- such as adding thousands of troops, or moving up elections or forcefully quashing insurgents -- which they contend Bush did not promise Monday.

"It was important for Bush to remind the American public of the cost of failure," said Michael Rubin, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute and another neoconservative war supporter. "Basically, Bush was letting us see the forest through the trees."

However, he said, "the devil`s in the details, and with the stakes so high, we can`t ignore the details."

Yet while criticizing the administration for failures of execution, few neoconservatives have abandoned their belief that the war was a good idea or that it is intimately linked, as Bush insisted Monday, with fighting terrorism.

Joining the neoconservatives in support of the basic war effort are Democratic hawks such as Rep. Tom Lantos of San Mateo, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee.

"Iraq is clearly waiting to see if we will help develop a more open society or whether we will tire, declare a Pyrrhic victory and leave," Lantos said, urging persistence and greater international involvement.

"Nobody is admitting defeat, and if anything they are taking an even harder line," said Charles Pena, head of defense studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, which opposed the invasion and urges a speedy withdrawal.

Some contend that neoconservatives resemble the communists they once ridiculed, blaming the failures of communist ideology on the Kremlin`s execution.

"It`s an argument that shows that they didn`t understand the problem to begin with, that you just cannot use military force to dictate outcomes everywhere in the world," Pena said. "It`s based on this presumption that somehow we have to turn Iraq into a democracy, that that will somehow make us safe, which presumes Iraq was a threat to begin with."

War supporters have been emphasizing the bright spots in the occupation, such as the relative calm in some parts of the country.

Many compare the current situation in Iraq with the darkest moments of World War II, when rampant despair clouded victories that lay ahead.

Neoconservatives warn, however, that the administration seems headed on a dangerous course. Pletka charges the administration with "subcontracting" the political process to the United Nations. Many are particularly worried by the decision to enlist a former Republican Guard general to pacify Fallujah, site of a bloody Sunni insurgency last month. Handing over security to factional militias is a recipe not for elections but for civil war, they contend. They urge instead a crackdown by U.S. forces.

"The truth is it wouldn`t take much actually to turn this around, not that they necessarily will," said Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American Century, a leading neoconservative think tank. "There are a lot of very positive trends going on in Iraq, and I think if you take care of the security situation and the political trend lines toward real elections, in fact I think Iraq is more than salvageable."

But their critics say the hawks` predictions have nearly all gone awry. The weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war were never found, and the war`s cost, rather than being self-funded from Iraq`s oil revenues, has reached $170 billion with no end in sight.

Neoconservatives widely predicted an easy occupation followed by an immediate peace, followed by "a flourishing democracy which would cause a domino effect across the region creating democracies elsewhere," said Peter Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution. "And then the very first foreign policy position taken by this new democratic Iraq, run by their exile friends, would be to recognize Israel, and that would somehow end the Arab-Israeli conflict, and bunnies would dance in the streets, and we would find life on Mars."

Singer said the plan was "incredibly ambitious to the point of absurdity, and of course reality stepped in, and that`s where we are now."

Neoconservatives contend they predicted no such thing.

"I`m on the record as saying the occupation would require several hundred thousand troops and the process would take five to 10 years," said Schmitt. "So you didn`t get the cakewalk stuff from us. That said, the administration made it harder on itself because, frankly, they planned a military campaign that was quite efficient at getting rid of the government but didn`t plan on getting rid of the regime, and the result allowed a lot of Baathist Republican Guard and other insurgents to get their feet under them and create the insurgency we face today.

"I`m willing to say policy was still correct, but I`m not willing to take the blame for people`s inability to carry it out in an effective fashion."

E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at [e-mail].

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2 of 3 in state say Iraq war not worth the costs, Field Poll finds
60% of Californians disapprove of president`s handling of conflict
- Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer
Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Nearly two-thirds of Californians believe the war in Iraq is not worth the toll in American lives and costs, an almost complete reversal of views held when the war began a little more than a year ago, a Field Poll released today shows.

And six in 10 Californians disapprove of President Bush`s handling of the war -- the highest rating of opposition he has received on the issue since the war began and, again, almost a complete reversal from a Field Poll in April 2003.

On the economy, the president fares only slightly better -- despite some recent good news on the jobs front. Just 37 percent of Californians approve of his handling of the economy -- down 20 percentage points from when he took office, the poll shows.

The poll constitutes the most negative assessment of Bush`s presidency to date, and highlights what has been a very significant change of opinion about the president in recent months, says Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll.

"There`s a consensus (on the war) that it`s not worth the cost, and that Bush`s handling of it has not been up to par," he said. "Right now, it`s just die-hard Republicans" who are sticking by him and believe in his leadership, DiCamillo added.

The poll of 514 state residents taken last Tuesday through Sunday shows that 63 percent no longer believe the war is worth the costs in lives and in dollars to 31 percent who believe it is worth the costs -- the lowest rating since the war began in 2003.

The view that the war isn`t worth the cost is held across all demographic groups -- age, sex and region of the state.

Overall, just 39 percent of Californians approve of the job Bush is doing in office, compared to 54 percent who disapprove -- another low for the Field Poll. And 57 percent of state residents say the United States is now on the wrong track -- a figure that has not been surpassed since 1992, when Bush`s father was defeated in his re-election bid for president against Democratic candidate Bill Clinton.

The latest Field Poll numbers also dramatize how, in the nation`s most populous state, the president`s support has evaporated across the board -- in all geographic areas, among all racial and ethnic groups, even among men and white voters who have been Republican stalwarts.

While Democratic-leaning California always has held a lower approval rating for Bush than the nation as a whole, the poll could be a signal of bad news for the president nationally.

A Washington Post-ABC News Poll released Monday showed the president`s approval ratings at an all-time low nationally on the same day he gave a major speech outlining plans for bringing peace and democracy to Iraq.

The Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Bush`s approval rating declined to 47 percent. And, it showed that just 40 percent of Americans approved of Bush`s handling of the war in Iraq, another all-time low in the Post-ABC poll since U.S. troops entered the Mideast nation in March 2003.

A CBS News poll, also released Monday, showed the president`s approval ratings dropped to 41 percent -- the lowest recorded in that news organization`s surveys. Only 34 percent of those polled by CBS support the president`s policy in Iraq, while 61 percent disapprove.

In California, a particular danger sign for Bush appears to be his standings with independents and third-party voters, who could be the deciding factor in the president`s re-election effort.

The latest Field Poll shows his approval ratings have crumbled precipitously among those voters: By 63 percent to 32 percent, nonpartisan and third-party voters in California disapprove of his job in office -- and on Iraq, a stunning 75 percent of those voters disagree with his handling of the war.

"The nonpartisans give you which way the wind is blowing, and the nonpartisans are 69-24 against the war," DiCamillo said.

But the effort in Iraq is still a partisan issue, DiCamillo said, with Republicans supporting the war despite its costs by 67 percent to 27 percent and Democrats against by 84 percent to 13 percent.

UC Berkeley political science Professor Bruce Cain said that in the state with the most electoral votes, 55, the president`s approval ratings all but count out a stated GOP goal of mounting a challenge in the state.

"It makes the prospects of an election (win) in California, which were already remote, more like remote squared,`` Cain said.

Nationally, Cain said that Bush`s approval numbers may not be permanently depressed -- depending on the reaction to his speech Monday and events in Iraq.

"If you were to get out of Iraq in June and the Iraqis were to get their act together, then the numbers could change again, and he could be back in the running,`` Cain said. "You lose an election if we`re spending billions of dollars, and Americans are dying, and there appears to be no purpose -- and that`s where we are now.

"I see no political future for the president if he decides to stay the course in Iraq and finish a mission that is still undefined,`` he said.

Even leading GOP analysts, such as Hoover Institution research fellow Bill Whalen, said the polls reflect Bush`s annus horribilis -- to use a phrase coined in 1992 by then scandal-battered Queen Elizabeth II to describe her family`s difficulties.

"He has had a bad week, a bad month and a bad year," Whelan said.

Whalen said the president is "on a negative trend, which is usually fatal in your last year (in office)." Now "the president must find a way to turn around the negative news in Iraq,`` he said. "But can the president end the bad news cycle by himself -- or does he need an event beyond his control to do it?``

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percent.



URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/05/25/M… ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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Amazon.com Does Not Know Me
Here, have my credit card info. And my data profile. And my shoe size. What do you really know?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, May 26, 2004

I am a walking time bomb.

Like millions, I live deep deep deep in the digital storm, aswim in the electronic morass, irrevocable and irreversible and never to return to the ways of old because, as everyone knows, once you step foot into the rushing miasma of Net commerce and e-communication, you are imprinted onto the digital Void pretty much forever.

The Net, it washes over your life in a tidal wave of logins and passwords and cookies and AutoFill forms and account summaries and credit card numbers and semisecure Web sites, each promising on a stack of ridiculously defective Windows software that they won`t sell or share your personal data, even though most of them do because otherwise how do you explain the 600 goddamn spam messages I receive every day? I`m looking at you, SBC.

I pay all my bills online. I bank online. I have accounts at probably 50 online merchants, everyone from the big boys like iTunes and Amazon and eBay and AdultDVDEmpire to scrappier shops like Teeccinno and VitaminShoppe and Blowfish.com, along with a whole plethora of e-joints I`ve long since forgotten about because I set up an account there once to buy a Christmas gift only to change my mind at the last minute because I found the same item for three bucks cheaper plus free shipping from some other site that I purchased from once and then completely forgot about.

It`s just a matter of time before my data is exposed and the hackers and thieves and government agents come and steal my very being and my life is ruined. Right? Well, sort of

MapQuest. Neiman Marcus. Erowid. Car & Driver. PayPal. UPS. Evite. TinyURL. Chicago Trib. Nerve.com. Good Vibrations. Psychology Today. ClearEcstacy.com. Ofoto. L`Occitane. NYTimes.com. iHerb.com. Southwest Airlines. DivineInterventions.com. AdultDVDTalk.com. The Ugg Store. Overstock.com, MacConnection, MiniUSA.com. My Web browser`s AutoFill list reveals either a massive and frightening amount about me and my purchasing habits and my predilections for acrylic sex toys and French incense and cars, or ... nothing at all.

This is the gist. I have left an enormous e-trail of purchases and site visits and account data. My credit card number is lodged in a hundred different company servers, if not more. I have doubtlessly generated some sort of meta-profile somewhere that indicates which ads I`d like to see more of and which products might interest me and I`m probably the target of a thousand advertisers who think they can reach me in some significant or profound way.

But this is what gets lost in the morass of e-commerce and credit cards and alarmist privacy concerns: They cannot touch me. They cannot actually reach me in any significant manner, ever. I am protected and secure and absolutely, thoroughly immune, forever. And you know what? So are you.

Look. They can clog the Internet with spam and slam us all with a thousand targeted gender-specific demographic-intensive ads per day. They can go so far as to steal my credit card numbers and my Social Security number and make my life a living logistical hell. It`s true. And it`s goddamn scary and obnoxious and wrong on a hundred different levels.

But is this really me? Is this truly any sort of real danger to what I truly value, those things that engage my spirit and fondle my soul and melt the heart of my cockles? What sort of threat is some marketer`s data sheet to my ability to laugh and love and lick my lover, to enjoy dog parks and bath salts and huge ancient trees? Answer: nada.

This is their grand illusion. And this is our mass consumerist delusion. We confuse credit cards and shopping habits and Web-site histories with true personality, with spirit, with life. We think if we offer up too much personal data they will somehow use it against us, diminish us, finagle it so we can no longer run down the street in the sunshine or write bad poetry in a drunken haze or sing "Highway to Hell" at the tops of our lungs while driving under a full moon on a warm summer night.

And, to be sure, it is highly disgusting the lengths many companies will go to to watch you and track your behaviors and share it with others, and I wrote an entire column on Comcast`s nauseating and openly vile cable-TV privacy policy, which basically states that they don`t have one and fully intend to sell everything they know about you (which, by the way, is a lot) to anyone who wants it so screw you hope you like your wildly overpriced HBO ha ha ha.

But they cannot know me. Or you. They do not and shall not and it`s sort of laughable when you think about it, how there is nothing they can really do, how there is no way for them to know any of us in any authentic way because they don`t share a bottle of wine with you and they don`t sleep next to you in your bed and they have no idea as to the color of your id and the make and model of your fluxive wanton gorgeous cosmic aspirations.

But let us not be blind. In this ass-clenched, war-torn, Bush-molested climate, paranoia thrives like a virus. The marketers may be getting agressive, but the government is getting positively draconian. A sickening savageness flourishes in the current Republican regime, a mean-spirited black-souled approach to snuffing the world and silencing dissent and suppressing truth and wrangling up innocents in remote prisons and attaching electrodes to their genitals and raping the women and sodomizing the boys and calling it all-American patriotism.

And, yes, absolutely, they can all go too far. They can publish your address and broadcast photos of your home and invade your personal space like a pinch-faced Lynne Cheney intrudes into your worst nightmares. Hospitals share your health data and decimate your insurance. And it`s true -- in a few years, a handful of massive international conglomerates will own just about every brand on the planet, including the one called human DNA.

But here`s the thing: They are all merely screaming at the divine gates. They are all pounding on the high stone walls of What Really Matters with their fleshy bloody useless little fists, wailing and crying and thinking they are all-powerful and omniscient, signifying nothing.

Maybe I`m delusional. Maybe I`m like Frodo in that first installment, when Aragorn asks him if he`s scared and Frodo says yes and Aragorn says, "Well, you`re not nearly scared enough" and Frodo`s eyes get all wide and trembly and he looks really really scared. Maybe I`m titanically naive to be so smug, thinking I`m covered in some hard titanium armor of informed wisdom and personal choice.

But, then again, maybe this is the ideal standpoint. Maybe this is exactly the type of energy we need to put out toward the world, not a fierce snarling buffalo stance of rage and dread, but one of calm laughter and fiery perspective and a well-honed Teflon spirit. Choose to wallow, and the world will give you wallow. Choose to believe they can`t get to you, not really, not ever, and they never will.

Because otherwise, if we just give in to the paranoia and the anxiety and the credit card companies and Rumsfeld`s tiny gleaming black marble eyes boring like poison into the heart of the cosmos, life shrivels into a hollow nub and all is lost. And what fun is that?
# Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
# Mark`s column archives are here

Mark Morford`s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. Subscribe to this column at sfgate.com/newsletters.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…

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http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-battle…
Battleground states poll:
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Alle Umfragen im Überblick:

National 2004 Presidential Race Polls Bush vs Kerry

http://realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry_hth.html

[bares@nobles]

Übrigens wählen lt. Statistik 90% der unentschlossenen Wähler den Herausforderer.
Das heisst der Amtsinhaber (in diesem Falle Bush) muss über 50% in den Umfragen liegen, um überhaupt eine Chance zu haben.

Bush vs. Kerry 43 : 43 in Umfragen, heisst dann bei Wahlen 44 für Bush und 56 für Kerry.
Natürlich muss man den Nader Faktor auch noch berücksichtigen.

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Wednesday, May 26, 2004
War News for May 26, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Two Russian contractors, two Iraqis killed in ambush near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers killed, six wounded in mortar attack near Iskandariyah.

Bring ‘em on: Six insurgents killed, one US soldier wounded in firefight near Tikrit.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqis wounded by IED near Balad Ruz.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi police chief wounded in assassination attempt near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier wounded in RPG attack on Baghdad police station.

Bring ‘em on: Bulgarian troops under mortar fire near Karbala.

Bring ‘em on: Nine Iraqis killed in Najaf fighting.

One US soldier killed, two injured in vehicle accident near ad-Dwar.

Report from Sadr City. “In the past month, seven Iraqis, including the chairman of Sadr City`s version of a city council, were killed in separate incidents, an Iraqi police official said. In every case, their bodies were hung in public with attached signs accusing them of being American spies.”

More desperate measures. “’The thought that OPFOR is now being thrown into the mix in Iraq is deeply shocking because it absolutely shows where we are now,’ said retired Army colonel Kenneth Allard, an author and lecturer on military history and strategy. ‘We`ve always managed to maintain the basic integrity of the training base. That is the seed corn of the Army.’… Until now, OPFOR has been considered off limits for deployment to foreign wars. The Army`s philosophy was, ‘the more you train in peace, the less you bleed in war,’ Allard said. The increase in violence in Iraq has forced the Pentagon to sustain a larger land force in Iraq than planned and for a longer - at this point, indefinite - period.”

Something done right. “The senior Muslim religious leader in the Iraqi city of Samarra inspected the jail at Forward Operating Base Brassfield-Mora earlier this month to check on the condition of Iraqi prisoners being held there by the 1st Infantry Division, a 1st ID spokesman said.”

Anatomy of an ambush. “The unidentified American soldier, a young military police officer, was carried from the gate by her four comrades, nervous, jittery men whose fear seemed to throb in their eyes. The wounded soldier writhed in her own blood and shrieked, her voice climbing and ebbing suddenly as if she had run out of breath. ‘Hold on, we`ll be there in 10 minutes,’ one soldier said, lifting her onto the hood of their Humvee as a crowd of Iraqis gathered and the police waved their guns.”

Commentary

Opinion: “This is called staying the course. The only course an immoral war can follow is one of unrelenting tragedy and permanent mistrust. It cannot be a surprise that a certain number of soldiers did not care about Iraqi prisoners when the commander in chief has yet to seriously acknowledge, let alone apologize for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. It cannot be a surprise that the military continues to make mistakes and then blithely tells the press the victims had evil intentions when the commander in chief has yet to apologize for a single mistake outside of the prison abuse scandal. On Monday Bush issued a five-point plan to stabilize Iraq. No five-point plan can come from a president whose war had no point. Under him, staying the course will continue to mean the blowing to bits of brides, grooms, mothers, and children. The only credible plan is one where Bush announces that he has changed course -- right out of Iraq.”

Analysis: “It has become an article of faith among neo-conservatives that, as one of their number - syndicated columnist Mona Charen - recently put it, ‘the question of the moment is not whether we`ve done enough good, but whether we`ve been tough enough’….Commanders on the ground knew it was a disaster and, with White House backing, eventually agreed to lift the siege and permit a former Revolutionary Guard general, who had been cashiered under Chalabi`s ‘de-Ba`athization’ program, to organize a local security force that includes other ex-Ba`athists, and which so far has also kept the peace. Denounced as ‘appeasement’ by the neo-cons, that agreement is now seen by the uniformed military, as well as the realists in the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the British Foreign Office - who have always considered the neo-cons` dreams of ‘transforming’ Iraq into a democratic, pro-Western, pro-Israel state fanciful - as the model for dealing with other restive parts of the country, including the Shi`ite south.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Two Vermont Guardsmen killed in Iraq.

Local story: California Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Ohio soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Ohio Guardsman wounded in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 3:03 AM
Comments (8)

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Derrick Z. Jackson: `Bush`s blind leadership`
Date: Wednesday, May 26 @ 09:27:06 EDT
Topic: Commander-In-Thief

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe

IN NEED OF blind obedience as he stays the course in Iraq, President Bush went to the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., on Monday. Rows of military officers, with not a hint of dissent, clapped like choir boys as Bush said, "The terrorists and Saddam loyalists would rather see many Iraqis die than have any live in freedom."

This is the same Bush who chose to see between 4,000 and 11,000 Iraqi civilians die, according to human rights groups, in an invasion and occupation based on nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Bush said he will stay the course for an Iraq that "protects basic rights," even as a stream of photos exposing prison camp abuse by American soldiers is released.

Bush said, "A free Iraq will always have a friend in the United States of America." At the rate we are going, it will be any wonder if we will have any friends left in Iraq by the time it is "free." Last week, 40 people died in a US military airstrike on a house. The White House said that it was a safe house for terrorists. Residents who lived nearby said it was the site of a wedding party.



A Reuters story from the site of the airstrike said, "Standing over 3-year-old Kholoud al-Mohammed, who held a cookie in her hand and cried, Mamdouh Harajee listed off the names of the dead from a complex web of relatives who attended.

"`She lost her mother and father. Another family of eight lost six members. Another family lost four,` he said as he looked down on the bandaged child. `It was just a wedding.` "

The top American military spokesman in Iraq, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, said: "There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration. There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."

But the Associated Press obtained a videotape it said was shot by the wedding cameraman, who was killed in the attack. The videotape, according to the AP, showed "fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans, and brightly colored beddings used for celebrations, scattered about the bombed out tent." The AP story said the tape captured the travel of "a dozen white pickup trucks speeding through the desert escorting the bridal car -- decorated with colorful ribbons. The bride wears a Western-style white bridal dress and veil."

On Monday, Kimmitt showed the press slides that he said indicated large amounts of illegal drugs, weapons, and materials to make bombs. "The activities that we saw happening on the ground were somewhat inconsistent with a wedding party," Kimmitt said. Furthermore, Kimmitt claimed, "we have no evidence of any children being killed on the ground."

But the AP actually interviews survivors, unlike the US government, which bombs them, waits for survivors to straggle into an office and then offers families an average of about $400 per dead Iraqi victim, compared to an average of $1.8 million being given to the victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Relatives said at least 10 children died in the airstrike. The bride and groom were said to have been killed.

As gruesome as any of the photos from the Abu Ghraib prison is the AP`s interview with Haleema Shihab. When the bombing started, the 32-year-old Shihab said she started running, clutching her 7-month-old son Yousef in one arm, grabbing the hand of her 5-year-old son Hamza, and running alongside her 15-year-old son Ali. She fell and broke a leg. As she lay hurt, the explosion of another missile hurt her arm. Shihab said Hamza yelled "Mommy!" Ali, the oldest, said he was bleeding.

"That`s the last time I heard him." Shihab said. "Hamza fell from my hand and was gone. Only Yousef stayed in my arms. Ali had been hit and killed. I couldn`t go back."

Shahib said a stepdaughter found her. They hid in a bomb crater. "We were bleeding from 3 a.m. to sunrise." A US soldier came. Instead of asking for help, Shihab played dead as the soldier kicked her. She said the soldier was laughing. "I pretended I was dead so he wouldn`t kill me," Shahib said.

This is called staying the course. The only course an immoral war can follow is one of unrelenting tragedy and permanent mistrust. It cannot be a surprise that a certain number of soldiers did not care about Iraqi prisoners when the commander in chief has yet to seriously acknowledge, let alone apologize for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. It cannot be a surprise that the military continues to make mistakes and then blithely tells the press the victims had evil intentions when the commander in chief has yet to apologize for a single mistake outside of the prison abuse scandal.

On Monday Bush issued a five-point plan to stabilize Iraq. No five-point plan can come from a president whose war had no point. Under him, staying the course will continue to mean the blowing to bits of brides, grooms, mothers, and children. The only credible plan is one where Bush announces that he has changed course -- right out of Iraq.

Derrick Z. Jackson`s e-mail address is [e-mail].

© Copyright 2004 The Boston Globe

Reprinted from The Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/
oped/articles/2004/05/26/bushs_blind_leadership/

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The Long Goodbye
President Bush offered a plan for staying in Iraq. Here are some suggestions for getting out
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Updated: 12:30 p.m. ET May 26, 2004

May 25 - George W. Bush’s speech on Iraq last night was the first of many, we’re told, as he mounts a kind of international whistle-stop tour to convince America and the world that the mess in Mesopotamia isn’t really as horrible as it looks. By the end of June the president may even find some time to campaign in Baghdad. (I’m just guessing here, but he will be next door in Turkey for a NATO summit.)

Let’s hope his stump speech improves. On Monday he repeated pretty much the same old points he’s made many times before—been making for a year now, in fact—as if he’d been on the right track all along. And that leaves those of us who try to stay in touch with reality making some of the same old points we’ve made before, too. Sorry about that. But for one last time, I hope, let’s look at what it actually will take to get us out of Iraq.

First and foremost, we have to be perfectly clear that getting out really is our goal. Until we make that case, neither the Iraqi people nor the international community is going to trust our motives. That doesn’t mean we should "cut and run." It means we should have honest intentions and be honest about them.

Now, you may think that’s what the president was saying, but it’s not. The administration’s cherished goal has been, and remains, to create "a stable, friendly, Israel-recognizing, [U.S. military] base-tolerating and oil-producing ‘friend’ who will allow us to thumb our nose at the rest of the region with impunity," says a former member of the proconsular authority in Baghdad. You can add "democracy" as icing on the cake, and from afar that recipe sounds mighty appetizing. But Iraqis just haven’t bought into our vision for their country, which is precisely why quite a few are fighting us, and why so many more are tolerating or supporting them. President Bush paid lip service to the notion that "Iraqis are a proud people who resent foreign control of their affairs, just as we would." But it’s as if he didn’t hear his own words. He should think about them more carefully. We all should

In that light, let’s go over the president’s five-step program for Iraq, point by point.

Step one: On June 30 the United States and its Coalition Provisional Authority "will hand over authority to a sovereign Iraqi government." But what does "sovereignty" mean? Not "supreme power," certainly, which is the way my old Webster’s Collegiate defined it. Iraqi sovereignty, as envisioned by this administration, is totally dependent on American power. The job of choosing this government has been subcontracted to Lakhdar Brahimi, a veteran U.N. envoy from Algeria. But the United States has to sign off on the names he presents—and five weeks from deadline, we still don’t know who they are. There’s not much that can be done to make this bad plan better at this stage, except to favor candidates with strong nationalist credentials. If not, even as an interim regime, they’ll have no credibility at all in Iraq, the region or most of the world.

Step two: "Establish the stability and security that democracy requires," as the president puts it. Obviously American troops are going to have to do this job in the near term, and at least 138,000 will be required, according to President Bush. The new U.N. resolution proposed by Washington and London will keep them under U.S. command, which is another obvious contradiction when we’re talking about "sovereignty," but there’s probably no way around that. Meanwhile Iraqi police and security forces—charged with cracking down on other Iraqis—are supposed to number a couple hundred thousand. It looks like several of the ethnic and sectarian militias will remain armed and ready to fight, too, very possibly against each other. But the president says the Iraqi Army that’s being cobbled together will have only about 35,000 soldiers.

That’s nothing in this neighborhood. Every country on Iraq’s border except Kuwait has a military more than twice that big. Iran and Turkey have forces of half a million each. So the actual defense of Iraq, under the Bush plan, will be left in the hands of the U.S.A., which then has an excuse for permanent U.S. military bases. If we really want to get out, we’ll help Iraq broaden its range of defensive alliances while pulling together an Iraqi Army—and air force—that’s actually able to defend the homeland on its own.

Step three: Rebuilding infrastructure "so that a free Iraq can quickly gain economic independence." President Bush mentioned that this country, which has the second-largest petroleum reserves in the world, has managed to squeeze out about 2 million barrels a day, earning "nearly $6 billion so far this year." The United States spends that much on the occupation in six weeks, and will have to invest hundreds of millions more. Washington will be tempted to get major payback by guaranteeing that U.S.-based companies win the largest share of eventual oil contracts. The lack of transparency in Halliburton contracts and other deals fuels suspicions about this sort of thing, and the more we try to defend those interests, the more resented and the more bogged down we’re likely to be. The world thinks this war was about American control of Middle Eastern oil. At this point, if we want out of Iraq, we’ve got to prove it’s not.

Which brings us to step four: enlisting "additional international support for Iraq’s transition." That means persuading other countries to send troops—and quickly. But altruism is in very short supply these days. If the goal is to attract greater international participation in the risks of pacifying Iraq, then the potential benefits of the Iraqi market—including oil exploration and production—have to be opened clearly and explicitly to all comers.

At the same time, the U.N. and previously reluctant allies like France and Germany need to know they’ll have a real voice in decision-making over the months to come. The new Security Council resolution still relegates the U.N. to a largely technocratic role preparing for the elections. The bottom line: Paris, Berlin, Moscow and Beijing still don’t think there’s going to be any decent political or monetary return if they invest blood and treasure. As a result, it’s likely that the new resolution will win little support, even if it manages to pass without a veto.

Step five: In January, if all goes according to President Bush’s plan, Iraq will hold elections for a transitional assembly to take the place of the interim government which has supplanted the so-called governing council. The transitional assembly will serve as a de facto legislature appointing another transitional government and drawing up a constitution that will be submitted to a referendum in the fall of 2005, opening the way for election of "a permanent government by the end of next year."

And then can we get out? I’d like to think so, if we make it that far. But when President Bush ends his speech with the vow to "hold this hard-won ground for the realm of liberty," I can’t help but think he means to keep us in Iraq for many years to come.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

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A Gaping Hole
President Bush’s latest speech was filled with rhetorical flourishes—but it wasn’t enough to mask the gap between the words and the reality in Iraq
Web-exclusive Commentary
By Richard Wolffe
Newsweek
Updated: 12:42 p.m. ET May 26, 2004

May 25 - In years to come, historians will wonder why this Bush administration enjoyed such a strong reputation for its foreign policy for so long. After all, it was only a few weeks ago that Washington’s pundit class, spurred on by the rival presidential campaigns, declared that George W. Bush was a shoo-in as long as the focus remained on Iraq.

How times have changed. The president’s grand vision for Iraq—now known as his five-point plan—was supposed to get the full ballyhoo on Monday evening. The magical words “prime time” were thrown around, even though the networks chose to broadcast shows like "Fear Factor" instead of the president’s fine words. But no amount of rhetorical flourish can mask the disarray of the administration’s policy in Iraq, and the president’s continuing struggle to speak convincingly to the American and Iraqi people.

First the strong stuff. The president reached for the rhetorical heights by citing the horrific beheading of Nicholas Berg, as part of his latest to convince Americans that Iraq and Al Qaeda are part of one and the same War on Terror. “The return of tyranny to Iraq would be an unprecedented terrorist victory, and a cause for killers to rejoice,” Bush said. “It would also embolden the terrorists, leading to more bombings, more beheadings and more murders of the innocent around the world.” A new and free Iraq, he explained, would represent “a decisive blow to terrorism at the heart of its power, and a victory for the security of America and the civilized world.”

It’s hard to remember how many times Bush has tried and failed to convince the world that the enemy in Iraq is part of the global terrorist plot. But it was clear within hours that he has failed to convince members of his own cabinet on this critical point. Speaking on ABC’s "Good Morning America," Colin Powell strained to avoid the T word. “These former regime elements, these anti-Coalition people, as we call them, these terrorists, are determined to keep Iraq from having self-government, to keep Iraq from electing its own leaders,” the secretary of State said. “They want to go back to the past, and we can’t allow that to happen.”

As Powell well knows, there’s a wide spectrum of insurgents covered by his comments: Saddam loyalists, Iraqi nationalists, and, ultimately radical Islamists. Who is the Coalition fighting in Iraq? In spite of the president’s speech, U.S. commanders don’t know the full answer to that question. “We still don`t have as good a view as we`d like to have about the nature of the insurgency and who`s in charge and where the cells move and how they operate, etcetera,” Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the region, told senators last week. “It’s an intelligence-intensive task.”

Voters might not care to find out who the enemy is, as long as they’re shooting and bombing in the direction of Coalition troops. But they will care about the president’s warning, buried toward the bottom of his speech, about what is to come: “There`s likely to be more violence before the transfer of sovereignty, and after the transfer of sovereignty.” That violence has already driven down support for the war and the president himself. According to the latest Washington Post poll, 58 percent of Americans now disapprove of his handling of Iraq. Those figures are only likely to rise as the violence continues, not least because the bloodshed is directly linked to the political instability in Iraq. As General Abizaid explained last week: “The situation will become more violent even after sovereignty because it will remain unclear what`s going to happen between the interim government and elections.”

There’s a reason why the Bush administration opposed for so long the suggestion that the United Nations—or Iraqi politicians—should take a formal role in running Iraq. It’s messy. You spend time negotiating with others, instead of following your instincts. And you may well find yourself, at the end of it all, with vocal and powerful critics who still disagree with you. That’s the prospect for the next seven months in Iraq. America’s critics—at the U.N. and in Iraq—will grow in stature. Inside Iraq, as political figures emerge, the process will look even messier as rival groups fight (politically) with one another and with the Bush administration. If President Bush wanted to reassure voters he was on course to a free and happy Iraq, he may find himself facing more disappointment this fall.

Then there’s the messiness of the U.S. role in Iraq after the scheduled handover of sovereignty on June 30, which is less than six weeks away. Bush suggested at the Army War College that U.S. officials in Iraq would be no different from their counterparts anywhere else in the world. “Our embassy in Baghdad will have the same purpose as any other American embassy, to assure good relations with a sovereign nation,” he explained. “America and other countries will continue to provide technical experts to help Iraq`s ministries of government, but these ministries will report to Iraq`s new prime minister.” Normally such technical expertise doesn’t include thousands of troops in a combat zone and billions of dollars in reconstruction money. “Our function turns from running Iraq to advising and supporting the Iraqi government,” said one senior State department official. “But of course everybody knows we are going to have to do the security because the new Iraqi government can’t take on the burden of security, and we have got the money, or most of the money.”

That kind of gaping hole between the president’s words and the reality in Iraq poses huge political risks for Bush. Many Republicans have blamed “events” in Iraq for driving down the president’s numbers. Yet those events look worse if voters are unprepared for them. In Iraq’s case, the fanfare of June 30 will give way to reports of U.S. forces and U.S. diplomats engaging with Iraqis in hostile, and sadly fatal, situations.

The Bush years weren’t supposed to be like this. This was billed as a team of heavy hitters and big thinkers, led by a president with an historic sense of mission. Compared to the supposedly feckless Clinton crowd, Bush’s foreign policy brains were reshaping the world. There were new alliances with countries like Pakistan, new deals with the Great Powers of Russia and China. This time was supposed to be, in the words of Condoleezza Rice, the post-9/11 era—the next phase of history beyond the post-cold-war era.

Instead it looks like the Iraq era, shaped by what the president now acknowledges is an occupation. “Iraqis are proud people who resent foreign control of their affairs, just as we would,” he said on Monday. The challenge for Bush is to convince Iraqis and Americans that the U.S. is no longer resented in Iraq. It’s not clear his five-point plan can get anywhere close to that goal, any time soon.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

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Talk of independence but US wants to keep Iraq on a leash
May 27, 2004


Behind the rhetoric, one thing is clear: the Americans intend to retain control, writes Paul McGeough.

Diplomatic language is funny stuff. You`d think that "occupation" and "sovereignty" were mutually exclusive, but not in the great Iraq debate. The experts will split hairs about whether sovereignty or administrative power comes into play on June 30.

So let`s call it control, and look at who will exercise it - Iraqis or foreigners?

In his Monday speech, the US President, George Bush, spoke of "full sovereignty".

But if it is to be "full" and "sovereign" there should be none of the palaver we have at the UN where the Security Council is being asked to vote on a motion that would authorise US forces in Iraq to "take all measures" to keep order and which leaves their presence in the country open-ended.

Equally, if a Security Council motion is needed to legitimise an ongoing foreign presence in Iraq, why the unseemly plan for an exchange of letters at a later date on a range of vital issues, like the relationship between the Iraqis and foreign forces and the treatment of detainees and prisoners?

The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, would not be saying that the Iraqis have veto power over foreign troops when, clearly, Bush wants to keep that power for himself.

The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, very decently conceded that the US would "consult" the Iraqis on security issues, and Blair seemed to be all the way with Baghdad, when he said: "The final political control remains with the Iraqi government".

But there`s no room for consultation when Powell says: "Ultimately, however, it comes down to the US armed forces protecting themselves or in some way accomplishing their mission in a way that might not be in total consonance with what the Iraqi interim government might want to do at a particular moment in time". Blair, too, seems to be buying wriggle room with his talk of Iraqi "political" decisions as opposed to what Powell might describe as American "security" decisions.

Add to all of that Bush`s declaration that the US wants to "make sure that the reconstruction money we have set aside is well spent" and his announcement that its embassy in Baghdad is to have regional offices across Iraq to ensure just that, and it seems the US plans to stay in control of Iraq`s purse strings.

Even Iraqi control of the country`s single greatest asset - its massive reserves of oil - is in some doubt, with reports that its petroleum revenue will be supervised by a five-man international committee on which there will be only one Iraqi.

So, with all this caveat confetti hanging in the air, it was hardly surprising when Bush briefed reporters in the Oval Office after Monday night`s speech, that he baulked when asked if it was imperative that Iraq become a democracy or that it have free elections. In other words, were they free as a nation to decide their own fate?

Bush would have us believe in his speech that the enemy in Iraq is world terrorism - but only days earlier one of his senior military chiefs in the region admitted that the Americans didn`t really have a clue about who the enemy was. And despite his failure to find weapons of mass destruction or to prove an Iraqi link to global terrorism, the President tied American "sons and daughters in Mosul and Karbala and Baghdad" to "battles in the mountains of Afghanistan and ... orange alert(s) and ricin and dirty bomb(s)".

The White House`s new Iraq plan is its old plan - repackaged as "five points" in the hope that some might be fooled into believing that Washington knows what it`s doing, even if voters are deserting Bush in droves.

However, if the Americans stay in Iraq for the long haul - and there is enough on the record to indicate that is the plan - then so, too, are the insurgents and so, too, is violence; and therefore so, too, are all the failures that we can see on the ground in US-liberated Afghanistan where there is little stability and no security. Without these, there will be no useful economic or civil development in Iraq or in Afghanistan.

This week the British academic Adam Robert invoked the withering 1939 description of Slovakia`s independence to make his point on Iraq post-June 30: "... the same independence as a dog on a leash. As long as the dog trots quietly and cheerfully at his master`s side - and in the same direction - he is quite free; if he starts out on any tangent of his own, he feels the pull at once."

His point is well made. The US is discovering at great cost that it`s very difficult to put a pitt bull on a lead and, come July 1, the Iraqi terrier will probably be just as obstreperous as it has been for the past year.

Copyright © 2004. The Sydney Morning Herald.

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May 26, 2004
`Large Number` of Rebels Slain; Cleric`s Aide Seized, U.S. Says
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
and KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 26 — American troops killed a "very large number" of rebels during fighting in urban Shiite areas today and captured a lieutenant of the radical cleric who has led a movement resisting occupation forces for more than a month, American officials said.

The battles since early April between militias loyal to the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, and American-led occupation forces have complicated preparations for the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30, including the formation of a caretaker government.

An Iraqi nuclear scientist, Hussain al-Shahristani, has been identified as the leading candidate for prime minister in the period leading up to January 2005 elections, but Iraqi and American officials said today that there were others under consideration.

Fierce fighting erupted early today in the cemetery area of the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, residents said. Local medics said up to 26 Iraqis were killed and more than 30 were injured. They did not specify if the casualties were rebel or civilian.

The American forces also captured a lieutenant to Mr. Sadr, Said Riyad al-Nouri, Mr. Sadr`s brother-in-law.

He was handed over to Iraqi authorities for prosecution in connection with the April 2003 murder of a rival of Mr. Sadr.

In the Sadr City neighborhood in Baghdad, rebels using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fought with American troops, and an American military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said "a very large number" of rebels were killed in both places.

"We are constantly chipping away at his militia," said General Kimmitt at a news briefing in Baghdad, referring to the fighters who say they are allied behind Mr. Sadr.

"We are continuing to chip away at his militia that is there in Najaf, as we saw from operations that we held last night."

He offered no specific casualty figures, telling reporters later that "less than 100" fighters died. There were no reported deaths among coalition troops in the Najaf and Sadr City fighting.

In other violence today, two Russian technicians were killed and at least five others were wounded when their convoy was hit by rebel gunfire, news services said.

The technicians were employees of the Russian company Interenergoservis, which said today it would evacuate all its remaining staff from Iraq. The firm`s workers have been abducted and killed in previous attacks.

Russian engineers have specialized in maintaining Iraq`s fragile electrical system.

In Baqubah, militants driving a black Opel attacked the Al-Khalis chief of police with small-arms fire, killing both the chief and his driver, General Kimmitt said.

In southwest Baghdad, a roadside bomb was detonated, killing three Iraqis and wounding nine, the general said. Two suspects were killed in the explosion and one was wounded, he said, adding that two Iraqi police officers were also wounded in the blast.

The developments came a day after the the Shrine of Imam Ali, one of the holiest sites for Shiite Muslims, suffered minor damage in clashes between American forces and insurgents loyal to Mr. Sadr in Najaf and in the neighboring city of Kufa.

"We just can`t tell you how much we decry the attempts by Moktada`s militia, Moktada possibly himself, to violate the sacred holy shrines of the Shia religion for his own personal gain, for his own personal advancement," General Kimmitt said Tuesday.

Aides to Mr. Sadr said on Tuesday that American fire had damaged the shrine. And before the shrine was damaged, an aide to Mr. Sadr, Hosam Mosawi, strongly criticized the deaths in the two cities and raised the concern that the shrines would become targets for American soldiers.

The fighting, both with the Shiite militia and Sunni insurgents linked to the former Iraq government, has shown little sign of abating as the June 30 deadline for the handover of authority to Iraqi authorities looms.

A United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, is expected to announce the lineup of the caretaker government next week.

"The report that there is actually a candidate nailed down is incorrect," the Coalition Provisional Authority`s senior adviser, Dan Senor, said at a news briefing in Baghdad.

The Iraqi Governing Council president, Sheikh Ghazi Mashal Ajil Yawir, told reporters today that there were several candidates. "The debate is still going on," he said.

Christine Hauser reported from Baghdad for this article and Kirk Semple reported from New York.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Cuba libre
11.Teil

MIAMI - Florida is the Ground Zero of the US presidential election in November, according to Republican Machiavelli Karl Rove. Whoever wins Florida wins the presidency, just like in 2000 - but not with hanging chads this time, it`s hoped.

Ground Zero in Florida has to be Versailles: not a replica of the French chateau, rather a Cuban restaurant in the famous Calle Ocho (8th Street) of Miami`s Little Havana, close to the stupendously named Virgen Milagrosa (Miraculous Virgin) supermarket and an avalanche of stickers promoting Love for Mayor (not a declaration of love, but support for the also stupendously named Jay Love in his campaign for mayor of Miami-Dade County, running against the more Hispanic Jimmy Morales).

All the big shots have made their pilgrimage to Versailles: Bush Sr and Jr, Bill Clinton, an array of Democrats. John Kerry, if he harbors any expectation of winning Florida, must urgently hit a mojito, order a picadillo a cubana and hold an impromptu town meeting on site: what was the Latin Quarter at the end of the 19th century, and later clustered around the Tower cinema in Little Havana, is now a full-fledged Central American city, with all kinds of services catering to immigrants not only from Cuba but from Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.

Versailles is undiluted Cuban-American central casting. One finds everything from Bay of Pigs veterans and aged clones of Tony Montana in Brian de Palma`s 1980s cocaine epic Scarface to young Central Americans starting a new life and whole families parading their new SUV with sunroof and DVD. Everybody seems to sport an I`ve-made-it-in-America smile. When Christopher Columbus discovered America via the Caribbean, he apparently asked himself if he had not stumbled upon the Garden of Eden - instead of India. That`s understandable. In the name of God, money or Marx, Spanish conquistadores, Yankee capitalists and El Comandante Fidel Castro have tried to mold Cuba to their dreams. Seems like geography has resisted against history: if Cuba remains a paradisiac place, Cubans everywhere resemble the Children of Paradise.

Cuban-Americans, in their beautiful, melodic, salsa-tinged Spanish intonations, joke that "the enemy", Fidel, has nightmares about Versailles. But the fact is El Comandante is still there. This crucial 8 percent of the Florida electorate tends to vote en bloc: 82 percent did so in 2000 for George W Bush. And their priority is obvious: to get rid of Fidel. Just to pronounce these dreaded five letters is enough to release the Furies from the bowels of many a Cuban-American.

El Comandante raps
Bush got his votes in 2000 in essence because of tireless campaigning by brother Jeb, the governor of Florida. Now, the Bush administration has finally launched its own public relations blitz to promote what nobody since John F Kennedy has managed to concoct: its own mojito - two-thirds ideology, one-third political opportunism - to "expedite the ending of the dictatorship in Cuba", according to the State Department. A Cuban-American, Mel Martinez, presides over the Bush-appointed Commission for Assistance to Cuba Libre (Free Cuba) alongside Secretary Colin Powell. The Bush administration has already imposed restrictions to slow the flow of remittances by Cuban-Americans and has restricted travel to Cuba to only once every three years. This means that Cuban-Americans themselves now have to wait an eternity to see their relatives still living on the island, and vice-versa.

Peter Kornbluh, who follows Cuba closely at the National Security Archive, says the Bush program is "an Operation Mongoose without the CIA covert sabotage and assassination efforts". It involves, for instance, wacky propaganda claims, such as Cuba having the capacity to produce biological weapons. Silvia Wilhelm, director of Puentes Cubanos, a non-profit organization in Miami, says the restrictions on remittances and travel will only hurt the average Cuban, not the Fidel regime. Even Cuba`s leading dissidents are saying Cubans have to organize the post-Fidel era, not Washington.

Is Fidel losing any sleep? Not a wink. He denounced the Bush program in front of a million people in Havana on May 1, International Workers Day. His verve is intact: "You are attacking Cuba for petty, political reasons, trying to obtain electoral support from a shrinking group of renegades and mercenaries who have no ethical principles whatsoever. You lack the moral right to speak of terrorism because you are surrounded by a bunch of murderers who have caused the death of thousands of Cubans through terrorist methods."

El Comandante is defiant: "This people can be exterminated - it`s as well you know this - or wiped off the face of the Earth, but it cannot be subjugated nor put once again into the humiliating position of a United States neo-colony." El Comandante is an acute observer of US political life: "The only thing you know about Cuba are the lies that spill forth from the ravenous mouths of the corrupt and insatiable mob of former [president Fulgencio] Batista supporters and their descendents who are experts in electoral fraud and capable of electing president of the United States someone who did not obtain enough votes to claim victory." And El Comandante always keeps his sense of humor: "Since you have decided that the die is cast, I have the pleasure of saying farewell like the Roman gladiators who were about to fight in the arena: Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you!"

So Fidel is not losing any sleep, as he has not lost any sleep over the 40-year-old, thick-as-a-brick, Kennedy-imposed trade embargo. Many Cuban-Americans are also having second thoughts. Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, believes the embargo is "sort of a moral position, but the freedom of Cuba is what matters". The embargo is like the Tablets of Moses: it will only go when Fidel goes. But Garcia would have liked the Bushies to do more for Cuban civil society - as they promised. Other businessmen are also considering the possibility of the end of the embargo, but only under strict controls so Fidel`s regime - supposed to be dynastic (brother Raul is next in line) won`t benefit.

Felipe Valls, Versailles`s owner, hurrying to catch a flight to Spain, expresses the majority view: he will vote for Bush. For powerful Cuban-Americans, Kerry is considered "soft" on Fidel and a flip-flopper to boot - one more proof that Karl Rove spinning really sticks. Some of these powerful Cuban-Americans live not far from Little Havana, in fabulous mansions in Coral Gables, and are members of the Republican Business Advisory Council. But nothing can be taken for granted. Both Bush and Kerry have to prepare. When they drop by Versailles in the near future to order their rice and beans and then wash it all down with the Sugarcane Express that is a Cuban cup of coffee, they will both face the same question: What are they really going to do about Cuba, and how fast?

Diplomats tell Asia Times Online that Cubans who did not or could not leave the island now regard Fidel with a sort of bitter sympathy: they`ve been through so much together before arriving at the current impasse. It`s like the feeling in Spain during the last years of the Francisco Franco era. By the way, both the Franco and Castro families come from the same region in Spain. They got on very well. Maybe that`s the secret of a dictatorship: if you stay in power for a generation, and if you do not kill a lot of people in the last stretch, your superhuman iron will and good luck will compensate in the public eye for all your mistakes, your crimes and all the mess you created. The future of Cuba does not depend on Fidel. Cubans are just waiting for him to die. But in a US presidential election, 40 years on, he`s still a huge player.

Florida flip-flopping
So what is Kerry doing about all this? Progressive Democrats are terribly worried. In the past few months, Kerry has all but endorsed the Tony Montana-style, anti-Fidel paranoia of some powerful Cuban-Americans, not to mention the ramblings of ultra-wealthy expatriates from Venezuela also living in fabulous mansions in Coral Gables. Kerry has been sounding exactly like the two key Latin America policymakers of the Bush administration: the ideological extremists Roger Noriega at the State Department and Otto Reich at the White House. Both Noriega and Reich are actively involved in a PR blitz accusing both Fidel and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of a plot to destabilize Latin America - something that always provokes interminable rounds of roaring laughter in Latin American diplomatic circles.

Here`s a flagrant case of flip-flopping. In 2000 Kerry said the embargo was a product only of the "politics of Florida", and should be reconsidered. But now, as far as El Comandante is concerned, Kerry favors the embargo. Even conservative Republicans in agricultural states are against it. When asked whether he would consider lifting the embargo, Kerry said, "Not unilaterally, not now, no." The problem is that the lifting of the embargo would be unilateral, because no other country in the world bothers to follow it. Why did Kerry change his mind? Because he met a group of top, powerful Cuban-Americans in Miami late last year.

Before his presidential campaign, when he was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry was in favor of a more rational and much more principled US policy for Latin America. The whole problem amounts to the fact that Kerry still does not know how to position himself to capture both the Cuban-American vote and the Democratic progressive vote.

Asia Times Online has learned the Kerry campaign`s Tony Montana-style paranoia centers on one fact: by all means, do everything to prevent something like Al Gore`s Palm Beach County election disaster in 2000. The bright side is a series of polls according to which only 60 percent of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade and Broward counties are planning to vote for Bush, and the number may even be falling by the day with the scandals piling up.

The Kerry campaign strategy to capture the 40 percent of remaining voters, if not more, would be something like the first Clinton campaign against George Bush Sr: Clinton accused Bush of being soft on Havana; he bashed Fidel; and he bashed every government that had good relations with Cuba. This explains Kerry accusing Hugo Chavez of being anti-democratic and also a supporter of narco-terrorism in Colombia (no evidence anywhere supports this outlandish charge). In a sublimely ironic twist of fate, Chavez supports Kerry for president, as well as virtually any democratically elected Latin American leader.

Kerry - not to mention the Bush administration itself - obviously does not understand the extremely complex populist nationalism practiced by Chavez. Nor does he understand the basic deal in the relationship between Chavez and Fidel: Chavez provides subsidized oil deliveries to Cuba, and Fidel provides thousands of urgently needed doctors and technicians to Venezuela. The Kerry rhetoric is only concerned with capturing votes on Ground Zero.

Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, stresses: "There has been an increasingly vocal constituency within the Democratic Party - including labor, students, farm interests, multinational businesses and minorities - that has been advocating the adoption of a Latin America policy that is less belligerent, more balanced, and reflective of greater sensitivity to the region`s yearning for authentic democratization as well as its other political and economic aspirations, including addressing the issues of social justice throughout the region."

To sum it all up: if Kerry does not get his act together, Ralph Nader - not Bush - will outflank him and steal all these precious hundreds of thousands of Florida votes. Ground Zero, indeed.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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Miami vice and virtue

May 22, 2004

12.Teil

"You wanna go to war OK, say hello to my little friend."
- Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in Scarface, 1983

MIAMI - This is not your average US city. This is a city where almost everybody seems to be an expat - always ready to tell a harrowing story involving dangerous escape to freedom, political exile, starvation or all of the above. Political volcanoes in any part of the world reverberate in Miami - as trauma or as a new beginning. And so we have children of Haitian political prisoners studying at Miami Dade College, Sandinistas going capitalist in Hialeah, former Peruvian victims of the Shining Path playing their version of "El Condor Pasa", survivors of torture in Honduras opening shops on Biscayne Boulevard.

Miami has also the highest rate of violent crime in the United States. But most of the victims are not expats: they are black Americans.

Ten years ago, in Bill Clinton times, Miami was the epitome of fashion. The cocaine cowboys were gone, replaced by every model this side of Bratislava and every Italian playboy this side of the Via Veneto. It was a designer - Calvin Klein - who had put Miami back in the map, shooting an underwear ad on the roof of an art-deco hotel. It was a designer - Gianni Versace - who elevated Miami to fashion Valhalla, when he bought a fabulously kitschy house on Ocean Drive (today the house is a must backdrop for the digital-camera hordes).

For a time, New York and Los Angeles wanted to be Miami - so Miami became the epitome of cool. But now supermodels have been replaced by super-masses. Compounding the Disneyland effect, South Beach - celebrated in countless TV series - priced itself out and the fashion industry left to other sunnier pastures. Not trendy anymore, Miami had to come up with an ad campaign last year to tell the world how trendy it is.

But fashion is a vortex. Profiting from its fabulous 1930s South Beach art deco - a whole neighborhood of sleek, deserted hotels dripping with style - Miami had used its architecture to rebrand itself as a worldwide cultural destination. Then it rebranded itself again as a post-modernist festival. And now it is rebranding itself again via Mimo - Miami modernism, a style that flourished between the end of World War II and the beginning of the Vietnam War, when the US was truly the benign superpower.

Mimo is pure sun, sea, sand, sex and lots of money. Mimo shines best on the pedestrian mall of Lincoln Road - not by accident the most popular place in contemporary Miami. Unlike almost everywhere in America, here the pedestrian is king. And this was built in the early 1960s, when the ultimate car and full air conditioning were the answer to all of humanity`s problems. Florida architect Morris Lapidus, the king of Mimo, knew what he was doing. He used to say that "a car never bought anything". Today, Floridians park their air-conditioned US$40,000-plus sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) to come to Mimoland and ... walk.

It`s kosher
The cocaine cowboys may be gone - replaced by memorabilia shops in South Beach selling framed photos-cum-Tony Montana`s immortal lines in Scarface. Jewish-Americans, on the other hand, keep coming. As in New York or California, they are certified members of the US elite, huge political campaign contributors, their wealth and influence straddling politics and the media. One might suspect that the interests of the top end of the Jewish diaspora might be well defended by the Washington neo-cons and their association with the Likudniks in Israel. That`s not exactly the case.
An extremely wealthy, politically active but professionally retired Jewish population is installed all over South Florida - from Coconut Grove to the mansions in Coral Gables, from Biscayne Bay to Fort Lauderdale and up north on the US 1 toward West Palm Beach. Many come from New York: unlike Ratso (Dustin Hoffman) in Midnight Cowboy, they have managed to live the full (retired) American dream, complete with mega-yachts and endless rounds of golf. Some are former Marines. Some voted for George W Bush in 2000 - even though they were not exactly fond of the faux Texan. It`s fair to say the majority votes Democrat. Among these are the Democrat majority in West Palm Beach, who in 2000 didn`t know whether they were voting for Al Gore or for arch-right-winger Pat Buchanan. Bush, as everyone knows, won Florida by 537 votes.

Now, among the palm trees, manicured gardens and swimming pools, the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign may be in deep trouble. The anger of the Jewish-American Democrat vote in South Florida has reached "mad as hell, can`t take it anymore" proportions. In West Palm Beach, they are going to the polling stations in November with clickers to count every voter in and out. Democratic candidate John Kerry has already been to a rally in Palm Beach, and will be back soon.

Karl Rove, the Republican acting Machiavelli, bets the current Bush administration`s Israel policy is enough to attract the Jewish-American swing vote. "Not really," says a wealthy retiree in Biscayne Bay. "Of course Israel`s security is paramount, but the most important thing is to come up with a viable peace process, and stick to it." He believes Kerry`s Israel policy will be "very sound". Karl Rove, meanwhile, may expect that straddling the seashore, Republicans will keep gaining ground in South Florida in the form of the new residents: increasingly affluent Cuban-Americans.

Many Jewish-Americans in South Florida are worried that they don`t seem to be able to notice any significant difference between Bush and Kerry. Gaza massacres notwithstanding, and now even with a condemnation by the United Nations Security Council, the perennial Bush line is that Israel "has every right to defend itself from terror", as the president confirmed on Tuesday in Washington to 4,500 supporters of the pro-Zionist lobby AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee).

Kerry has been mum regarding the appalling recent rampage in Gaza and the West Bank - where the UN has estimated that more than 1,100 Palestinians have been left homeless thanks to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon`s tanks. Both Kerry and Bush ignored the UN in all of their recent speeches. Kerry`s ads play incessantly all over South Florida TV. "But he still does not know how dangerous is Sharon`s idea of a Greater Israel in the Middle East," says a prominent Jewish-American in Hollywood (Florida, not California), Democrat and definitely not Zionist.

Hardcore
While its electoral prospects in South Florida may be dicey, the Bush administration at least has found one more way to seduce older, more conservative voters everywhere by attacking pornography - a thriving $10-billion-a-year industry. A "summer of censorship" is coming, courtesy of the Bush administration, and with Florida as a sex-for-cash paradise, controversy will abound.

According to the trade association Adult Video News, more than 11,000 porn videos hit the US market every year. There are no fewer than 800 million porn video and DVD (digital video disc) rentals every year. Porn is the ultimate Internet virus. According to Websense, an Internet software management company, there are more than 1.6 million porn webpages on its database (18 times as many as in a 2000 census). A recent Nielsen/Net Ratings study said one in every four Internet surfers in the US - something like 34 million people - uses the Net to check out porn.

Bruce Taylor, a high-profile anti-porn lawyer, was recently reappointed to the Justice Department, and he`s coming with all guns blazing. Everybody will be investigated - from cable TV to big hotel chains with pay-per-view "adult" movies. A CBS News investigation showed that 50 percent of guests at the Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, Sheraton and Holiday Inn hotel chains across the US buy porn videos: this is 70 percent of in-room profits. Porn videos last year made a $50 million profit for Comcast, one of the big cable-TV providers in the US. Satellite-only DirecTV made much more.

But the greatest pornography of all is the pornography of war - which finally hit the US in the face directly from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Jean Baudrillard, philosopher extraordinaire, revered by the best and the brightest at major US universities, has written a devastating text in the French daily Liberation. When read in the US, in the News Cafe in South Beach where Gianni Versace - before being killed by a deranged American fan - used to take his breakfast, the impact is even stronger. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld does not read Baudrillard. He should: "All this masquerade which crowns the ignominy of war - up to this travesty, this most ferocious of images (the most ferocious towards America) because the most phantasmagoric, and the most `reversible`, of this prisoner threatened by electrocution who became a whole mask, a member of Ku Klux Klan, crucified by his counterparts. Here, it`s really America that has electrocuted itself."

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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Georgia on his mind

May 27, 2004

13.Teil



Bush against Bush (Apr 30, `04)
Kerry, the Yankee muchacho (May 7, `04)
You have the right to be misinformed (May 8, `04) 08.05.04
An American tragedy ((May 11, `04) #16184
In the heart of Bushland (May 12, `04) #16186
The war of the snuff videos (May 13, `04) #16338
The Iraq gold rush (May 14, `04) #16340
The new beat generation (May 15, `04) #16342
Taliban in Texas: Big Oil hankers for old pals (May 18, `04) #16567
Life is a beach. Or is it? (May 19, `04) #16568
Cuba libre (May 21, `04) #16893
Miami vice and virtue (May 22, `04) #16894

SAVANNAH, Georgia - Cool, calm, collected in its preserved neoclassical and colonial leafy charm, refusing to be reduced to an Old South theme park, Savannah is regarded in elite circles in Europe as the most beautiful city in North America. Here, in the first settlement in Georgia, the 13th and final American colony, General William Tecumseh Sherman, at the end of the Civil War, offered his "40 acres and a mule" to all liberated black slaves. Flannery O`Connor penned literary masterpieces. Forrest Gump sat down in a movie prop - a bus bench at Chippewa Square - musing that "life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you`re gonna get" (tell that to Washington neo-cons). And in two weeks, the big circus of the Group of Eight (G8) summit of industrialized nations will land in Savannah with all its might.

Savannah is terribly worried. The summit itself will be 120 kilometers away, on pristine and isolated Sea Island, but the bulk of the army of sherpas, diplomats, journalists and security will be posted among Savannah`s magnificent mansions and manicured squares. Dan Flynn, the chief of police, does not want the quaint city of 130,000 turned into a "war zone": there will be protests - in Forsyth Park, modeled after the Place de la Concorde in Paris and close to the historic center. Fearful local merchants are "overreacting", according to Flynn, and want to shut downtown businesses. Some want an Iraqi shutdown as well. At Mrs Wilkes` Boarding House, a milestone of Southern cooking, this opinion is offered with no irony: "On June 30, we should declare victory, bring the soldiers home, maybe retire some people at the Pentagon and let Fox News spread the word that we prevailed."

Late at night, in the rolling back roads of Georgia on the way to Dublin, the only thing open for business is church business. "We support our troops" signs are not uncommon. President George W Bush`s "evildoers" rhetoric finds ample echo among churchgoers. Only one of them, late at night on Highway 80, sees a problem with Bush placing a large part of the world on a morally lower plane than the United States, thus transposing "our rightful actions" against al-Qaeda into a crusade against the Islamic world.

Savannah is intimately related to its US Army base, Fort Stewart. This is where Sergeant Camilo Mejia was recently court-martialed and sentenced as a deserter - a verdict most of Savannah agrees with. Mejia was a green-card (work permit for foreigners) holder from Nicaragua who joined the army to learn more about US society. The war in Iraq horrified him. He offered to testify before Congress about torture of prisoners he saw at Al Assad last May, months before the Abu Ghraib scandal. Todd Ensign, director of Citizen Soldier, an anti-war group supporting military personnel, is furious: "They tried Camilo for refusing to go back, he doesn`t want to torture people. Yet they are trying Private Jeremy Sivits because he did torture people."

Super-Rangers in the house
Georgia is very much in George W Bush`s mind - and this is not the sound of Ray Charles singing. Last month, at the deluxe Ritz-Carlton Lodge, Reynolds Plantation, 75 minutes south of Atlanta, Bush was the superstar in front of 300 guests, some of the most powerful individuals in the United States, including the landowning and developing Reynolds family of Georgia. The guests all but snubbed 81 holes of golf, an imperial spa and plenty of fishing, boating and skiing on placid lake Oconee to sit in a conference room and listen to Bush. They are the people who finance the bulk of his multimillion-dollar re-election campaign (US$200 million so far, and counting): they are known as the Pioneers (those who collect up to $100,000), the Rangers (up to $200,000) and now the Super-Rangers (who have up to August 15 to collect $250,000 or more).

Pioneers, Rangers and Super-Rangers are no less than the people who virtually own the US if Bush is re-elected: the embodiment of a totally mercantilized electoral process. Many are rewarded with prominent roles inside the federal government. Their companies or multinationals are awarded fat federal contracts worth billions of dollars, and of course benefit from ultra-friendly legislation - especially concerning energy and air pollution.

According to Texans for Public Justice, a monitoring group, there are, for now, 630 Bush super-donors. Almost 20 percent hail from financial circles, and 18 percent are lawyers and lobbyists. Almost 25 percent got a job in the Bush administration (this includes 24 ambassadors and two members of the cabinet). In 2002, according to the group`s research, more than $3.5 billion in federal contracts were awarded to 101 companies: among them there were 123 Pioneers or Rangers. A total of 146 Bush super-donors have been involved in corporate scandals, or have lent a helping hand to companies involved in scandals - be it in Texas (the Enron debacle), on Wall Street, or regarding air-pollution and health issues. The Super-Rangers were launched only at the Ritz-Carlton meeting, but there are already 25 of them.

Bush was again back in Georgia more than a week ago, along with Republican Machiavelli Karl Rove. They stayed for only four hours, first in a deluxe gated community in Atlanta where Bush hosted a garden reception at the house of Robert Nardelli, the chief executive officer of Home Depot; then Bush was the guest of honor at a packed $25,000-per-person dinner (menu: steak, potatoes and vegetables).

Savannah was holding its breath, waiting for Bush to outline his "clear strategy" on Iraq. World leaders, including such allies as Britain`s Tony Blair and Japan`s Junichiro Koizumi, and very reluctant allies such as France`s Jacques Chirac, Germany`s Gerhard Schroeder and Russia`s Vladimir Putin, who will meet with him in Georgia for the June 8-10 G8 summit, are holding their breath as well: they are not exactly convinced by a "clear strategy" in which the Bush administration keeps claiming it is fighting for democracy in Iraq while it keeps 130,000 entrenched troops virtually running the place against the will of the absolute majority of "the Iraqi people".

What is Bush to tell his peers about Muqtada al-Sadr? Shi`ite sources in holy Najaf tell Asia Times Online that recently disgraced Ahmed Chalabi will soon try to go to Najaf to install himself as mediator between the Sadrist movement and the Americans. With an Iraqi street credibility of less than zero, it`s hard to see how any Shi`ite would trust him. But Chalabi is a wily operator, confident that his Iraqi National Congress (INC) has plenty of solid Shi`ite and Kurdish alliances.

The sources in Najaf emphasize that no Shi`ite at the moment can possibly be seen as an ally of Washington against Muqtada. So the whole game is not for the Shi`ites to choose between Muqtada and moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The real issue is to choose between Muqtada and proconsul Paul Bremer.

Bush and the Pentagon simply cannot admit that the Sadrists have already achieved a victory of sorts. Whether he becomes a martyr or not - the Americans still want him "dead or alive" - Muqtada`s forces will fight until the de facto end of the occupation. The war of resistance against the Americans, after the "handover" of June 30, will be followed by some sort of civil war to bombard whomever UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi installs as the new proconsul in disguise. After that, in the long run, say the Najaf sources, an Iraqi Shi`ite theocracy - not following the Khomeini model - is extremely possible.

This is not exactly what deputy defense secretary and longtime architect of the war Paul Wolfowitz had in mind. And on top of it "their" (neo-con) man, Chalabi, may become a Frankenstein. If he does not land in jail, Chalabi will certainly run in the election next January as an Iraqi nationalist, with a platform of virulently opposing the US occupation.

It always gets worse
The other members of the G8 will ask Bush: Can it get worse in Iraq? Yes, it can. Abu Ghraib can be studied as one more perverse effect of the US obsession with sex and pornography - a $10-billion-plus-a-year industry - mixed with the proliferation of reality shows, where every idiot has his own Andy Warhol-style 15 minutes of fame, including amateur torturers.

It can get much worse. British, French, Russian, Japanese intelligence services, they all know that security in Iraq is a disaster. The reconstruction process has virtually stopped. The Halliburton overcharging scandal won`t go away. And in a fascinating crossover of cinema and politics, Michael Moore`s scathingly anti-Bush Fahrenheit 9/11 has just become the first documentary for almost half a century to win the Palme d`Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

"Can you think of any mistakes you have made as president?" This question was posed to Bush at his last press conference in April. At the time, miraculously no mistake came to mind. In Georgia, Chirac, Schroeder or Putin may dare to pose the same question again, in private. It`s unlikely they will get an answer.

This leaves us with Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan and one of the leading US experts on Iraq: "I said the other day I thought Bush was pushing Europe to the left with his policies. I think he is at the same time pushing the Shi`ite world to the radical right, and I fear my grandchildren will still be reaping the whirlwind that George W Bush is sowing in the city of Imam Hussein [a reference to F-16s bombing Karbala]. I concluded in early April that Bush had lost Iraq. He has by now lost the entire Muslim world."

Two weeks from now, Bush may have lost the rest of the world as well. Maybe Forrest Gump could help.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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May 26, 2004

Clarke claims responsibility
Ex-counterterrorism czar approved post-9-11 flights for bin Laden family
By Alexander Bolton

Richard Clarke, who served as President Bush’s chief of counterterrorism, has claimed sole responsibility for approving flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In an interview with The Hill yesterday, Clarke said, “I take responsibility for it. I don’t think it was a mistake, and I’d do it again.”

Most of the 26 passengers aboard one flight, which departed from the United States on Sept. 20, 2001, were relatives of Osama bin Laden, whom intelligence officials blamed for the attacks almost immediately after they happened.

Clarke’s claim of responsibility is likely to put an end to a brewing political controversy on Capitol Hill over who approved the controversial flights of members of the Saudi elite at a time when the administration was preparing to detain dozens of Muslim-Americans and people with Muslim backgrounds as material witnesses to the attacks.

Several Democrats say that at a closed-door meeting May 6, they pressed members of the commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11 to find out who approved the flights.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who attended the meeting, said she asked former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) and former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, a Republican, “Who authorized the flight and why?”

“They said it’s been a part of their inquiry and they haven’t received satisfactory answers yet and they were pushing,” Boxer added.

Another Democrat who attended the meeting confirmed Boxer’s account and reported that Hamilton said: “We don’t know who authorized it. We’ve asked that question 50 times.”

Referring to questions about who authorized the flights, former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), one of the 10 members of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission, said in an interview Monday: “In my mind, this isn’t resolved right now. We need more clarity and information from the relevant political sources and FBI sources.”

But Clarke yesterday appeared to put an end to the mystery.

“It didn’t get any higher than me,” he said. “On 9-11, 9-12 and 9-13, many things didn’t get any higher than me. I decided it in consultation with the FBI.”

Clarke’s explanation fit with a new stance Hamilton has taken on the issue of the Saudi flights.

Hamilton said in an interview Friday that when he told Democratic senators that the commission did not know who authorized the Saudi flights, he was not fully informed.

“They asked the question ‘Who authorized the flight?’ and I said I did not know and I’d try to find out,” Hamilton said. “I learned subsequently from talking to the staff that we thought Clarke authorized the flight and it did not go higher.”

“I did not at any point say the White House was stalling,” Hamilton added. “They asked me who authorized it, and I said we didn’t know.”

Hamilton said, however, that “we asked the question of who authorized the flight many times to many people.”

“The FBI cleared the names [of the passengers on the flights] and Clarke’s CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] team cleared the departure,” Hamilton said.

He cautioned that this is “a story that could shift, and we still have this under review.”

This new account of the events seemed to contradict Clarke’s sworn testimony before the Sept. 11 commission at the end of March about who approved the flights.

“The request came to me, and I refused to approve it,” Clarke testified. “I suggested that it be routed to the FBI and that the FBI look at the names of the individuals who were going to be on the passenger manifest and that they approve it or not. I spoke with the — at the time — No. 2 person in the FBI, Dale Watson, and asked him to deal with this issue. The FBI then approved … the flight.”

“That’s a little different than saying, ‘I claim sole responsibility for it now,’” Roemer said yesterday.

However, the FBI has denied approving the flight.

FBI spokeswoman Donna Spiser said, “We haven’t had anything to do with arranging and clearing the flights.”

“We did know who was on the flights and interviewed anyone we thought we needed to,” she said. “We didn’t interview 100 percent of the [passengers on the] flight. We didn’t think anyone on the flight was of investigative interest.”

When Roemer asked Clarke during the commission’s March hearing, “Who gave the final approval, then, to say, ‘Yes, you’re clear to go, it’s all right with the United States government,’” Clarke seemed to suggest it came from the White House.

“I believe after the FBI came back and said it was all right with them, we ran it through the decision process for all these decisions that we were making in those hours, which was the interagency Crisis Management Group on the video conference,” Clarke testified. “I was making or coordinating a lot of the decisions on 9-11 in the days immediately after. And I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me, but I don’t know. The two — since you press me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State or the White House chief of staff’s office.”

Instead of putting the issue to rest, Clarke’s testimony fueled speculation among Democrats that someone higher up in the administration, perhaps White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, approved the flights.

“It couldn’t have come from Clarke. It should have come from someone further up the chain,” said a Democratic Senate aide who watched Clarke’s testimony.
Clarke’s testimony did not settle the issue for Roemer, either.

“It doesn’t seem that Richard Clarke had enough information to clear it,” Roemer said Monday.

“I just don’t think that the questions are resolved, and we need to dig deeper,” Roemer added. “Clarke sure didn’t seem to say that he was the final decisionmaker. I believe we need to continue to look for some more answers.”

Roemer said there are important policy issues to address, such as the need to develop a flight-departure control system.

Several Democrats on and off the Hill say that bin Laden’s family should have been detained as material witnesses to the attacks. They note that after the attacks, the Bush administration lowered the threshold for detaining potential witnesses. The Department of Justice is estimated to have detained more than 50 material witnesses since Sept. 11.

Clarke said yesterday that the furor over the flights of Saudi citizens is much ado about nothing.

“This is a tempest in a teapot,” he said, adding that, since the attacks, the FBI has never said that any of the passengers aboard the flight shouldn’t have been allowed to leave or were wanted for further investigation.

He said that many members of the bin Laden family had been subjects of FBI surveillance for years before the attacks and were well-known to law-enforcement officials.

“It’s very funny that people on the Hill are now trying to second-guess the FBI investigation.”

The Sept. 11 commission released a statement last month declaring that six chartered flights that evacuated close to 140 Saudi citizens were handled properly by the Bush administration.







© 2004 The Hill
733 Fifteenth Street, NW Suite 1140
Washington, DC 20005

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May 27, 2004
THE TRANSITION
Top Candidate to Lead Iraq`s Interim Government Says He Doesn`t Want the Job
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 26 — An Iraqi nuclear scientist trumpeted as the likely interim leader of Iraq withdrew his name from consideration on Wednesday, and the American military captured a close aide of Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric.

The scientist, Dr. Hussain al-Shahristani, emerged on Tuesday after Iraqi and American officials said that he was a leading candidate.

Dr. Shahristani, a Shiite, had established his credentials by breaking with Saddam Hussein over his plans to develop an atomic bomb and spent several years in Abu Ghraib as a result. He escaped to the West in 1991, during the Persian Gulf war, and led an exile group from London in the intervening years.

But by Wednesday, Dr. Shahristani was expressing misgivings about taking the job, and Iraqi and American officials said others were under consideration.

Dr. Shahristani said in an e-mail message quoted by Reuters that he did not want the job but was prepared to take on the responsibility to serve his country.

A spokesman for Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy who has been leading the effort to build a new government, said Wednesday afternoon that Dr. Shahristani had "clarified that he would prefer to serve his country in other ways."

In a statement at the United Nations, the spokesman said that Mr. Brahimi "remains reluctant to provide more details at this delicate stage" about the selection process, but that he had met Dr. Shahristani several times, thought highly of him and had "no doubt that Mr. Shahristani could serve his country well in a number of positions in government."

In a nighttime raid in Najaf, American troops grabbed Mr. Sadr`s lieutenant, Riyadh al-Nouri, in his home. Mr. Nouri is Mr. Sadr`s brother-in-law and a crucial figure in his organization in Najaf, where Mr. Sadr`s militias battled American troops early on Wednesday. American officials said that he was handed over to the Iraqi authorities for prosecution in connection with the April 2003 murder of a rival of Mr. Sadr.

Fighting between the militias and American-led forces in Iraq since early April has complicated the process of forming a caretaker government to take control after the proposed transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.

In Najaf, Iraqi residents said fierce fighting erupted before dawn and lasted for about three hours. Local medical personnel said up to 26 Iraqis were killed and more than 30 wounded. They did not specify if the victims were rebel fighters or civilians.

The fighting was in a cemetery in the downtown area, not far from the ancient shrine of Imam Ali, one of the holiest religious sites for members of Islam`s Shiite sect. Both sides have blamed the other for damage to the shrine on Tuesday by a mortar.

[Three American marines were killed in action on Wednesday in Al Anbar Province, west of Baghdad, the American military said Thursday, Reuters reported. It gave no further information on the circumstances of their deaths.]

In the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, where Mr. Sadr also has followers, rebels using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fought with American troops in 21 separate clashes, said an American military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.

Casualty figures for those killed or wounded in Sadr City were not available from the Iraqi side.

General Kimmitt said "a very large number" of rebels were killed in both places. "We are constantly chipping away at his militia," he said. He offered no specific casualty figures, telling reporters later that fewer than 100 fighters died in the Najaf and Sadr City fighting. There were no reported deaths of American troops.

General Kimmitt said that after weeks of battles, fighting near the Shiite shrines in Najaf and Karbala had died down to nothing on Wednesday. "Iraqi police continued to extend control throughout the city," General Kimmitt said.

The shrines have presented a difficult issue for American commanders. The holiest in Shiite Islam, the shrines cannot be attacked for fear of inflaming Shiite and Arab opinion, but the guerrillas have been using them for shelter.

Policing is also a problem for the Americans. While the American authorities hope to have Iraqi police and security forces in place by June 30, the police have continued to be a target of guerrilla attacks. On Wednesday, the police chief of Baquba, north of Baghdad, was killed in a drive-by shooting, General Kimmitt said. News agencies reported that gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying power station workers in Baghdad, killing two Russians and two Iraqis.

Discussions continued about the formation of the new Iraqi government, said Dan Senor, the Coalition Provisional Authority`s senior adviser. L. Paul Bremer III, the occupation`s senior official in Iraq, met with the Iraqi Governing Council and discussed the draft resolution on the precise nature of Iraqi sovereignty and control over Iraq`s military and foreign forces after June 30.

The United States and Britain submitted the draft at the United Nations on Monday.

An Iraqi member of the Governing Council, Mahmoud Othman, said that the Iraqis should have been consulted before the resolution, and that one of the issues the council was concerned about was the extent to which the military would be immune from prosecution.

"We think the provisional Iraqi government should have a say," Mr. Othman said.

There were also concerns about whether there would be true sovereignty, especially over the command structure of the military.

Sheik Ghazi M. Ajil Yawar, the council president, said that an Iraqi Foreign Ministry delegation in New York would discuss the Iraqi reservations, but he added that the resolution could be amended.

He also expected the Iraqi Army to be under only Iraqi command, but some units would join a multinational force.

General Kimmitt said it has not yet been "firmly established" what the command structure would be after June 30.

Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 27, 2004
Cleric Offers to Pull Fighters From Najaf
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 1:48 a.m. ET

NAJAF, Iraq (AP) -- Radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr agreed to withdraw his militia from Najaf, raising hopes for an end to weeks of fighting in the holy city, but also demanded coalition forces pull back and a murder case against him be postponed.

There was no immediate response from the coalition to the Wednesday agreement, which was conveyed in an announcement by National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie. Al-Sadr also could not be reached to confirm it directly.

An agreement to abandon Najaf would be a major step toward ending an uprising al-Sadr`s militia has waged in the south only weeks before a new Iraqi government takes power June 30, formally ending the U.S.-led occupation.

The weeks of fighting -- which had threatened some of Shia Islam`s holiest sites -- had posed a major challenge to the U.S. occupation.

It wasn`t known how much al-Sadr was swayed by the pre-dawn raid in which U.S. troops arrested al-Sadr`s key lieutenant. Clashes late Tuesday and early Wednesday between U.S. troops and militia fighters killed 24 people and wounded nearly 50 here, hospital and militia officials said.

Riyadh al-Nouri was seized during a raid on his Najaf home about 4 a.m. Wednesday. U.S. officials said al-Nouri offered no resistance.

Al-Nouri`s arrest was a major blow to the al-Mahdi Army, which has been fighting coalition forces since early April in Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad and in the Shiite heartland south of the capital.

Al-Sadr launched his uprising after the U.S.-led occupation authority launched a crackdown on his movement. An Iraqi judge has issued an arrest warrant charging both al-Sadr and al-Nouri in the April 2003 assassination of a moderate cleric, Abdul Majid al-Khoei.

Al-Rubaie, a Shiite and former Governing Council member, said al-Sadr made the offer in a letter to the city`s Shiite clerical hierarchy. According to al-Rubaie, al-Sadr offered to remove his fighters from Najaf -- except for those who live there -- but demanded that U.S. and other coalition troops ``return to base,`` allowing Iraqi police to regain control of the city.

The young Shiite radical also demanded ``broad discussions`` within the Shiite community over the future of his al-Mahdi Army militia and that the legal proceedings against him be deferred until then.

Al-Sadr said he was making the offer because of ``the tragic condition`` in Najaf after weeks of fighting between his militiamen and the Americans and the slight damage suffered by the city`s holiest shrine, the Imam Ali mosque.

Fighting around some of the holiest cities of Shia Islam has angered many Shiites in Iraq and elsewhere and has led to calls for both the Americans and the militiamen to pull back from the shrines.

On Tuesday, the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf received slight damage. Both U.S. and Shiite forces blamed the other.

U.S. officials have expressed their desire for a peaceful settlement to the standoff but have insisted that al-Sadr disband his ``illegal militia`` and submit to ``justice before an Iraqi court.``

``We still are committed to finding a peaceful resolution to this problem,`` Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, coalition deputy chief of operations, told reporters in Baghdad before word of al-Sadr`s offer. ``But until that peaceful resolution comes forward ... we will continue to conduct military operations directed against his forces.``

Also Wednesday, three Marines were killed in Anbar province ``while conducting security and stability operations,`` the military said, declining to release further details because of security concerns. The province includes the western suburbs of Baghdad as well as Fallujah, Ramadi and Qaim.

Elsewhere, three Iraqis were killed and nine were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded Wednesday in southwest Baghdad, the U.S. command said. Two of those killed and one of the wounded were believed to have been trying to set the bomb, the command said without elaborating.

A roadside bomb exploded Wednesday on Baghdad`s Tahreer Square near a main bridge across the Tigris River, damaging a U.S. Army vehicle. There was no word on casualties.

In Baqouba, about 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, five people were killed and seven others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a convoy that included the city`s police chief, who escaped injury.

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Associated Press correspondent Hamza Hendawi contributed to this report from Baghdad.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

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May 27, 2004
On New Kissinger Tapes, Crises in White House and the World
By ELIZABETH BECKER

WASHINGTON, May 26 — News had just broken of a terrible wrongdoing committed by American soldiers, and the secretary of defense and the national security adviser debated whether there was any way to stop newspapers and television news programs from showing graphic photographs of the victims.

"They`re pretty terrible," said Melvin R. Laird, the secretary of defense, of the color photographs of the men, women and children killed in the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam.

Henry A. Kissinger, the national security adviser, responded that one of President Nixon`s top aides had "heard that the Army is trying to impound the pictures — that can`t be done."

A transcript of this 1969 telephone conversation, with its uncanny echoes of the Iraq war and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, at least in the fact of the photographs, if not in the severity of the wrongdoing, was released on Wednesday by the National Archives as part of 20,000 pages of records of Mr. Kissinger`s telephone conversations. The documents cover the years from the beginning of his service in 1969 until August 1974, when Nixon resigned.

The conversations portray a senior adviser trying to juggle foreign policy crises under a president increasingly distracted by the Watergate scandal and, on at least one occasion, too drunk to talk to the British prime minister.

They also show Mr. Kissinger using his charm on Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to the United States. One minute the two men are joking about Mr. Kissinger`s date with a former Playboy playmate, the next they are discussing the Mideast or disarmament treaties, all on a secure phone line to avoid having to share their conversations with the State Department.

The transcripts were released over the objections of Mr. Kissinger after the National Security Archive, a nonprofit organization, initiated legal proceedings to make them public.

Mr. Kissinger issued a statement Wednesday saying he had not seen the released material and would have no comment.

"It`s nice to have these juicy details, especially now when I feel like I`m seeing déjà vu all over again," said Stanley Karnow, the author of "Vietnam: A History" and a war correspondent who covered the Indochina conflict.

The episode involving Nixon`s drinking occurred on Oct. 11, 1973, shortly after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war erupted. Aides to Prime Minister Edward Heath of Britain telephoned shortly before 8 p.m., hoping to reach the president so the two leaders could discuss the war.

Mr. Kissinger asked: "Can we tell them no? When I talked to the president, he was loaded."

Brent Scowcroft, then an assistant to Mr. Kissinger, said: "Right, O.K. I will say the president will not be available until first thing in the morning but you will be this evening."

The papers cover major events of the cold war, like the opening of China, which was soon followed by calls to Mr. Kissinger from influential figures like David Rockefeller, chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, and Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, who wanted help getting the first visas to Beijing.

But war and conflict were the most constant topic.

In their conversation on Nov. 21, 1969, about the My Lai massacre, Mr. Laird told Mr. Kissinger that while he would like "to sweep it under the rug," the photographs prevented it.

"There are so many kids just laying there; these pictures are authentic," Mr. Laird said.

The telephone transcripts show how frustrated Nixon was becoming with the Vietnam War and his failing effort to withdraw American troops from Vietnam by expanding the war into Cambodia.

He became especially angry on Dec. 9, 1970, with what he considered the lackluster bombing campaign by the United States Air Force against targets in Cambodia.

"They`re not only not imaginative but they are just running these things — bombing jungles," Nixon said. "They have got to go in there and I mean really go in."

Mr. Kissinger then cautioned: "The Air Force is designed to fight an air battle against the Soviet Union. They are not designed for this war."

But the president persisted, suggesting that the bombing campaign could be disguised as an airlift of supplies.

"I want them to hit everything," he said. "I want them to use the big planes, the small planes, everything they can that will help out there, and let`s start giving them a little shock."

He ended by saying, "Right now there is a chance to win this goddamn war, and that`s probably what we are going to have to do because we are not going to do anything at the conference table."

Mr. Kissinger immediately relayed the order: "A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves."

Few foreign officials had a more complicated relationship with Mr. Kissinger than Mr. Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador.

At first they were formal with each other, testing whether this new back channel would make it easier for the rival superpowers to avoid war and possibly cooperate on arms reduction treaties or defusing tensions in the Middle East.

They were soon on a first-name basis — Henry and Anatoly — and treating each other like old buddies.

One afternoon Mr. Dobrynin teased Mr. Kissinger about his latest date.

"I guess I have her picture," said the Soviet diplomat. "I think she was on this Playboy calendar."

"Oh-h-h-h, you`re a dirty old man," Mr. Kissinger said.

As peace negotiations progressed with Hanoi, it was Mr. Dobrynin who brought proposals from the Vietnamese Communists to Mr. Kissinger, who would win a Nobel Peace Prize for the treaty that brought an end to America`s involvement in the war.

In the spring of 1972 Mr. Kissinger telephoned the president with news of something of a breakthrough from the Vietnamese.

"We got some pretty quick action out of our Soviet friends — Dobrynin was in slobbering over me," said Mr. Kissinger. "He had a message from the North Vietnamese for us which was a lot more conciliatory than the one that they gave us in Paris."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 27, 2004
EDITORIAL OBSERVER
A Film That Could Warm Up the Debate on Global Warming
By ROBERT B. SEMPLE. Jr.

Even as a summer disaster film, "The Day After Tomorrow" does not rank with the greats of yesteryear. Its dialogue is overwrought, its symbolism sophomoric, its subplots annoyingly irrelevant and its relationship to scientific reality tenuous at best.

But the special effects are terrific, and the timing couldn`t be better. Scientists, environmentalists and a few lonely politicians have been trying without great success to get the public and the Bush administration to take global warming seriously, and to inject the issue into a presidential campaign that so far seems determined to ignore it.

Whatever its flaws, "The Day After Tomorrow"` could do more to elevate the issue than any number of Congressional hearings or high-minded tracts. That`s one reason the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan was happy to present the premiere in a theater not far from its Hall of Biodiversity, biodiversity being one of global warming`s most likely victims. It`s also a reason why mainstream environmental groups have rushed to offer sage commentary on what, after all, is just a mindless summer blockbuster. One group, the Worldwatch Institute, goes so far as to offer on its Web site energy-saving tips on how to ensure "a better day after tomorrow." It exhorts the 20 million Americans the producers hope to draw to the movie to install more efficient shower heads to cut down on hot water use, and to ride bikes to the theater instead of driving.

Senator John McCain is among the believers, expressing the hope that the film may win a few more votes for a bill he`s co-sponsoring with Senator Joseph Lieberman. That bill would slowly begin to reduce industrial carbon-dioxide emissions, which are a huge part of the problem. Despite its over-the-top story, the film does leave you with the unnerving feeling that the natural world deserves far more respect than we and our leaders are giving it. "We`ll take all the help we can get," said Mr. McCain, who got 43 votes for his bill the last time around. He plans to bring it back to the Senate floor before Congress`s July 4 recess.

The movie, which opens this weekend, revolves around a scientist named Jack Hall, played with tortured earnestness by Dennis Quaid. Hall`s obsessions with climate change have not only busted up a perfectly good marriage but made him a complete pain in the neck to a complacent White House. The real power in this White House is not the well-meaning but vacant president, but a reactionary vice president who is meant, unmistakably, to be Dick Cheney and is played that way by Kenneth Welsh. While Hall keeps warning of disaster, Welsh/Cheney keeps whining that doing anything meaningful — ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, for instance — will bankrupt the economy.

Hall, of course, is right. Before you know it, all hell breaks loose: The polar ice cap splinters, hailstones flatten Tokyo, and tornadoes level Los Angeles. All that is merely a prelude to the Big One, namely the complete devastation of New York City, first by a huge tidal wave, then by an ice storm that flash-freezes everyone and everything in sight, except the wolves in the Bronx Zoo.

As for the underlying science, the movie rests on the respectable theory that at some point, the melting of the ice sheets in Antarctica or Greenland, or both, could disrupt important oceanic currents that act as heat-carrying conveyor belts, like the Gulf Stream, and in so doing trigger a sharp drop in temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere.

But most experts believe that a sudden switch from gradual climate change to an instantaneous hemispheric deep freeze, like the one portrayed in the movie, is all but impossible. If the currents did shut down, a more likely result would be a temperature drop of 10 or so degrees, limited mainly to northern Europe.

Moreover, the film offers viewers who come to it with little knowledge of the subject almost no enlightenment on the underlying causes of global warming. The role of all those S.U.V.`s owned by Hollywood celebrities, for instance, is nowhere mentioned. There is even less on what might be done about it, beyond getting rid of dunderheads like Welsh/Cheney. "If you are expecting this film to educate you on global warming, forget about it," said Michael Oppenheimer, an adviser to Environmental Defense and a Princeton professor whose studies on warming helped put the issue on the map. On the other hand, he adds, the movie may well cause people to start paying attention to the realities of the issue, which "are plenty bad enough."

Moviegoers who find themselves inspired to learn more will benefit from a new book called "Red Sky at Morning" by James Gustave Speth, dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale. The book, an overview of environmental threats, provides a list of the already observable consequences of warming — coral bleaching, the gradual loss of coastal salt marshes and wetlands, melting permafrost, vanishing glaciers — as well as a forecast of even greater calamities, like drought, deforestation and even widespread starvation if nothing is done to arrest the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

To bring matters back to New York, Dr. Oppenheimer`s calculations suggest that business-as-usual will mean the certain loss of every beach in the metropolitan area by the end of the century and — should one or the other of the big ice sheets in western Antarctica or Greenland begin to go — the inundation of much of Lower Manhattan as well. This isn`t the frightening event portrayed in "The Day After Tomorrow." It`s slower and stealthier, though no less dangerous to global stability. Dr. Oppenheimer observes that "the future is still in our hands." That`s fine, as long as someone in authority grabs hold of it, which the real-life Bush administration seems no more disposed to do than the movie version.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 27, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Marquis de Bush?
By MAUREEN DOWD

An outraged president called yesterday for the immediate resignations of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Douglas Feith and Stephen Cambone.

Unfortunately, it wasn`t the president in the White House. It was the shadow president, the one who won the popular vote.

Thundering at New York University about the man the Supreme Court chose over him, Al Gore said, "He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation." Holy Nixon!

The former vice president accused the commander in chief of being responsible for "an American gulag" in Abu Ghraib, as depraved as anything devised by the Marquis de Sade. It was hard to tell whether President Bush would be more offended by the sadomasochism or by the fact that the marquis was French.

Mr. Gore blasted the administration`s "twisted values" and dominatrix attitude toward the world: "Dominance is as dominance does."

"George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility," he said, in one of the most virulent attacks on a sitting president ever made by such a high-ranking former official. "Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world." (He did not ask the neocon cabal ringleader, Dick Cheney, to step down, perhaps in a spirit of second-banana solidarity.)

John Kerry`s advisers were surprised and annoyed to hear that Mr. Gore hollered so much, he made Howard Dean look like George Pataki. They don`t want voters to be reminded of the wackadoo wing of the Democratic Party.

They would like Mr. Gore, who brought bad karma to Mr. Dean with his primary endorsement, to zip it and go away. But more and more Democrats think it is Mr. Kerry who should zip it and go away.

Mr. Kerry has made a huge $25 million ad buy in recent weeks, believing that the better voters know him, the more they`ll like him. But many Democrats fear he`s one of those supercilious/smarmy candidates (like Al Gore) for whom the opposite is true: the more you know him, the less you want to see him.

They wonder whether Mr. Kerry should just let the campaign be Bush vs. Bush. As the president`s old running buddy, Lee Atwater, used to say, don`t get in the way when your rival`s busy shooting himself.

Couldn`t the Democratic standard-bearer use a William McKinley front-porch strategy, talking only to those who bother to show up at his front porch? After all, Mr. Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, have five front porches, stretching from Sun Valley to Nantucket and Georgetown.

Mr. Kerry, once a critic of campaign financing abuses, had toyed with the idea of not accepting the nomination at his nominating convention so he could spend even more in contributions. While he announced yesterday that he had dropped that belittled idea, maybe he just didn`t take the plan far enough.

Maybe he shouldn`t go down from his town house on Beacon Hill to the Fleet Center at all. The conventioneers may be more galvanized if they focus on vividly vivisecting Mr. Bush, instead of being dulled to distraction by Mr. Kerry, waving stiffly in his Oxford-cloth shirt, trying to be all things to all people all the prime time.

The Democrats are already excited to see the Republicans acting as fractious as they usually act.

The president did look a little rattled during his finger-in-the-dike speech at the Army War College on Monday night, as he promised to give the Iraqi people the gift of "a humane, well-supervised prison system." It was hard to tell if it was the subdued response of the military audience, the only group forbidden to criticize the commander in chief, or if it`s beginning to sink in: this is one mess that no amount of power and privilege, or unending terror alerts, can get him out of. (Mr. Bush`s speech about the Iraqi makeover, as he wore all that makeup, couldn`t even pre-empt the more convincing makeovers on "The Swan" on Fox.)

Or maybe it was just the dread at knowing that the next morning he had to call Jacques Chirac and cry "oncle" on Iraq.

That`s enough to give anybody mal de mer.

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Om Hyder talks to U.S. soldiers about problems in her Baghdad neighborhood during a ground-breaking ceremony for a sewer project.
washingtonpost.com

A Different Street Fight in Iraq
U.S. General Turns to Public Works in Battle for Hearts and Minds

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 27, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, May 26 -- The American counterinsurgency effort in Iraq`s largest urban war zone is being fought in the sewers. Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, an earnest tank officer who recalled that he once dreamed of commanding "large mechanized formations across vast open deserts," is instead knee-deep in a very different fight.

The recently arrived commander of the Army`s 1st Cavalry Division pulled up Wednesday to a trash-strewn lot in Al-Rashid, a treacherous southern suburb of Baghdad. A moat of sewage ringed the neighborhood, giving off an eye-watering stench in the noon sun. People assembled before easels and a podium. In front of them, huge pipes, pieces for a sewer system in a neighborhood that has never had one, waited to be set into the cracked mud.

"Your struggle is not with the occupation," Chiarelli told the several dozen community leaders and a pack of local reporters seated on plastic chairs before him. "Your struggle is right before your eyes."

A career tank officer who once taught political science at West Point, Chiarelli contends that public works projects may be more effective than guns in deciding the future of Iraq. He said he fears that time might be running out for the U.S. occupation after a year of enduring war and sluggish reconstruction that has left many Iraqis not knowing where to turn.

Chiarelli, the U.S. officer responsible for greater Baghdad, is among a number of commanders in Iraq who blame the U.S. civilian authority for many of the missteps that have plagued the occupation and turned many Iraqis against U.S. forces. The U.S. effort to improve the lives of ordinary Iraqis, hailed by President Bush this week as a notable achievement over a difficult year of occupation, has been largely forgotten in the recent surge of violence.

The armed resistance has targeted U.S. reconstruction efforts in the hopes of demonstrating to Iraqis that the U.S. occupation, despite its $18.4 billion development budget, has been a failure. If the resistance is successful, U.S. officials here fear, the Iraqi government scheduled to assume political authority from the Americans on June 30 would begin with very little public support.

Chiarelli described the next five weeks as the equivalent of an election campaign, and he said he intends to win it by drawing on lessons he once imparted to students: Understand your constituency and deliver on promises. He is targeting Iraq`s "fence-sitters," his term for the mostly poor or barely middle-class Iraqis who he estimates account for 40 percent of the population.

They are deciding now, as the handover date approaches, whether to back the next government or an insurgency working in such neighborhoods as Al-Rashid to undermine it.

Chiarelli is tall and lanky, standing a head higher than most of his officers or the Iraqis he works with. His face is long, and his short black hair is graying at the temples. His arrival in March coincided with an upsurge in armed resistance, and he worries that beleaguered Iraqis may turn to the insurgency after months of neglect by U.S. civilian officials.

In a convoy of armored Humvees, Chiarelli rumbled Wednesday into a section of Al-Rashid known as Al-Shurta, the Arabic word for police. During ousted president Saddam Hussein`s rule, members of Hussein`s security services received free houses in the neighborhood. U.S. officials say those disaffected officials make up the backbone of the resistance.

Chiarelli kicked off two sewer projects that will cost $31 million, part of a $240 million pot of money he has to spend on public works construction and power generation. Instead of hiring private contractors, Chiarelli intends to turn senior military officers into project managers, saving the high security costs that have become a part of doing business in Iraq.

To prepare for the rebuilding, Chiarelli sent his brigade commanders to four months of civil affairs training, including a three-day seminar with the city planning department of Austin. From headquarters on the Baghdad International Airport grounds, the division peppers Austin planners daily with questions over a direct Internet link.

But those early perceptions of a nation-building operation vanished in the first days after the division`s arrival. Intense street fighting in the concrete mazes of Al-Rashid, Sadr City and the town of Abu Ghraib during the first weeks of April stunned Chiarelli and his senior officers at a time when they expected to be dealing with the conflicting interests of Iraqi civil society. "If you`d have told me I was going to lose 36 soldiers in less than 45 days," said Chiarelli, his voice trailing off. He commands about 15,000 troops here. "The key to winning this is that we`ve got to show them progress."

"We`re fighting at night and building by day," said Col. Steve Lanza, the burly, affable brigade commander from Brooklyn, N.Y., in charge of southern Baghdad.

Soon after the groundbreaking ceremony ended, a group of tribal sheiks strode up to Chiarelli. One complained that they were not formally invited to the event. "We think this means you don`t respect us," Ismael Dona said.

About 10,000 neighborhood residents belong to the tribes and generally follow what the sheiks say. Chiarelli, the 54-year-old son of a butcher in Seattle who was a lifelong union member, realized immediately he was looking at what amounted to a wildcat strike before the job had even begun.

"Not at all, and this is the first of many ceremonies," Chiarelli bellowed good-naturedly about not respecting the sheiks. "How about some pictures?"

With that, the group walked over to a set of souvenir shovels and dug into the dirt for a second groundbreaking. The sheiks were appeased for the moment, but their long-term interests revolve around which tribe will secure the bulk of the 1,200 jobs on the project to lay seven miles of pipe and renovate a pump station to rid the streets of standing green slime.

"That`s the next fight," Lanza said. "Who gets the work."

The people in the surrounding neighborhood, many of whom Chiarelli places among the fence-sitters, remain skeptical of the project. "Any possible improvements in basic services will help the Americans," said Ismael Saeed Abdul Rahman, a 50-year-old electrical engineer with a graduate degree, who has remained ambivalent about the occupation. "The Americans should have done it from the beginning, when they were welcomed."

Chiarelli said U.S. civilian officials have moved too slowly to free up public works money and failed to ask the Iraqis to draw up their own wish lists, as his senior officers have done and compiled in an inch-thick binder he flips through during meals.

He said he believes U.S. civilian officials focused too intently on satisfying the Iraqis who already support them -- a group he estimates at 55 percent of the population -- rather than reaching out to those who still might.

Referring to the insurgents, he said, "This is their worst nightmare -- our delivering on promises to these places." Of the fence-sitters, he added, "They don`t believe me. They think this should have been done a year ago."

In seeking to minimize conflict with any Iraqi, even those among the 5 percent he says "we`ll probably have to hunt down and capture or kill," Chiarelli has experimented with solutions short of war.

Last week, on the edge of the Shiite slum of Sadr City, a stronghold of an anti-occupation militia, Chiarelli`s officers tried out a law enforcement technique imported from urban American: the weapons buyback.

The program, which pays Iraqis for weapons they turn in, was part of a truce arranged between Chiarelli`s officers and sheiks from the neighborhood. The sheiks would rein in the militia, led by cleric Moqtada Sadr, and U.S. forces would cut down on patrols. Chiarelli`s idea was to allow his soldiers back in the neighborhood to continue public works projects, but first he had to stop the shooting. The gun buyback was an incentive.

For days, men, women and children lined up outside a sports stadium on the neighborhood`s dusty edge. They clutched burlap sacks filled with AK-47s, each selling for $200. Little girls held artillery rounds. A donkey cart dragged in a worn antiaircraft gun.

"If they keep this going a few more days, maybe I`d bring them a chemical weapon," said Khadar Hassan, 35 and unemployed, holding a sack full of assault rifles. "I have 35 more of these at home."

Capt. Kevin Baird, a 29-year-old from Nashville, watched the flow of weapons burn through his budget with an air of amusement and amazement. By the end of six days, he had collected 800 AK-47s and half that many rocket-propelled grenade rounds -- each one of which, he said, would likely have killed a soldier or crippled a vehicle.

"We knew everyone had an AK-47, but the tank rounds, artillery rounds, we had no idea," said Baird, surveying piles of munitions cluttering the stadium tunnels. "This is stuff they had just laying around the house. It`s made a dent, maybe only a small dent, but there are now that many fewer guns that will shoot at us down the road."

The larger truce collapsed over the weekend after stepped-up attacks on U.S. soldiers, and Chiarelli`s troops have been fighting intensely in the neighborhood ever since. Chiarelli said fighting continued because the sheiks could not control the fighters.

Chiarelli`s intelligence officers have shown him a map of Sadr City that reinforces his belief that public services are key to defeating the insurgency. The map transposes information on unemployment, sewer capacity and electrical service with the number of guerrilla cells and attacks on U.S. troops. The areas where unemployment is highest and public services most feeble are the same areas where the insurgents are most active recruiting in mosques and schools, and attacking his soldiers.

"It`s a classic insurgency -- you go to the have-nots," Chiarelli said. "This 40 percent could easily flip over to follow Moqtada. Someone else will fill the void."

Special correspondent Huda Ahmed Lazim contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Inmates of the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad listened to a sermon during evening prayers on May 7. The last of security detainees being held by the U.S. military were moved from cells to tent camps last week. About 1,500 prisoners accused of common crimes remain in the cell blocks, guarded by Iraqi police.
washingtonpost.com

U.S. General Says Iraqi Security Will Run Abu Ghraib by August

By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 27, 2004; Page A20

BAGHDAD, May 26 -- The U.S. military plans to vacate Abu Ghraib prison by August, handing over operation of the facility to Iraqi security forces and transferring the remaining detainees 300 miles to the southeast, prison authorities said Wednesday.

In an interview at the prison, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, deputy commander of U.S. military detainee operations in Iraq, said the military had already relinquished the cell blocks at Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers were photographed abusing Iraqi prisoners late last year. The last of the security detainees -- civilians accused of attacks on U.S. forces -- being held by the U.S. military were moved last week from the cell blocks to tent camps on the grounds of the 280-acre Abu Ghraib compound, 20 miles west of Baghdad.

About 1,500 prisoners accused of common crimes remain in the cell blocks, guarded by Iraqi police.

The 3,000 security detainees will remain in tents here until they are released or transferred to Umm Qasr, the port in southern Iraq where 2,000 detainees are already being held at a facility called Camp Bucca. Miller said the prisoners will be safer at Camp Bucca than at Abu Ghraib, where a mortar attack in April killed 22 detainees and wounded 91.

The plans outlined by Miller made clear that the United States will maintain a large detention facility in Iraq after June 30 to deal with what it deems to be security threats. It was not clear, however, what authority the U.S. military will have to detain and operate a facility in Iraq when it is no longer the occupying power in the country.

Miller said 980 prisoners will be released from Abu Ghraib in the next two weeks as military officials attempt to reduce the prison population to 1,500 by June 30, when occupation authorities are to turn over limited authority to an interim Iraqi government. More than 1,700 prisoners have been released in the last 30 days.

Seven members of the U.S. Army`s 372nd Military Police Company have been charged with abusing detainees at the prison. In statements to investigators, the soldiers said they were ordered to prepare prisoners for interrogations by military intelligence officers.

An Army investigation released in March found that Miller, who was brought here last fall to advise on improving interrogations of Iraqi detainees, had encouraged military police officers to play a greater role in interrogations. Miller has denied the assertion.

The top U.S. intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib also has said in sworn testimony that Miller inspired and promoted the use of guard dogs there to frighten the Iraqis. Miller has denied telling the officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, to use the dogs.

In an interview at Abu Ghraib on Monday, Lt. Col. Craig Essick, commander of the 391st Military Police Battalion, which has 700 soldiers at the prison, said his military police escort prisoners to interrogation and bring them back but do not "get involved directly with interrogations."

"We aren`t doing anything except what we should be doing," he said.

As he toured the prison with a group of mostly Iraqi journalists on Wednesday, Miller walked past shiny chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. Behind the barriers, detainees wearing civilian clothes or towels draped around their waists signaled with their hands and called out in Arabic.

Miller said life in the prison has improved significantly in the past month. "Thirty days ago, they weren`t waving," said Miller, the former commander of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "We`re working very hard. It`s hard to be patient."

As Miller approached the fence, three English-speaking detainees spoke softly to him. They were the mayors of the section of the camp that was known as Camp Avalanche but was renamed Camp Redemption this month at the suggestion of a visiting member of the Iraqi Governing Council. The mayors represent different factions among the detainees.

"They always want to know the same thing: When am I getting out?" Miller said when asked what the detainees had discussed with him.

Miller said the military has made significant progress in winning back the trust of the detainees. He said violence among prisoners has dropped and the mood of the camps improved since detainees started being released.

A new visitor`s center has been erected during the last several weeks, allowing up to 256 visits a day. Family visits had been limited to 30 per day. When families visit, the soldiers take a photograph of the detainee with his family. One copy is given to the family, and one is left with the detainee. "Being detained is hard enough," Miller said.

Convincing the rest of the Iraqi population that the military is treating the detainees humanely "will take more time," he said. "These detainees will have to tell the story."

Iraqis have complained that the U.S. military is unlawfully detaining people at the prison. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military`s top spokesman in Iraq, said Monday that the military is in the process of reviewing all prisoner files.

"We don`t put them in Abu Ghraib to detain them for a period of time or to detain them until proven innocent," Kimmit said. "They are deemed to be a security threat by a judge through multiple sources. It`s that simple. If they were innocent, they wouldn`t be at Abu Ghraib."

Special correspondent Bassam Sabti contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com

Rights Eroded in War on Terrorism, Amnesty Says

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 27, 2004; Page A21

The Bush administration has "openly eroded human rights" to win the war on terrorism and sparked a backlash that has made the world more dangerous, Amnesty International charged yesterday.

"As a strategy, the war on terror is bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle," Amnesty`s secretary general, Irene Khan, asserted in releasing the human rights group`s annual report. She condemned militants unequivocally but said governments are "losing their moral compass."

"Sacrificing human rights in the name of security at home, turning a blind eye to abuses abroad, and using preemptive military force where and when it chooses have neither increased security nor ensured liberty," Kahn said of the United States.

Amnesty`s report comes amid deepening questions about U.S. interrogation techniques and the treatment of international prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Abuses have led to criminal charges against American soldiers and a range of inquiries into what orders and understandings were given by higher-ups.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan quickly dismissed Amnesty`s conclusions. "My response is that the war on terrorism has resulted in the liberation of 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the protection of their rights," McClellan said. "People in those countries did not have the kinds of protections that we`re used to in the United States, and now they do."

Amnesty researchers identified 177 violent groups that have operated in 65 countries in the past four years. More than half have killed civilians, and one in five has committed rapes or other sexual violence.

The response by governments has often been troubling and self-defeating, Amnesty officials said. Under cover of fighting "terrorists," many governments killed civilians and used torture and indefinite detention to challenge militants.

William F. Schulz, the organization`s U.S. director, called it a "global street brawl, with governments and armed groups duking it out and innocent civilians suffering severely."

Among examples of repression, Amnesty pointed to China`s persecution of Uighurs, Egypt`s treatment of Islamists and the brutal fight by Russia to prevent Chechen independence. Spain and France drew criticism for what Amnesty called "regressive" anti-terrorist restrictions.

Amnesty challenged the Bush administration for using what it termed "indiscriminate and disproportionate means." A central argument is that the United States, long seen as a model, weakens international norms when it fails to honor the Geneva Conventions or guarantee access to lawyers and public, nonmilitary trials.

Hundreds of foreigners remained in indefinite detention without charge or trial outside the U.S. mainland, Amnesty noted. The nonprofit organization also said the United States had unlawfully killed Iraqi citizens.

State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher questioned Amnesty`s conclusions, calling Khan`s comment about the U.S. anti-terrorism fight being bereft of vision "a sound bite that we would disagree with."

"This president has enunciated a very clear vision of defending civilization, defending society, defending decency from people who want only destruction," Boucher told reporters.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Consistently Disconnected

By Richard Cohen

Thursday, May 27, 2004; Page A31

On a recent Sunday four men, stripped to their underpants, were paraded through the city on the back of a pickup truck. They were escorted by scores of masked men shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) and their backs were bleeding from the 80 lashes each had received for selling alcohol. Later, they were treated at a hospital and released -- another example to the populace that things had radically changed.

Where has this happened, you`re probably wondering? Well, it`s Fallujah, the Iraqi city described by George Bush in the most serene terms in his address at the Army War College the other night. He mentioned the city when he said military commanders had exercised commendable restraint in not leveling the place after American contractors were killed and their bodies mutilated and hung from a bridge.

"We`re making security a shared responsibility in Fallujah," the president told the nation. "Coalition commanders have worked with local leaders to create an all-Iraqi security force, which is now patrolling the city." But an Associated Press dispatch by Hamza Hendawi offers a different picture. The president`s "all-Iraqi security force" has allowed Fallujah to become "an Islamic mini-state" -- complete with floggings and the usual restrictions on women. In this manner, it has been liberated from both the secular Saddam Hussein and the democratic Americans.

The contrast between what the president said and what the AP reported is jarring, but it is also somewhat typical. There was something detached about the president`s address. Once again, for instance, he made Iraq the centerpiece of his war on terrorism when, as we all know by now, there was never a proven link between Hussein and al Qaeda. He went on in this vein nonetheless, not mentioning that it was weapons of mass destruction we were once after but, aside from a single trace of sarin uncovered recently and dating to before the Persian Gulf War, none have been found.

As for terrorism, the president made no mention of the apparent fact that the war in Iraq has proved a boon to terrorists. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the war has been a recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Foreign fighters -- maybe as many as 1,000 of them -- have infiltrated Iraq, where they have been able to inflict casualties on American forces. They have made it even harder to bring Iraq under control and, in effect, have suckered the United States into the sort of guerrilla war we tried to avoid. In this respect, Iraq could wind up being an ambush.

On another matter, the president also talked as if he has been spending the past several weeks under the bed covers. He mentioned Abu Ghraib prison as "a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops," when it now seems that those "few" were either following orders or were operating with the silent approval of superiors who simply looked away from torture and abuse. The International Red Cross complained of this early on -- only to get a shrug from the military brass.

America is trapped. Having gone into Iraq, we cannot now pull out. In its own region, the country is more important than Vietnam ever was -- and not because it can become a democracy that will be emulated by others in the Middle East. It`s rather that without an American military presence, Iraq will almost certainly fall into chaos, a bloody civil war that might well draw in its neighbors. Bad could turn out to be much worse.

But having said that, it`s hard to feel confident that the Bush administration is prepared for the challenge ahead. It has been unforgivably incompetent so far, going to war for one reason, staying for another and layering contradictory facts with Sunday-school rhetoric. Fallujah, a compromised compromise, becomes a sterling success in the president`s mouth. A systemic failure to abide by the Geneva Conventions becomes the kinky work of a few. The war over WMDs becomes one over terror. And Ahmed Chalabi, the erstwhile George Washington of Iraq, becomes Benedict Arnold virtually overnight. One moment he`s Laura Bush`s guest at the State of the Union speech; the next he`s ranting anti-American screeds in Baghdad.

The Bush administration`s rap on John Kerry is that he is inconsistent. The president`s virtue, on the other hand, is supposedly his consistency. But to stick to the same rhetoric when the facts have changed, to insist on what is palpably false, to render black as white and to say it all with a childlike faith in civics class bromides is not commendable consistency. It is instead the mark of a narrow mind overwhelmed by large events.

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© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Amnesty International Report 2004
http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/index-eng
Huge challenges confronted the international human rights movement in 2003. The UN faced a crisis of legitimacy and credibility because of the US-led war on Iraq and the organization`s inability to hold states to account for gross human rights violations. International human rights standards continued to be flouted in the name of the "war on terror", resulting in thousands of women and men suffering unlawful detention, unfair trial and torture – often solely because of their ethnic or religious background. Around the world, more than a billion people`s lives were ruined by extreme poverty and social injustice while governments continued to spend freely on arms.

This Amnesty International Report reflects those challenges. It documents the human rights situation in 155 countries and territories in 2003, and summarizes regional trends. It reports on areas of work being prioritized and developed by Amnesty International -- such as violence against women; economic, social and cultural rights; and justice for refugees and migrants – and celebrates the achievements of activists in these and other areas.

In a dangerous and divided world, it is more important than ever that the global human rights movement remains strong, relevant and vibrant. Through its members and allies, Amnesty International remains committed to revitalizing the vision of human rights as a powerful tool for achieving justice for all.

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UN fury over Bush attempts to install PM
By Anne Penketh and Justin Huggler in Baghdad

27 May 2004

The Bush administration was accused yesterday of undermining the work of the UN envoy attempting to put together an interim Iraqi government, by suggesting that a respected nuclear scientist was tipped to be prime minister.

The spokesman for Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy in Baghdad, reacted with fury after US officials were quoted as saying that Hussain Shahristani had emerged as the leading candidate. Mr Shahristani, a Shia, spent almost a decade in prison under Saddam Hussein after refusing to build a nuclear weapon, but he escaped into exile in 1991.

"There is no final list yet, we are still working on it," said the spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, who denied that Mr Shahristani was the leading contender for the post. "Now his life could be in danger," he added, now that Mr Shahristani`s name had been leaked. "This is a dangerous city." In New York, a UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said the report in yesterday`s Washington Post was "pure speculation which is not helpful to the process".

Mr Brahimi is working against the clock to announce a government of 30 people by next Monday, with the delicate task of striking a viable balance among all the Iraqi factions. "He is getting into the endgame of this, but a number of names are still in play for the top jobs," said an official. While the lower level positions have been agreed, Mr Brahimi`s private consultations have intensified as he attempts to nail down Iraqi approval for the positions of president, prime minister, and two vice-presidents.

UN and British officials dismissed suggestions that the Americans had a sinister motive in putting out Mr Shahristani`s name, and said that the information was simply out of date. Asked whether the Americans might have been trying to "bounce" Mr Shahristani into the post, a senior British official replied that "it was just a leak".

Mr Shahristani, who had the support of the British Government as he had worked as a visiting professor in Britain, was apparently in the frame for the position of prime minister. But his candidacy ran into difficulties when Mr Brahimi held further consultations with a range of Iraqis, including the influential Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini Sistani. The formation of the Iraqi government is a crucial step towards the adoption of a UN resolution which is to officially end the occupation of Iraq, transfer political sovereignty to the Iraqis and map out the future towards an elected government.

The Anglo-American resolution was presented to the UN Security Council on Monday, but ran into immediate difficulties from France, Germany and Russia which are insisting on "real sovereignty" for the Iraqi interim government which is to take power on 1 July.

Among other contenders for the top posts is Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni who served as foreign minister in the 1960s and who is being touted as a possible president. Ibrahim Jaaferi, a potential vice-president, and Mr Pachachi are two of the only members of the current US-appointed Governing Council to command the respect of ordinary Iraqis.

Dr Jaaferi is one of the leaders of the Dawa party, a Shia faction that was opposed to Baathist rule and banned under the Saddam regime. Unusually, the Shia Dr Jaaferi is respected by Sunnis. Some Sunnis even said yesterday that if there were an election, they would vote for him.

By contrast, the name suggested to fill the other of the two vice-presidencies, Jalal Talabani, is one that will not please Iraq`s Arabs, both Sunni and Shia. Mr Talabani`s past, leading a Kurdish rebellion against Arab rule, and the fact that he was seen as close to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, would make him a particularly unpopular choice. He is one of the two Kurdish leaders who control the Kurdish north of Iraq.


27 May 2004 11:47


© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion

Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan
http://www.juancole.com/
Hier einige Postings, mehr auf der Home-Page


Thoughts on Torture

Guest Editorial

By William R. Polk

Displays of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated in American military prisons have shocked not only Arabs and Europeans but also most Americans. They need not have been surprised – torture is not new.

Widely practiced by the Germans during World War II, it was standard French procedure during the Algerian war. One of the most influential books on that war, written by Colonel Roger Trinquier, a French paratrooper, argued that torture is to “modern war” what the machinegun was to World War I. Horrified by what they learned was happening, French critics called torture the “cancer of democracy.” Using it, the French not only destroyed their claim to legitimacy in Algeria but also nearly destroyed French civil life.

If there was a lesson to be learned by the Algerian experience, it certainly was not heeded.

Influenced by the French – Trinquier’s book was translated and made available by the CIA -- American soldiers and “special forces” used torture in Vietnam. Israeli troops and security forces have employed it for years against the Palestinians. Routinely, almost casually, it is employed in prison systems throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. It is more common in Europe than most would admit. From Greece, under the regime of the colonels, came a macabre episode: the men employed to torture prisoners, complaining of long hours at low pay, went on strike.

Studies of torture raise two questions that lie behind the horrifying images in the press in recent days: “does torture work?” and “why do governments do it?”

If the objective of torture is to get information, as is usually said, the answer to the first question is “sometimes.” The French in Algeria found that they could “break” a prisoner and find out where his colleagues were hiding or what kind of an operation was being planned. Often, of course, the person being tortured would just say what he thought his tormentors wanted to hear – anything to get them to stop. He knew that he was likely to be killed after he had been “debriefed.” But they had ways to check what he said and, keeping him alive, increased his pain if he lied.

Even if torture often failed to get the sought-after information, it was still an attractive option. Why? I think there are two answers: first, security officers think it might work and they have few other options. Much more important, I believe, is the second reason. Some circumstances almost demand brutality.

A century of careful medical and psychiatric studies tell us that the juxtaposition of absolute weakness and absolute power provokes violence. The bound and hooded Iraqi prisoners lying naked on the floor of Abu Ghraib prison invited attack.

So shocking is such a statement that few of us have wanted even to consider it. To deal with its implications requires us to reexamine our very concept of our humanity. So to get around that inhibition, some scientists, like the Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz, posed “our” problem to animals. What he found was that those animals that have “weapons systems,” like the lion with its claws and fangs, have evolved to practice restraints. Had they not done so, their species might not have survived. So the winner in a fight among lions will make ferocious noises but will usually stop short of killing the lion he has just knocked down. In contrast, those creatures, like that symbol of peace, the dove, that do not have lethal weapons have not evolved to practice restraint. They did not need to. Lorenz observed a dove actually torturing another to death.

Our evolution, students of violence assert, has made us more like doves than lions. True we have massive weapons systems but they are external; our ancestors were not forced to incorporate them into our behavior. So, when we see in the pictures of the Iraqi prisoners cowering on the floor, bound, hooded and defenseless we notice that the upright, armed and dominant guards do not show compassion. Rather, they feel stimulated to attack.

Surely, we say, these are aberrations. Normal people do not do such things. Alas, there is much evidence to the contrary.

Cultural, religious, ethnic and age ethnic differences do not seem to influence the willingness of human beings to torture others. Torture has been reported almost everywhere among peoples of all religions and historical experiences. It does have a racial or cultural dimension, however: men are more likely to torture people of a different color or culture than their own kind. Setting them apart is often easy. In Vietnam, American soldiers derided “gooks” and in Iraq “ragheads;” Germans despised untermenschen; Israelis treat Palestinians as subhuman and so on. Regarding the victim as unimportant makes it easier to attack him. Remember the phrase, “Asians feel no pain.”

Can ways be found to prevent these horrors?

One that we have found is generally ineffective is education. The Germans of the 1930s were certainly among the most educated people in the world; yet they set up the concentration camps. The French of the 1950s were a model for the rest of the world in their dedication to reason and intellect; yet some of their most cultured people were implicated in their sordid policies. Even more surprising, some Frenchmen who had fought in the underground against the Nazis to preserve French freedom went on to do to the Algerians what the Nazis had been doing to them. They too built concentration camps. Clean-cut, decent American college graduates who felt strongly about civil liberties were prepared to do to Vietnamese what they abhorred in America. We have only to look at photographs of the crowd of White American participants at a lynching to see how thin is the veneer of civilization. So I think that the best we can say is that education is necessary but not sufficient.

Two actions offer some hope to those who wish to stop torture.

The first is to demand “transparency” in whatever prison systems are believed to be necessary everywhere. This means that we cannot close our eyes and ears to abuses as we naturally would prefer to do. Nor can we accept any justification for torture. Those who do it and those who authorize it must both know for certain that they will be held responsible for a crime against humanity. That is, to be clear, a crime against both the humanity of the victims and against us as those whose humanity they thus debase.

The second is much more important because more likely to work. It is that we must make as a major goal of national policy solution of situations that promote the use of torture. An obvious first step is to work toward a world which recognizes that the basic political right is that of self-determination. Unless or until this is at least approached, we can expect others to fight for it with every means at their disposal and that those who oppose them will similarly use the means at their disposal: guerrilla warfare/terrorism will be met with various forms of suppression including torture. Only when it is no longer “needed” will torture be put aside.

We can draw many historical proofs that it then will be put aside. Take just one example. After centuries of severe repression including torture of prisoners, England finally granted Irish independence. Torture then stopped because it was not longer useful.

A policy embodying the quest for self determination will not be easy to implement. Nor will the benefits appear quickly. There will be shortfalls and setbacks. But in evaluating such difficult actions as will be required, we must bear in mind that, however much some people will wish to try the shortcuts that torture will seem to offer to avoid attacks or break terrorist cells, doing so not only will impact upon the victims but also brutalize those who employ or sanction it. That was the real lesson of Algeria. It should also be a lesson of Iraq. That is what the pictures from Iraq show us – not just the anguished faces of the prisoners but the gloating smirks of the torturers. Lest those looks appear in our own mirrors, we simply and finally cannot “afford” torture.

© William R. Polk, May 6, 2004


William R. Polk is senior director of the W.P. Carey Foundation. A graduate of Harvard and Oxford, he taught Middle Eastern politics and history and the Arabic language at Harvard University until President Kennedy appointed him a Member of the Policy Planning Council of the U.S. Department of State. He was in charge of planning American policy for most of the Islamic world until 1965 when he became professor of history at the University of Chicago and founded its Middle Eastern Studies Center. Later he also became president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. Among his many books are The United States and the Arab World; The Elusive Peace: The Middle East in the Twentieth Century; Neighbors and Strangers: The Fundamentals of Foreign Affairs; and Polk’s Folly, An American Family History. His books The Birth of America and Iraq: Out of the past toward an Uncertain Future will be published in New York in the spring of 2005.





posted by Juan at 5/26/2004 10:41:59 PM

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Abuse of Women Detainees

Iraqi women were also abused at Abu Ghuraib, according to the Taguba report and reports of photographs seen by the US Congress. As this Islamist PakNews story notes, most of the reporting on torture and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghuraib has focused on men. It is clear, however, that Iraqi women were also made to strip naked, were photographed in that compromising position, and it is alleged that some were raped by US military personnel. Although, of course, the soldiers who behaved this way and the officers who authorized or allowed it were not "crusaders," as the article alleges, the abuse of women was designed to take advantage of Muslim and Arab ideas concerning female honor.

A scandal that has not yet broken in the press is the story of how many women ended up in US prisons. The fact is, few were suspected of having themselves committed a crime or an act of insurgency. Rather, they were taken as hostages or potential informants because their husbands or sons were wanted by the US military. This kind of arrest, however, is a form of collective punishment and not permitted under the Fouth Geneva Convention governing military occupations of civilian populations. The sexual abuse of these women is therefore a double crime.

Eventually these photographs of abused or tortured Muslim women are likely to leak, and the reaction in the Muslim world will be explosive. One shakes one´s head in bewilderment as to what the Bush administration thought they were doing. William Polk´s guest editorial today is all the more a propos in light of these revelations.

posted by Juan at 5/26/2004 10:50:23 PM

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Noch ein Artikel von der Seite von Prof. Cole

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

America`s Incompetent Colonialism

Guest Editorial
by Keith Watenpaugh

America’s Incompetent Colonialism: The Failures of the US Administration of Iraq

A year ago, word began to filter out of Baghdad that in addition to the National Museum, the Iraqi National Library and Archive had also been looted, and burned, not once, but twice. Like the current scandal of systematic abuses of human rights by members of the US military, the CIA and its sub-contractors, the burning evoked a host of emotions most notably shame, revulsion and anger. The anger was primarily directed against the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense who failed to heed the near-unanimous warnings of the probability of post-war instability and the vulnerability of Iraq’s cultural heritage and take appropriate preventative measures. Their failure to fully grasp the reality of the situation in Iraq was among the earliest examples of continuing gross and criminal ineptitude of which the gruesome images from Abu Ghuraib are the most recent manifestations.

The destruction so enraged an international group of junior historians of the Arab Middle East, that we organized an assessment visit to the country last June to find out what had happened at Baghdad’s library and archives. What we also sought to do was record the needs of Iraq’s academic and intellectual community as it rebuilds itself in the face of a generation of brutish rule by Saddam Hussein, a decade of debilitating UN sanctions, a brief and humiliating war, and an open-ended American-led military occupation. All of us spoke Arabic, had lived in the region and conducted research in Iraq or in its neighboring countries before. The report of our findings is available for free download from the H-Net (http://www.h-net.org/about/press/opening_doors/) website. Downloaded several thousand times in the last year, our report is still among the only independent assessments of cultural and intellectual conditions in Iraq. Current status of the libraries and museums can be also be accessed from the following: IFLA-Blue Shield (http://www.ifla.org/VI/4/admin/icbs-iraq.htm), Iraq Crisis (https://listhost.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/iraqcrisis) SAFE (http://www.savingantiquities.org/k-safe-resources.htm).

Conducting research for the report required us to meet with civilian and military administrators of the CPA in the Green Zone. Aside from discovering that when American men are overseas they all - including me - wear khaki slacks and blue button-down shirts, I experienced what could only be termed “de ja vue all over again.” My own area of expertise is the interwar Middle East when France and Britain controlled the several states of the Arab Eastern Mediterranean as League of Nation’s Mandates. And while the League imposed humanitarian requirements on both, the Mandates were merely colonialism in drag. Sitting across the table from CPA administrators I listened to the same language of democratization and development being employed as part of a broader, concerted plan to turn Iraq into a dependent and docile American client; and key features of Iraqi society, including higher education, media, culture, and the arts would be subordinated to that program.

What also struck me about those conversations - and the events of the intervening year have confirmed my suspicions - is that the CPA, and here I mean not just the American diplomats and bureaucrats seconded to the DOD and the token representatives of “Coalition Partners,” but also the vast array of civilian contractors and subcontractors, have been infected by the pathologies of colonialism. As I have discussed in an earlier essay for Middle East Report, (http://www.merip.org/mer/mer228/228_watenpaugh.html)
the civilian and military administrators of Iraq have grown contemptuous of Iraq and Iraqis and have convinced themselves of their hosts’ essential incompetence. Blaming the victim has always proved an effective strategy in justifying colonialism.

The CPA’s colonial culture has limited its effectiveness on behalf of the Iraqi people and thus the US taxpayer is not getting a good value for its billions of dollars. And while unique elements of the CPA have made significant contributions to the rebuilding of Iraqi society, here I note especially the work of John Russell in the recovery of Iraq’s ancient heritage, those successes are not balanced by the abuses, corruption, cronyism and incompetence on the other side of the ledger. In part this has been caused by the exportation of domestic US politics to the Green Zone and the appointment of individuals whose sense of Iraqi, Arab, and Islamic cultures (if they have any at all) is shaped by a narrow partisan, cultural or religious agenda - and in some cases the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This was reinforced recently by the discovery that the CPA’s massive press/propaganda office is peopled primarily by Republican Party activists, lead by Dan Senor, himself a former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) intern, as well.

An exemplary token of this phenomenon is the civilian contractor John Agresto, appointed last year as senior advisor to the Ministry of Higher Education. Senior advisors play a paternalistic role in the CPA akin to colonial administrators of the inter-war French and British Mandates and exert a tremendous amount of power over Iraqi institutions and agencies through the control of budgets, security and as gatekeepers to the upper echelons of the Department of Defense. Prior to going to Iraq, Agresto was briefly the president of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an institution known for its Eurocentric “Great Books” curriculum and he now runs his own educational consulting firm, Agresto Consultants. Agresto has no training in Middle Eastern society or culture and no experience in the region. He served briefly as interim chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, to which he was appointed by Ronald Reagan. Along with William Bennett, and Lynne Cheney, the wife of the current Vice President Dick Cheney, Agresto was one of the leading right-wing figures in the “culture wars” of the 1980s.

More problematic for the future of higher education in Iraq, the ostensible reason he is there, is that his appointment signaled that the CPA was intent on peopling its bureaucracy with politically loyal agents, rather than those most objectively qualified to assist Iraq. The clearly political nature of Agresto’s position sent a chilling signal to those academic institutions interested in working in Iraq that their efforts - regardless of how disinterested, or how much they believe that they could change the system from within - would be part and parcel of the administration’s current policy objectives and cronyism. And in the short-term, while these programs have the potential to aid Iraqis as they rebuild their educational structures, in the long run they will tar all American educational initiatives and American academics with the same neo-colonialist brush. Being perceived as, or in fact being, allied to the military occupation of Iraq or as agents of American domination will hinder the creation of permanent, collegial and productive relations between the US and Iraqi academic communities as equals. The ultimate cost of failing to create viable and permanent relationships and of confusing what appears to be voluntary cooperation with a strategy to survive is that the core values of open exchange, freedom of inquiry, women’s participation in higher education and faculty self-management may all be dismissed as “American” values and moreover as anti-Muslim despite our assertion of their inherent universality.

While the CPA is supposed to go out of business on June 30, what elements of it will persist in the next iteration of the American role in the civil administration of Iraq is unclear. Dan Senor recently used the euphemistic construction “close partnership” to describe that relationship as he dismissed the possibility that an independent Iraqi government might ask us to leave. Fear of being asked to leave may be the leading factor in the administrations rejection of the technocratic solution suggested by the UN’s Lakhdar Brahimi. While US diplomats will in all likelihood occupy a role similar to that played by current administrators, what I suspect will also be the case is that a significant portion of American policy in Iraq will be implemented by contractors. At this juncture, Congress should exercise due diligence and mount an independent audit and investigation of the CPA; it should also introduce legislation that would hold contractors liable to US and Iraqi law and moreover give the FBI enforcement powers and responsibilities. In other words, US citizens should enjoy no extraterritorial rights in Iraq, nor should the contractors simply be allowed to police themselves.

As a rule historians should avoid the use of history to predicate the future. Yet, in an essay I wrote shortly before the war for Logos, I opined that thinking about the exit strategies of the various interwar colonial powers could shed light on what the US would do in Iraq. At the time, I argued that the way the British left Iraq – install a loyal client leadership backed by a strong military, gain basing rights and oil concessions – would be repeated. I was convinced that the US would not leave Iraq like the British left Palestine in 1948: merely abandoning it to the UN and laying the groundwork for a half century of ongoing and unremitting war and suffering. I think I was wrong.

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Keith Watenpaugh is Assistant Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern History at Le Moyne College; he also serves as the college’s Associate Director of Peace and Global Studies. In the Fall he will be a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He is the third generation of his family to have lived and worked in the Middle East. He speaks and reads Arabic and Modern Turkish. Dr. Watenpaugh has written extensively on Arab intellectual history, the formation of the Baath and urban and communal violence. His book Being Modern in the Middle East: Colonialism, Modernity and the Middle Class will be published by Princeton University Press.


In June of 2003 he led a multinational team of Middle Eastern historians to Iraq to assess the conditions of Baghdad’s libraries, archives and universities * and more broadly observe the emergence of civil society and intellectual life in Iraq. The group’s findings are included in the report Opening the Doors: Intellectual Life and Academic Conditions in Post-war Iraq. Copies are available at h-net.org. The report is the first comprehensive account of Iraq’s intellectual and cultural scene after the war and provides the most detailed study of Iraq’s university system as it begins to rebuild in the wake of the war.


Dr. Watenpaugh has spoken on humanitarian issues confronting Iraq at Harvard, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas, the University of Utah, as well as the annual meetings of the American Historical Association, the Middle East Studies Association and the College Art Association. His work has been covered by The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Boston Globe, The Syracuse Post-Standard and National Public Radio.



Keith D. Watenpaugh
Associate Director
Peace and Global Studies


Assistant Professor
Eastern Mediterranean and Islamic History
Department of History
Le Moyne College
Syracuse NY 13214

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NEWS ANALYSIS
Kerry Feels Squeeze on Iraq Policy
While Bush moves ever closer to his challenger`s ideas, more Democrats are calling for a pullout.
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

May 27, 2004

WASHINGTON — Sen. John F. Kerry faces a stark new challenge in the campaign skirmishing over Iraq: As President Bush has moved toward his position, the Democratic Party is moving away from it.

From one side, Kerry confronts calls from growing numbers of Democrats to establish a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. That idea will receive a major boost today when Win Without War, a coalition of 42 liberal groups, launches a campaign urging the U.S. to set a date for ending its military presence in Iraq.

From the other direction, Bush has come much closer to Kerry`s view that the U.S. should rely more on the United Nations to oversee the transition from occupation to a sovereign Iraqi government, thus blurring the contrast between the two men.

In the long run, these shifts in Democratic attitudes and Bush`s strategy may pressure Kerry to break more sharply from the administration on Iraq, a step he has firmly resisted.

More immediately, the squeeze is encouraging Kerry to subtly shift his critique of Bush on the war. In his response to Bush`s speech on Iraq on Monday night, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee focused less on criticizing the president`s policies than on questioning whether he could provide the international leadership to implement them.

"That is the principal difference at this point in time," said Rand Beers, the Kerry camp`s national security coordinator.

But as Kerry begins an 11-day focus on national security with a speech in Seattle today, his shrinking differences with Bush over Iraq could revive the problem that plagued him during the Democratic primaries: conflict with his party base over the war.

Recent polls have shown rising support among Democrats for withdrawal. And Win Without War plans a nationwide series of demonstrations in late June to push for a firm date.

"We are going to be making that case as vigorously as we can to the American people," said Tom Andrews, Win Without War`s national director and a former Democratic House member from Maine.

While the liberal coalition veers away from Kerry, Bush over the last several weeks has crowded the Massachusetts senator by executing what many analysts see as a major midcourse correction on Iraq.

After months of resisting an expansive United Nations role in Iraq, the administration ceded to U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi responsibility for selecting the interim government expected to be given limited sovereignty on June 30.

Since last fall, Kerry`s principal argument has been that Bush had to give the U.N. more authority in overseeing Iraq`s political transition to trigger greater commitments of money and troops from other nations.

Kerry would still move further in that direction than Bush. In a recent speech, Kerry advocated the appointment of a U.N. high commissioner to direct the change from an interim to a permanent Iraqi government. He also said he would seek to place the coalition military effort in Iraq under NATO control (although with a U.S. commander).

But some Democrats acknowledge that these ideas now may strike many voters more as differences of degree than of kind with Bush, especially with independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader trumpeting the choice of rapid withdrawal.

"Kerry`s position is being eroded," said one top Democratic foreign policy analyst who asked not to be named. "Kerry is in a position where the best he will be able to say is that Bush is finally doing what I said to do all along."

Compounding Kerry`s problem, doubts are growing among Democrats to the open-ended commitment in Iraq that he echoes Bush in supporting. In an ABC/Washington Post survey released Monday, 53% of Democrats said the U.S. "should withdraw its military forces from Iraq … even if that means civil order is not restored there."

Voices influential in Democratic circles are also promoting withdrawal. In recent articles, James B. Steinberg, the deputy national security advisor under President Clinton, and Leslie Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, have said the U.S. should set a "date certain" for the withdrawal of all American troops.

Such a step, they argue, is critical to winning Iraqi backing for maintaining the occupation long enough to build a reliable security force for the country`s new government.

The withdrawal idea is certain to receive more attention now that Win Without War, whose members include the influential liberal Internet advocacy group, MoveOn.org, has endorsed it after extensive deliberations.

Andrews, Win Without War`s director, said that although the resolution the group will announce today will call for setting a deadline for withdrawal, it will not endorse a specific date.

"To us, the mere presence of an unwelcome occupation force is … fueling the insurgencies, and it means our soldiers have become vulnerable targets unable to restore order," he said.

Kerry has said the U.S. could begin withdrawing troops once stability is established in Iraq. Aides say he believes a more specific withdrawal option would be both a policy and political mistake: an invitation to chaos in Iraq and a backlash from swing voters in the U.S.

In his emphasis on national security and foreign policy issues over the next several days, Kerry is not expected to engage in detailed policy disputes over Iraq with Bush. Instead, he and Democratic allies seem more inclined to argue that only a new president could change the international atmosphere enough to generate significant help from other nations in Iraq.

For Democrats, that approach has the advantage of focusing the Iraq debate on Bush`s performance rather than Kerry`s proposals. Former Vice President Al Gore, in a New York City speech Wednesday, praised Kerry for resisting pressure to tie himself down on Iraq.

"Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing … but rather should preserve his, and our country`s, options," Gore said.

Andrews said that while he believed Kerry made the right decision to maintain a low profile on Iraq in the near term, eventually the candidate would need to provide Americans a sharper alternative.

"What Kerry`s doing is stepping out of the line of fire and making the issue George Bush`s policy on Iraq," Andrews said. "But clearly the degree to which [he] can be clear, specific and concrete about what … steps he can take to get us out of this colossal mess is to the good."



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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$2.36 a Gallon? Honey, I Shrunk the SUV
By Sharon Bernstein
Times Staff Writer

May 27, 2004

Mario Sanchez really wanted a big, American-made sport utility vehicle to haul his children around in pride and safety.

Then he did the math. And bought a Toyota 4Runner.

"It was the price of gas," the 31-year-old North Hills resident said.

The high cost of gasoline — which averaged $2.36 per gallon in Los Angeles County on Wednesday — priced him out of the market for a bigger sport utility vehicle. With six cylinders instead of eight, the smaller 4Runner could cost Sanchez as much as $720 per year less than the Chevrolet Tahoe or GMC Yukon he had wanted to buy.

As gas prices hit new records, there are signs that motorists may be downsizing — at least a bit.

Sales of the largest SUVs dived last month from the previous April, according to research firm Autodata Corp., which tracks sales nationwide: Ford Expeditions dropped 34%, Lincoln Navigators were down 25%, and Chevrolet Suburbans drew 21% fewer buyers.

Overall SUV sales continue to climb, up 2.5% last month over the previous April, largely due to the soaring popularity of smaller, more fuel-efficient SUVs. Sales of Saturn`s Vue rose 59%, Chevrolet`s Blazer jumped 55%, and Ford`s Escape rose 49%.

Car experts say it`s too soon to conclude that high gas prices will cut into sales of the largest SUVs over the long run. And last month`s drop-off might be explained, at least in part, by a rise in sales in April 2003. But transportation industry analysts say that if gas prices stay high, the "bigger is better" mentality could give way to a thriftier attitude.

"We expect to see a shift from big trucks to little trucks, and from big cars to little cars," said Ron Tadross, an auto industry analyst with Banc of America Securities.

Adjusted for inflation, today`s prices for gasoline are actually a third lower than they were at their peak in 1982. But with average prices in Southern California hitting $2.40 in Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties Wednesday, they still take a bite out of a motorist`s budget.

At that price for gas, and based on 15,000 miles a year of stop-and-go city driving at the Environmental Protection Agency`s estimated city mileage, it would cost about $2,600 for fuel to drive the largest sport utility vehicles, including Chevrolet`s biggest Suburban and Tahoe models.

Gas for a Toyota Sienna minivan would cost about $1,900 per year, while for a Toyota Prius, a hybrid car, it would cost about $600.

"The longer these prices persist and the higher they go, ultimately they`re going to become a problem," said Bob Schnorbus, chief economist for the automotive market research firm J.D. Power and Associates.

"We need to be watching this closely."

Morris Sheppard, a furniture designer who needs a vehicle with a cargo bed large enough to move custom-made couches and tables, had planned to replace his Jeep Grand Cherokee with another one. But he bought Toyota`s Scion xB instead, figuring he would save about $1,000 per year in fuel costs.

"I wasn`t as concerned about the gas mileage the last time I bought a car," the 59-year-old Marina del Rey resident said. "It was not in the forefront of my consciousness as it is today."

High prices at the pump are also leading more motorists to buy gas-electric hybrid cars, according to market analyses by Toyota and Honda, which make the two most widely available models.

At Toyota of North Hollywood one recent morning, Shane Ross and his wife took turns cradling their new baby as they discussed the automaker`s Prius hybrid with a salesman. The car had initially seemed too expensive to the 33-year-old Ross, who has three children, but now he is considering buying one.

He figures that he would save enough money on gas to recoup the premium he would pay for the popular Prius, which has a suggested retail price of about $21,000 but can sell for as high as $30,000.

Dealers and automakers said many customers who want large SUVs and trucks are opting for versions with smaller, more fuel-efficient engines.

"Our customers are very aware of the gas price situation, and we`re seeing them make decisions within models," said Mark McCready, director of pricing strategy for the online company Carsdirect.com.

"For example, the customer that wants to buy a Ford Explorer is saying, `Do I need the 4x4 or can I live with the 4x2? Or do I really need the V-8? Can I use the V-6?` "

Jesse Toprak, director of pricing and market analysis for the online research firm Edmunds.com, said consumers have been concerned about gasoline prices since last summer, when the usual seasonal spike in prices failed to subside.

To move the larger vehicles, he said, automakers and dealers are resorting to incentives and discounts. In the case of Chevrolet`s Suburban, they add up to about $10,000.

Ted Nicholas, general manager of Three Way Chevrolet in Bakersfield, is counting on the markdowns to boost sales of Suburbans, which have been sagging even in partly rural Kern County.

His customers are not rejecting SUVs altogether, Nicholas said, but they are increasingly choosing the half-ton Suburban over the three-quarter-ton version, or moving from the Suburban to the Tahoe, which has several models with a smaller engine.

"Our Suburban sales were off," said Nicholas, who Chevrolet says is one of the state`s biggest sellers of Suburbans. "But our Tahoe sales were up."

Part of the reason was price and availability, he said.

But customers are also concerned about gas mileage, and the biggest SUVs can get as little as 10 miles to the gallon.

"There is a big change here," said Ali Sepehri, who sells Lincolns, Mercurys and Toyotas at Toyota of Hollywood. "Our customers are really considering the price of the gas."

Raul Gutierrez, a father of two from Eagle Rock, had been considering buying a Ford Expedition or a Toyota Sequoia, both large SUVs that the EPA rates at about 14 miles to the gallon in city driving.

Last Friday, on the day that the nationwide average cost of self-serve regular gasoline hit $2.06 a gallon and California averaged $2.32, Gutierrez decided to buy a Toyota Sienna minivan, which is rated at 19 miles to the gallon in city driving.

His reason was simple: "It`s not a gas guzzler."

Times staff writer John O`Dell contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

What it`ll cost

With average gasoline prices hitting $2.40 per gallon in several Southern California counties, it`s becoming more expensive to drive the biggest sport utility vehicles. Sales of large SUVs were down in April from the previous year; sales of smaller ones appeared to be on the rise.

Full-sized

Chevrolet Suburban: 8-cylinder, 5.3-liter engine, 14 mpg in city, $2,571 per year in fuel costs.*

Sales: Down 21%.**

Mid-sized



Toyota Highlander: V-6, 3.0-liter engine, 19 mpg in city driving, $1,895 per year in fuel costs.*

Sales: Up 15.5%.**

Compact



Ford Escape: 4-cylinder, 2.0-liter engine, 23 mpg in city driving, $1,565 per year in fuel costs.*

Sales: Up 49.3%.**

*Cost estimates assume city driving of 15,000 miles per year in 2004 models.

** In April 2004 as compared to April 2003.

Sources: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, AAA, Autodata Corp.

Los Angeles Times




Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
A U.S. Ally Caught Between Two Goals in Iraq
If insurgency splinters the country, ethnic Kurds will have to weigh Washington`s dream of unity against their own dream of independence.
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Times Staff Writer

May 27, 2004

BAGHDAD — The iconic image of the Kurd is a man in billowy trousers with a rifle, a knife and a will to fight to the death. He has battled throughout the generations, and Kurds say he may be called upon again.

Kurds fear that Shiite and Sunni Muslim insurgencies against U.S. troops in Iraq could splinter the nation. If that happens, the Kurds — who account for just 19% of the population but control the country`s largest ethnic army — will be forced to choose between their risky dream of independence and the Bush administration`s goal of a unified Iraq.

With the June 30 deadline for Iraqis to regain sovereignty little more than a month away, a U.N. envoy is putting the finishing touches on an interim government representing all of the country`s main religious and ethnic groups. Kurds are expected to hold prominent positions in the government, but they are uneasy about whether Iraq`s disparate factions can hold the country together.

"The turmoil in south and central Iraq threatens us Kurds," said Hewa Abdullah, a painter studying at Sulaymaniya University in the mountains of northern Iraq. "Islamic extremism has arrived in the south and is strong in the middle of the country. If we don`t go toward independence, we will lose all our achievements."

A Kurdish push for independence is one of many troubling scenarios rippling from the Shiite and Sunni insurgencies. The unrest underscores Iraq`s perilous political map and how generations of ethnic and tribal animosities can flare with the ferocity of a desert sandstorm. It also illustrates how much of Iraq`s fate is tied not only to U.S. resolve, but also to radical clerics, terrorists and the agendas of neighboring Turkey, Syria and Iran.

Kurds, the only long-standing U.S. allies in this ravaged land, are resented by Arab Iraqis for supporting the invasion of the country. It was pressure from Washington — and threats by Turkey to crush an emerging Kurdish state — that forced Kurds to abandon designs for independence as Saddam Hussein`s regime collapsed. Kurds today know they are vulnerable if the U.S.-led forces can`t control Iraq`s increasingly defiant Arab majority, one reason they insist on retaining their army of about 55,000 peshmerga soldiers.

"How long is Kurdish patience for a new Iraq? That`s based on how long American patience is," said Rosh Shawais, speaker of the Kurdish parliament and an official with the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council. "Without the Americans there will be no democratic Iraq."

Kurdish leaders say Hussein loyalists and foreign terrorists are driving wedges between Kurds and Arab Iraqis. The shift in attitude against Kurds is intensifying as more Iraqis express disdain for the U.S.-led occupation and those who foster it. Insurgents in Fallouja, for example, have stoked resentment by spreading rumors that U.S. forces helped Kurds seize Arab homes. Many Iraqis are also troubled when they see former peshmerga soldiers in the ranks of the new, U.S.-trained Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. "We are totally against these plots and conspiracies to divide Kurds and Arabs," said Azad Jindyany, a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which controls the eastern half of northern Iraq. Like many Kurdish officials, Jindyany was conciliatory when speaking of the new Iraq, but steely when it came to Kurdish interests.

"We are concerned about the possibility of civil war," he said. "But the phase of marginalizing the Kurds is over."

Kurds have growing misgivings about Arab Iraqis, especially Muqtada Sadr, the Shiite cleric whose militia is battling U.S. forces in Najaf. A recent article on the Kurdistan Observer website said that the "Iran-backed fanatic Sadr and his gang of black shirts [are] awaiting their chance to maim and kill and dismember Kurds."

A mountain people who for centuries have withstood the elements and armies arrayed against them, the Kurds have learned to navigate Iraq`s terrain and political gambles. Hussein`s army killed 5,000 Kurds in Halabja with chemical weapons in 1988, and tens of thousands disappeared during Baath Party military assaults on Kurdish lands during the last 40 years.

Kurdish officials say they want to move beyond this troubled history and are embracing the idea of autonomy in a federated Iraq.

Yet many Arab Iraqis believe that the Kurds will use the chaos of occupation to secede.

"The other day on TV there were Kurdish students wearing badges of the Kurdish flag," said Ayab Badri, a Sunni and former lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi army. "The teacher asked them, `Do you want to stay part of Iraq or be separate?` The students answered, `Separate.` "

Bannai Jarala, a bookseller in downtown Baghdad, said the Kurds were seeking something more than autonomy.

"We feel the Kurds are like the Germans were before World War II," Jarala said. "Their nationalist feelings are too strong. But will circumstances today allow such indulgences?"

From the Kurds` point of view, the same question could be asked of radical Shiites and their aspirations for a theocratic state, and of Sunni Baath loyalists who want to return to the days of Hussein. Kurds, however, insist that they will hew to the American line.

"We have made a strategic choice," said Barham Salih, prime minister of the Kurdistan regional government, in the east. "We are partners with the U.S. to bring about a democratic transformation of Iraq. We will not be on the fence. This is not gimmicking — it is how we read our interests."

He added: "But I am worried, as so often U.S. policy people tend to take their friends for granted while attempting to win over opponents. The thugs of Fallouja, who represent the same value system that gave rise to the tyranny of Saddam, cannot and will not like the Kurds. And most probably they will never forgive us for opposing Saddam and working with the U.S.-led coalition."

The Kurds have limited places to turn. The 3.5 million of them in the mountains of northern Iraq were protected from Hussein`s forces after the 1991 Persian Gulf War by a "no-fly" zone patrolled by U.S. and British planes. They built a quasi-capitalist democracy and thrived compared with the rest of the country.

The Kurds contend that they are jeopardizing these gains to rejoin a vanquished nation in hopes the future will bring security and better economic opportunities.

The Kurdish leadership realizes that it is not the time to press for independence. Turkey, with an anxious Kurdish population of its own, has vowed to quash a separate Kurdish state. Such a crackdown would disrupt the fragile region — possibly drawing in Syria and Iran — and further roil Washington`s plan for postwar Iraq. The Kurds have also postponed attempts to immediately incorporate Kirkuk — the city and its surrounding area account for 40% of Iraq`s oil reserves — into their region.

Such concessions have angered Kurdish nationalists. They believe that the uncertainty in Iraq gives Kurds an ideal chance to break away.

"It is the duty of our political parties to go back to the people and to start to reorder the Kurdish house," said Hallkawt Abdullah, a member of a nationalist group that seeks a referendum on the Kurds` future. "We now have the best opportunity to achieve independence. Fraternity with the Arabs doesn`t necessarily mean coexistence. We can have two independent states and still have good relations."

That desire is not what Kurdish leaders and their American allies want to hear now.

Despite having a miniature Kurdish national flag on his desk in Baghdad, Jindyany offered a more pragmatic approach: "We will never give up the dream for a free state, and we don`t consider that dream to be a crime. But we are sacrificing that dream for a unified Iraq."

Special correspondent Azad Seddiq in Sulaymaniya contributed to this report.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY
Reality Check -- This Is War
Recent low-casualty conflicts have spoiled the U.S. In fact, the Iraq loss rate is among our smallest ever.
Max Boot

May 27, 2004

The panic gripping Washington over the state of Iraq makes it clear we have been spoiled by the seemingly easy, apparently bloodless victories of the last decade. From the Persian Gulf War of 1991 to the Afghanistan war of 2001, we got used to winning largely through air power. There were casualties, of course, but few of them were on our side. In Kosovo, we managed to prevail without losing a single person. We forgot what real war looks like. Iraq is providing an unwelcome reminder of how messy and costly it can be.

By comparison with the wars of the last decade, what`s happening in Iraq appears to be a terrible failure. Things look a little different if you compare it with earlier conflicts.

Look at three key indicators:

• Casualties. As of Wednesday, we`ve lost 800 service people in Iraq (666 of them from hostile fire), and more than 4,500 have been wounded (of whom 1,769 returned to duty within 72 hours). At least 200,000 soldiers and Marines have served in Iraq — including many who have since left — so that amounts to a total casualty rate of about 2.5%. If you add Air Force, Navy and logistics personnel supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom (at least 150,000), the casualty rate drops to 1.5%.

How does that compare with previous U.S. wars? By my calculation, using data from Information Please and the Oxford Companion to American Military History, the losses we`ve suffered in Iraq are so far among the lowest of any of our major conflicts. Comparing the number of U.S. wounded and dead with the size of the force deployed, in Vietnam the casualty rate was 6.2%; in World War I and World War II, just above 6.5%. On D-day, June 6, 1944, more than three times as many servicemen were lost as died in Iraq in the past year.

The Iraq war rate seems high only because our unstated benchmark is the 1991 Gulf War (total casualty rate: 0.14%). This is not meant to deprecate the sacrifices of our soldiers; for friends and family members, no statistics can assuage their grief. But, from a historical vantage point, what`s remarkable is how few casualties we`ve suffered, not how many.

• Nation-building. No, we haven`t established a liberal democracy in Iraq. But it`s only been a year. We occupied West Germany for four years after 1945, Japan for seven years. We occupied the Philippines for almost half a century after the Spanish-American War. More recently, Bosnia is still occupied by the international community nine years after the end of hostilities, as is Kosovo five years later.

It takes a long time to bring order out of chaos. The most successful examples of nation-building, such as the British in India, required hundreds of years. No one is suggesting that the United States should occupy Iraq nearly that long, of course, but it`s unrealistic to expect too much in only a year. The fact that an interim Iraqi government will be established June 30, and elections held by Jan. 30, is actually pretty speedy by historical norms.

• Abuses: I make no excuses for the sadistic creeps at Abu Ghraib whose misconduct deserves the harshest possible punishment. But let`s be serious. For all the media`s coverage, this is no My Lai (1968) or No Gun Ri (1950) — both instances in which innocent civilians were gunned down by U.S. troops. Nor is this comparable to the abuses that occurred during the Philippine War (1899-1903), when Brig. Gen. Jacob Smith instructed his men to turn the island of Samar into "a howling wilderness" and kill "all persons … who are capable of bearing arms."

In Iraq, there is no evidence of the kind of systematic torture employed by the French in Algeria (1954-62) or the kind of "concentration camps" invented by the British in the Boer War (1899-1902). U.S. troops haven`t simply leveled whole towns, as the Russians did in Chechnya (1994-95) or the Syrians in Hama (1982). Even in World War II — the "good war" — there were numerous instances of Americans shooting enemy soldiers trying to surrender, to say nothing of the carpet-bombing of German and Japanese civilians.

On the historical scale of abuses, the misconduct of a few soldiers in Iraq ranks pretty low. Most soldiers and Marines actually have exhibited great restraint in the face of an enemy that hides behind civilians and fires from mosques.

I don`t mean to imply that everything is going great in Iraq. There are huge problems, especially the lack of security, and the Bush administration has badly bungled many aspects of the occupation. All I`m suggesting is that we keep a sense of perspective: Mistakes and setbacks occur in every war. At least in every war before the 1990s.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Chronicling the Casualties

Percentages of personnel injured or killed among the totals that served in major American conflicts (in descending order):

Civil War (Union forces): 29%

Mexican War: 22%

War of Independence: 11.6%

Korean War: 7.8%

World War I: 6.8%

World War II: 6.6%

Vietnam War: 6.2%

Philippine War: 5.6%

War of 1812: 2.3%

Iraq war: 1.5-2.5%

Spanish-American War: 1.3%

1991 Persian Gulf War: 0.14%

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Sources: Information Please, Oxford Companion to American Military History




Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

Max Boot is Olin Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He is also a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

His last book, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Basic Books) was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor. It also won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award, given annually by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for the best nonfiction book pertaining to Marine Corps history. He is now writing his next book, a history of revolutions in military affairs over the past 500 years, War Made New: Four Great Revolutions That Changed the Face of Battle and the Course of History, which will be published by Gotham Books, an imprint of Penguin (USA).

Boot has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs and many other publications. He is also a frequent public speaker and guest on radio and television news programs. He has lectured at many military institutions, including the Army and Navy War Colleges, the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School, and the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

Before joining the Council in October 2002, Boot spent eight years as a writer and editor at The Wall Street Journal, the last five years as editorial features editor. From 1992 to 1994 he was an editor and writer at The Christian Science Monitor.

Boot holds a bachelor`s degree in history, with high honors, from the University of California, Berkeley (1991), and a master`s degree in history from Yale University (1992). He grew up in Los Angeles and now lives with his wife and three children in Larchmont, N.Y.

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COMMENTARY
Is a New Strongman Iraq`s Solution?
Perhaps only a national hero can nudge it toward Western values.
By Milton Viorst
Milton Viorst, former Middle East correspondent for the New Yorker, has written five books on the region`s politics and religion.

May 27, 2004

King Abdullah II of Jordan, our best friend among the Arab leaders, this week dismissed the White House promise to install a democratic system in Iraq and said that what Baghdad needed instead was a strongman, probably from the ranks of the military, to preside over the transition to a permanent government.

His words made me recall talks I had in Baghdad on the eve of the war, when Iraqis repeatedly told me that although the impending American invasion would surely put an end to the Saddam Hussein regime, it would produce in its place not democracy but a carbon copy of Hussein. They said this without glee but rather with resignation. Most did not want another tyrant, but they had no faith in democracy`s prospects or in Washington`s ability to impose it.

Abdullah, however, was not calling for the restoration of a Hussein-like regime. He suggested a hero of the Iran-Iraq war, tough but untainted by Baathism, a consensus figure. Though not washing his hands of democracy entirely, he reminded us that Arab tradition tilted more readily toward authoritarianism. He seemed to be looking Arab history straight in the eye and concluding that it was all but impossible for us to build a democratic system on the rubble of the Iraqi battlefield.

Painful as it is for Americans to lay democracy aside, the king may be right. Did our planners really think Iraqis would embrace democracy coming from the barrel of a gun?

Scholars differ on the long-standing reasons for democracy`s poor prospects in Iraq — religious and ethnic divisions, tribalism, Islamic theology, social patriarchy. But what is undisputed is Iraq`s historical rage toward the West. The American vision of overriding that rage to design a state in our own image was never realistic, and the disorder fed by the occupation made matters only worse.

Iraq`s anger, rooted in centuries of Christian-Islamic rivalry, was reborn in earnest when Britain replaced Turkey as Iraq`s colonizer after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War I. The Turks, who were both Middle Eastern and Muslim, had shared basic values with the Arabs. The British, who were Western and Christian, brought values that tore Arab society apart. It did not impress Arabs that Britain was governed democratically.

The British in Iraq organized a democratic regime, to be sure, but it was only a facade for safeguarding their own power. When they departed a few decades later, and the Arabs found themselves free to choose for themselves, they overthrew the pseudo-democracy that the colonizers had left behind and put a strongman in its place. By the time Hussein reached the top he was already known for brutality, but at least, in the eyes of Iraqis, he had none of the smell of the foreigner about him. To the end, Iraqis were proud to be ruled by one of their own.

Turkey was the one Muslim state in the region to opt for democracy, but under its own unique circumstances. The hub of a grand empire, it was often defeated in battle but never occupied by the Christian West. Used to making political decisions, it accepted the leadership of Kemal Ataturk, a strong-arm military man who preached that the country`s lost grandeur could be restored only by adopting the ways of its conquerors. Democratizing Turkey was no easy task, and today, 80 years after Ataturk took power, it is far from finished. But Turkey`s democracy has proved resilient.

Abdullah, though a strongman himself, is the model of a benevolent monarch. Both he and his late father, King Hussein, kept ultimate control of the state in their own hands while nudging the country toward Western values — the antidote, in their view, to the Arab world`s economic and social stagnation. Although President Bush insists that it is condescending to say that Iraqis are unready for democracy, Abdullah clearly disagrees. He knows Arabs well enough to recognize the pointlessness of foisting on the Iraqis a democratic system before they are ready to embrace it on their own.

His proposal suggests a regime much like Ataturk`s and a little like his own, but, in the Iraqi context, it will not be easy to keep it from sliding into Husseinism.

Iraqis are no doubt aware of the danger. Yet if the current uprising tells us anything, it is not that they want a democratic or an Islamic or a military state but that — whatever the price in blood and resources — they want to be in charge themselves of the process of choosing.

Iraq may one day get to democracy, but not as an American gift. Iraqis will have to do it the hard way, getting there on their own.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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May 27, 2004
As Ashcroft Warns of Attack, Some Question Threat and Its Timing
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, May 26 - The Bush administration said on Wednesday that it had credible intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda is planning to attack the United States in the next several months, a period in which events like an international summit meeting and the two political conventions could offer tempting targets.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a news conference that intelligence reports and public statements by people associated with Al Qaeda suggested that the terrorist group was "almost ready to attack the United States" and harbored a "specific intention to hit the United States hard."

But some intelligence officials, terrorism experts - and to some extent even Mr. Ashcroft`s own F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III - offered a more tempered assessment, saying, "For the next few weeks we have reason to believe there is a heightened threat to the U.S. interests around the world.`` And some opponents of President Bush, including police and firefighter union leaders aligned with Senator John Kerry, the expected Democratic presidential candidate, said the timing of the announcement appeared intended in part to distract attention from Mr. Bush`s sagging poll numbers and problems in Iraq.

The administration did not raise the terrorist threat advisory from its current level of elevated, or yellow, and the White House said Mr. Bush would not alter his schedule because of security concerns.

"There`s no real new intelligence, and a lot of this has been out there already," said one administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "There really is no significant change that would require us to change the alert level of the country."

Mr. Ashcroft said the government did not have any information about where the terrorists might strike, and he said there was "extraordinary" security being put in place for events like a summit meeting of international leaders next month in Savannah, Ga., the Democratic convention in Boston in late July and the Republican convention in New York in late August and early September.

Mr. Ashcroft called for greater public vigilance, especially in looking out for seven people sought by the F.B.I. who are suspected of being Qaeda members or sympathizers.

The names of six of the seven were publicly circulated by the authorities months ago, and officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said that they had no reason to believe any of the seven suspects were in the United States.

Asked about the timing of his new warnings about the suspects, Mr. Ashcroft said, "We believe the public, like all of us, needs a reminder."

Some intelligence officials said they were uncertain that the link between the fresh intelligence and the likelihood of another attack was as apparent as Mr. Ashcroft made it out to be. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security said just a day before Mr. Ashcroft`s announcement that they had no new intelligence pointing to the threat of an attack.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who is a member of the intelligence committee, said in an interview that the committee had received no word of any new information of the type Mr. Ashcroft described. Mr. Durbin said that if there were credible new information about a possible strike, he believed the intelligence committee should have been told about it.

Other officials said they supported Mr. Ashcroft`s warnings.

"I think he was right on the mark in terms of what Al Qaeda`s intent is," said one counterterrorism official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The White House came under criticism this year for not acting more aggressively in August 2001 when Mr. Bush was informed that Al Qaeda was planning to attack the United States or its interests abroad. In issuing a high-profile warning this time, the administration appeared intent on insulating itself from any perception that it was not responding vigorously enough.

But the announcement also came after weeks in which Mr. Bush`s political standing has been battered by events in Iraq and as his re-election campaign is seeking to portray Mr. Kerry as opposed to the USA Patriot Act, the law giving the government broad powers to combat terrorism.

Harold Schaitberger, head of the International Association of Fire Fighters, told reporters in a conference call organized by Mr. Kerry`s campaign that he found the timing of the announcement to be "politically convenient at best" because it came after "we see the president`s approval ratings plummet."

Mr. Kerry issued a statement in which he said he knew Americans had been "struck by the seriousness and concern coming from this administration," but went on to attack the administration for not doing more to bolster domestic security.

Mr. Bush`s campaign responded by saying that Mr. Kerry "has played politics with homeland security throughout this campaign."

Of the seven people Mr. Ashcroft asked the public and law enforcement agencies to watch out for, the only one whose name had not been previously released was Adam Yahiye Gadahn, 25, who officials said is an American citizen from California.

Mr. Gadahn converted to Islam and is believed to have attended Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan several years ago, officials said. He is thought to have done translation work for Al Qaeda and was associated with Abu Zubayda, a senior Qaeda associate now imprisoned by the United States, they said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Al Gore: `George W. Bush has dishonored and humiliated our nation`
Date: Thursday, May 27 @ 10:00:25 EDT
Topic: Commander-In-Thief

By Al Gore

George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.

He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.

Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.

How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.



To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush`s team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by only one person, the President.

More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.

Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens - sooner or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one`s soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud - the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people`s pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.

Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire policy in Iraq. But in order understand the failure of our overall policy, it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it`s more complicated than that.

There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation.

Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation - especially the temptation to abuse power over others.

Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is needed in our constitution because every human being lives with an internal system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow citizens.

Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by specialist Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it`s wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, `I love to make a groan man piss on himself."

What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America`s checks and balances.

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration`s march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th.

There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet`s nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name.

President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It`s not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.] The unpleasant truth is that President Bush`s utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict " has arguable focused the energies and resources of Al Qaeda and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said that in the wake of the war in Iraq Al Qaeda now has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is swelling its ranks.

The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell doctrine of overwhelming force.

There was also in Rumsfeld`s planning a failure to provide security for nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting.

Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor.

And the worst still lies ahead. General Joseph Hoar, the former head of the Marine Corps, said "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss."

When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word "abyss", then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means: more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence, no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged.

Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command before becoming President Bush`s personal emissary to the Middle East, said recently that our nation`s current course is "headed over Niagara Falls."

The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are." Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the US occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that ... from happening again. " Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence in our policy, we will lose strategically."

The White House spokesman, Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about these scathing condemnations by Generals involved in the highest levels of Pentagon planning and he replied, "Well they`re retired, and we take our advice from active duty officers."

But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior General at the Pentagon as saying, " the current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice." Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public.

The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior Army guys I`m quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don`t think they care."

In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush team`s incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption."

Zinni`s book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush -- including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O`Neill, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush`s father for his service in Iraq, and his former Domestic Adviser on faith-based organizations, John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you`ve got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the political arm. It`s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then forced out.

And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example, young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to "break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation.

To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the chain of command was criss-crossed between intelligence gathering and prison administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military and civilian contractor authority.

The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.

Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.

These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President`s own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards over the objections of the uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is concerned."

Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors

President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met a different fate. Let`s put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our allies."

George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did. As many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity, though the numbers are difficult to rely upon because in many cases involving violent death, there were no autopsies.

How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush.

How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein`s torture prison.

David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the famous verdict: "we were all wrong." And for many Americans, Kay`s statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between Reality and all of the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building support for his policy of going to war.

Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also "all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even though they have paid him 340,000 dollars per month. 33 million dollars (CHECK) and placed him adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling 70 million dollars in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key advisors to the Bush Administration on planning and promoting the War against Iraq.

And they repeatedly cited him as an authority, perhaps even a future president of Iraq. Incredibly, they even ferried him and his private army into Baghdad in advance of anyone else, and allowed him to seize control over Saddam`s secret papers.

Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has been duping the President of the United States for all these years.

One of the Generals in charge of this war policy went on a speaking tour in his spare time to declare before evangelical groups that the US is in a holy war as "Christian Nation battling Satan." This same General Boykin was the person who ordered the officer who was in charge of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay to extend his methods to Iraq detainees, prisoners. ... The testimony from the prisoners is that they were forced to curse their religion Bush used the word "crusade" early on in the war against Iraq, and then commentators pointed out that it was singularly inappropriate because of the history and sensitivity of the Muslim world and then a few weeks later he used it again.

"We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world," Zinni said.

What a terrible irony that our country, which was founded by refugees seeking religious freedom - coming to America to escape domineering leaders who tried to get them to renounce their religion - would now be responsible for this kind of abuse..

Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh told the Washington Post that he was tortured and ordered to denounce Islam and after his leg was broken one of his torturers started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, " they ordered me to thank Jesus that I`m alive." Others reported that they were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol.

In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11th. But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The President convinced the country with a mixture of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda, and that he was "indistinguishable" from Osama bin Laden.

He asked the nation , in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation. He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating prisoners.

In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an impressive and extremely responsible way. Our nation`s best interest lies in having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation`s strategic position is as of the time the reigns of power are finally wrested from the group of incompetents that created this catastrophe.

Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country`s, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over.

Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America`s approach to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952.

When a business enterprise finds itself in deep trouble that is linked to the failed policies of the current CEO the board of directors and stockholders usually say to the failed CEO, "Thank you very much, but we`re going to replace you now with a new CEO -- one less vested in a stubborn insistence on staying the course, even if that course is, in the words of General Zinni, "Headed over Niagara Falls."

One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America`s quagmire in Iraq. But, I am keenly aware that we have seven months and twenty five days remaining in this president`s current term of office and that represents a time of dangerous vulnerability for our country because of the demonstrated incompetence and recklessness of the current administration.

It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq.

We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers, and sharply increasing the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including here at home. They are enraging hundreds of millions of people and embittering an entire generation of anti-Americans whose rage is already near the boiling point.

We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of Defense.

Condoleeza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy, should also resign immediately.

George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately.

As a nation, our greatest export has always been hope: hope that through the rule of law people can be free to pursue their dreams, that democracy can supplant repression and that justice, not power, will be the guiding force in society. Our moral authority in the world derived from the hope anchored in the rule of law. With this blatant failure of the rule of law from the very agents of our government, we face a great challenge in restoring our moral authority in the world and demonstrating our commitment to bringing a better life to our global neighbors.

During Ronald Reagan`s Presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the indictment was thrown out by the Judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" President Bush has now placed the United States of America in the same situation. Where do we go to get our good name back?

The answer is, we go where we always go when a dramatic change is needed. We go to the ballot box, and we make it clear to the rest of the world that what`s been happening in America for the last four years, and what America has been doing in Iraq for the last two years, really is not who we are. We, as a people, at least the overwhelming majority of us, do not endorse the decision to dishonor the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights....

Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America`s reputation and America`s strategic interests, but also to America`s spirit. It is also crucial for our nation to recognize - and to recognize quickly - that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more serious than President Bush`s belated and tepid response would lead people to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon assured us, "a few bad apples."

But as today`s shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was not an aberration. Today`s New York Times reports that an Army survey of prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanisatan "show a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.`

Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in our name, by our leaders.

These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed directly from this administration`s contempt for the rule of law. And the dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America - it is also an illusory goal in its own right.

Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.

A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.

Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward. Going it alone may satisfy a political instinct but it is dangerous to our military, even without their Commander in Chief taunting terrorists to "bring it on."

Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size of the needed force - but also because President Bush`s contempt for traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the occupation. Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies of communications and travel. The emergence of a truly global civilization has been accompanied by the recognition of truly global challenges that require global responses that, as often as not, can only be led by the United States - and only if the United States restores and maintains its moral authority to lead.

Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest source of strength, and it is precisely our moral authority that has been recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations and mean compromises of conscience wagered with history by this willful president.

Listen to the way Israel`s highest court dealt with a similar question when, in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to the security of its people:

"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual`s liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its strength."

The last and best description of America`s meaning in the world is still the definitive formulation of Lincoln`s annual message to Congress on December 1, 1862:

"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise - with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history...the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation...We shall nobly save, or meanly lose the last best hope of earth...The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and, we are now learning, in many other similar facilities constructed as part of Bush`s Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the victims are totally innocent of any wrongdoing.

The same dark spirit of domination has led them to - for the first time in American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush Admistration has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request - or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned.

They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have information to how they are spending the public`s money and the right of the news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing.

The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power. Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led them to attack as unpatriotic, Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in combat during the Vietnam War.

The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn Rush Limbaugh - perhaps his strongest political supporter - who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."

This new political viciousness by the President and his supporters is found not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives.

The same meanness of spirit shows up in domestic policies as well. Under the Patriot Act, Muslims, innocent of any crime, were picked up, often physically abused, and held incommunicado indefinitely. What happened in Abu Ghraib was difference not of kind, but of degree.

Differences of degree are important when the subject is torture. The apologists for what has happened do have points that should be heard and clearly understood. It is a fact that every culture and every politics sometimes expresses itself in cruelty. It is also undeniably true that other countries have and do torture more routinely, and far more brutally, than ours has. George Orwell once characterized life in Stalin`s Russia as "a boot stamping on a human face forever." That was the ultimate culture of cruelty, so ingrained, so organic, so systematic that everyone in it lived in terror, even the terrorizers. And that was the nature and degree of state cruelty in Saddam Hussein`s Iraq.

We all know these things, and we need not reassure ourselves and should not congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others, although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than ours. And this searing revelation at Abu Ghraib should lead us to examine more thoroughly the routine horrors in our domestic prison system.

But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and fear generated by the attack of September 11th.

The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president`s legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva`s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it; it is part of us. The important question now is, what will we do now about torture. Stop it? Yes, of course. But that means demanding all of the facts, not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing. One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am being punished for being honest."

The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration.

To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above with the direct intention to violate US values it was to be upholding. It was the kind of policy we see - and criticize in places like China and Cuba.

Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners. And for that, this administration should pay a very high price. One of the most tragic consequences of these official crimes is that it will be very hard for any of us as Americans - at least for a very long time - to effectively stand up for human rights elsewhere and criticize other governments, when our policies have resulted in our soldiers behaving so monstrously. This administration has shamed America and deeply damaged the cause of freedom and human rights everywhere, thus undermining the core message of America to the world.

President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world - but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions. He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending them into harm`s way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders. Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about justice under a rule of law in their own lands. Of course, the problem with all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold people accountable. And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and mistakes in the history of the United States of America.

He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few low-ranking enlisted people, who he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco.

In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.

I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability...

So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation`s trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.

I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable - and I believe we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility."




The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=16352

[Joerver]

Military Fatalities: US 806 Total 916

http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx


05/27/04 Centcom: THREE MARINES KILLED - Confirmed
Three Marines assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were killed in action today in the Al Anbar Province while conducting security and stability operations.
05/27/04 DOD: Casualties Identified
Pfc. Richard H. Rosas, 21, of Saint Louis, Mich; Pfc. James P. Lambert, 23, of New Orleans, La.
05/27/04 DOD: Casualty Identified
Pfc. Daniel P. Unger, 19, of Exeter, Calif., died May 25 in Forward Operating Base Kalsu (Iskandariyah, Iraq) during a rocket attack.
05/27/04 DOD: Casualties Announced
The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died May 25 in Fallujah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device hit their patrol.
05/27/04 uniondemocrat: Wounded Marine returns from service in Iraq
His injuries included a deep cut on his left leg, a deep cut on his left hand that limits the use of his thumb, at least temporarily, and losing the fingertips of his left pinky and ring finger. His body was also peppered with small pieces of shrapnel.
05/27/04 ContraCostaTimes: Brain trauma takes toll on soldiers
Alec Giess clicked off an episode of "M*A*S*H" and rose gingerly from his hospital bed, carrying nothing but the dull, merciless pain on the right side of his head.
05/27/04 AP: Three awarded Purple Heart as more reported injured
Three National Guard troops received Purple Heart awards for wounds suffered in Iraq, as word arrived of more members of their unit injured in action.
05/27/04 iccheshireonline: Man dies in Iraq ambush
Andrew Harries, 34, was killed in an ambush while driving between the cities of Mosul and Irbil in the north of the war-torn country
05/27/04 CoxNews: U.S. nab top Al-Sadr aide in heavy fighting
U.S. troops captured a top lieutenant to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Wednesday, while killing more than 20 al-Sadr militia and wounding nearly 50 in heavy fighting in Najaf.
05/27/04 WaPo: Female GIs swell casualty lists in Iraq
Rubalcava was one of 20 female U.S. service members to die so far in Operation Iraqi Freedom -- the highest number of U.S. military women to die in a combat operation since World War II
05/27/04 visaliatimesdelta: Exeter soldier killed in Iraq
Pfc. Daniel Unger, 19, was killed at an Army base south of Baghdad. His mother, Linda, said the family was informed of his death Wed-nesday morning.
05/27/04 AP: Witnesses report attack on an American convoy south of Fallujah
Three roadside bombs exploded near an American convoy south of Fallujah on Thursday, damaging at least one vehicle, witnesses said.
05/26/04 AP: Three U.S. Marines Die in Western Iraq
Three U.S. Marines were killed in action Wednesday west of the Iraqi capital, the U.S. military said
05/26/04 DOD: DOD Identifies VT National Guard Casualties
They died May 25 in Forward Operating Base Kalsu (Iskandariyah, Iraq,) when their unit came under mortar attack.
05/26/04 Ireland On-Line: Iraqi oil export pipeline ablaze after blast
An Iraqi oil pipeline was ablaze today after a bomb blast that stopped the flow to a key export terminal in Turkey.
05/26/04 WCAX.com: Wounded VT Nat. Guard Soldiers Identified
Vermont Army National Guard officials have identified the six soldiers wounded in an attack that also killed two other guardsmen.
05/26/04 DOD: DOD Identifies Army Casualty
Pfc. Owen D. Witt, 20, of Sand Springs, Mont., died May 24 in Ad Dawr, Iraq, when his armored high-mobility-multipurpose-wheeled vehicle rolled over.
05/26/04 DOD: DOD Identifies Army Casualty
Spc. Beau R. Beaulieu, 20, of Lisbon, Maine, died May 24 in Taji, Iraq, during a mortar attack on Camp Cooke.
05/26/04 Dumfries.co.uk: Soldier’s battle to survive
John Stonham, 19, was run over and left for dead, suffering serious internal injuries and a smashed pelvis, in February after his regiment’s jeep was rammed by an Iraqi petrol tanker.
05/26/04 Albawaba: Car Bomb Detonated at Balad
Three Iraqis were killed and 18 others injured, including a senior police officer, when a car bomb detonated at Balad Ruz, 75 kilometres northeast of Baghdad.

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2 + 2 is on My Mind
More on Morons and War Crimes

By TOM STEPHENS

"One did not know what happened inside the Ministry of Love, but it was possible to guess: tortures, drugs, delicate instruments that registered your nervous reactions, gradual wearing-down by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning. ..."

* * *

"...[T]here had been a moment ... of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion ...had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that were what was needed. ..."

* * *

"Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table: 2 + 2 = 5. `They can`t get inside you,` she had said. But they could get inside you. `What happens to you here is forever...` "

- George Orwell, 1984

On May 18, John Philo and I sent a letter to Congressman John Conyers, asking that he begin the process of seeking appointment of a special counsel to investigate the top figures in the Bush/Cheney Administration, as well as a few of their most notorious co-conspirators, for war crimes, conspiracy, and cover-up. Specifically, we suggested that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Stephen Cambone, Douglas Feith, Lewis Libbey, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Michael Ledeen, James Woolsey, Newt Gingrich, and John Ashcroft should be investigated.

At least two out of the many Internet responses to this modest proposal should be shared here. One writer suggested that we add Tony Blair and Ariel Sharon to the list. And a Canadian correspondent, who will remain unnamed, but who admits to the questionable personal information of being a Calgary Flames professional hockey fan, cited the letter to Congressman Conyers as proof that "not all Americans are morons."

Only 2 days later, on May 20, the ever-responsive People`s champion on Capitol Hill Rep. Conyers of Detroit, along with all the other Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Ashcroft, requesting that he "appoint a special counsel to investigate whether high ranking officials within the Bush Administration violated the War Crimes Act, 18 USC 2441, by approving the use of torture techniques banned by international law."

On May 24, a journalist in Detroit asked me whether I expected any of this to actually happen. This is the full answer.

2 + 2 = 4

There are two big things going on simultaneously, they are related, and they are a basis to believe that accusing the US Government`s top-ranking morons of war crimes is worth the time and effort. They are:

1. The issue of war crimes and US responsibility in the so-called "war on terror," in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, immigration sweeps here at home, and elsewhere, has clearly taken on a life of its own in mass corporate media and in the public mind. There have been countless articles and leaks of major secret government documents (such as Major General Antonio Taguba`s report with pictures regarding tortures employed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, ongoing investigations of prisoners` deaths in US custody, and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez` memo referring to the Geneva Conventions as "obsolete" and "quaint"). The publication of such damning evidence indicates that there are those in the US Government and the military who are now apparently trying to stop the Bush regime by revealing its sordid secrets. This is something we in the peace movement should be taking full advantage of by demanding justice. <2.Meanwhile> the imperial crusade for oil and world domination via

Iraq is completely falling apart. The occupation of Iraq now lacks any shred of credibility it ever had, with increasing violence and assassinations in the run up to the fraudulent June 30 "transfer of sovereignty." After the torture revelations, massacres of Sunnis in Fallujah, and the uprising of Shia in the south around the cities of Najaf, Karbala, Kufa, and the extreme fundamentalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, it can truly be seen by anybody with eyes that the emperor has no clothes. The idea that George W. Bush can give a series of speeches and put this turkey back in flight only reveals the vast distance between his administration and the reality of the world we live in at this point. News flash to Dubyah, Rove and their mind control apparatus spinning out of control: two and two does not equal three, or five. Imperial occupation is not "sovereignty," "liberation, "freedom" or "democracy." You can`t fool all the People all the time, and your act is wearing very thin.

In the above context, the letter John Philo and I sent to Congressman Conyers raised two closely related key issues that deserve special attention, in addition to the ugly reality of torture throughout the secret dungeons of the US gulag:

<1.The> full criminal responsibility lies with officials at the very top of the US Government for these war crimes, not just with "the seven morons who lost the war" by posing for sadistic photographs in Abu Ghraib, or even with the generals and other command officers who supervised the torture; and <2.The> illegal war against Iraq is itself a crime, and the major source of torture as well as all the other war crimes of the US Government and military in the so-called "war on terror." In other words, it is not "merely" the use and approval of "torture techniques banned by international law" (as horrifying and critical as this issue in fact is), that should constitute the full war crimes scandal, properly understood. Rather, unilateral preemptive war in Iraq raises the issue of personal criminal responsibility of top US Government policy makers, under the Nuremberg Principles, the UN Charter`s prohibition of aggression, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.

What`s the Use?

I don`t know, and neither can anybody else, if Ashcroft`s Justice Department after one of their daily prayer breakfasts, or an awakened majority of congresspersons, or perhaps even a court presented with a petition seeking an investigation, can be persuaded to actually order appointment of a special counsel to investigate war crimes at the top of the US Government. With the stakes this high, there are obviously no guarantees of anything. But there are at least four reasons why the peace movement, its sister movement for global justice, and others should loudly take up this call:

1. Condemning the war crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co., as described above, even without appointment of a special counsel, could help deprive the Bush pirates of what tiny remnants of credibility they may still possess in some isolated pockets of US public opinion, which they desperately need to continue their policies. The catastrophic failure of the Iraq fiasco pretty much accomplishes this all by itself for the vast majority of the world`s People. Especially if they continue to prosecute and punish military underlings, while Ashcroft and his bosses refuse to subject their own misconduct to any independent official investigation, this issue frames the pirates` humiliating defeat not only with their monumental arrogance of power and their staggering incompetence, but with their systematic and continuing criminality & hypocrisy as well.

A broad discussion of the war crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co, on the Internet and in other media, is a classic "win-win." If a special counsel is appointed, the advantages are obvious. If not, any opportunity they might otherwise have to rehabilitate their credibility is even further undermined. Turning up the heat on those ultimately responsible for the Iraq disaster by calling for them to be prosecuted for war crimes could be one of the most promising ways to keep this mess from getting even worse.

2. It makes strategic sense to take advantage of the logic of scapegoating that`s been adopted by the pirates themselves to deal with the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal and their broader failures in Iraq. The administration has clearly stated for years, and demonstrated by their actions that they have nothing but contempt for any restrictions the rule of law places on their power. That contemptuous attitude and the policies that flow from it are the source of the crimes, which they are now trying to limit to a handful of scapegoats. The top would-be scapegoat himself, the "splendid" secretary of defense, has ridiculously tried to distinguish "abuse" in Abu Ghraib from "torture." Under these circumstances, they should not be heard to claim that the documented misconduct of their subordinates does not fairly represent acts and policies of those at the top.

Responsibility for human rights abuses should clearly extend far beyond and above a few "bad apples" in one military police unit. Spc. Jeremy Sivits plead guilty to participating in the prison abuse, and was given a year in prison and dishonorable discharge. SSgt. Camilo Mejia went AWOL because he refused to continue participation in the atrocities he witnessed in Iraq, including abuse of prisoners. He too was given a year in prison and dishonorable discharge (subject to appeal, based on the court martial`s refusal to let him challenge the illegality of the war and the atrocities he refused to participate in). How long can the chickenhawk high command and their partners in crime maintain both that kind of harsh punishment regime against their own troops, and also deny and escape legal scrutiny of much more authoritative contributions they personally made to the same crimes? Write your congresspersons and editors, raise hell about it and see if we can find out.

3. This is the "exit strategy," folks. It`s impossible to tell when the rapidly escalating bloodshed, cost, and moral & intellectual bankruptcy of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" will result in its liquidation. At this point it seems virtually certain that this will eventually happen. Carping in the US corporate media about the supposed "lack of an exit strategy" reflects the spinelessness of those who still seem unwilling to hold the Bush Administration`s feet to the fire of accountability, for what has come to be seen in many quarters as one of the most remarkable, appalling and massive failures of judgment and power in history. The politically expedient sacrifice of Rumsfeld`s office would serve only as a last-ditch attempt to insulate Bush and Cheney themselves from the fallout. If the American People are to firmly stand apart from this administration`s crimes, and begin the long-term process of getting out of the quagmire of terrorism and Iraq, much more will be required. What John Philo and I said in our letter a week ago on May 18 bears repeating in this connection, again and again until it is heard by everyone and judged on its merits:

"Everywhere today we hear the question: "How will America regain its credibility?"... Investigate their crimes pursuant to law, indict them based on the massive record of facts supporting such an indictment, and put the top architects of this illegal and deadly policy of permanent, "pre-emptive" war on public trial."

In light of the utter fiasco in Iraq, the incredible pain and suffering of the Bush/Cheney administration`s many victims, and the resultant devastating damage to US credibility virtually everywhere, it may well be that nothing less will do the trick.

4. This is the message: It`s the Bush/Cheney Administration, not the American People, who declared, in their "National Security Strategy" in September 2002 what is, in effect, a policy of systematically and intentionally flouting laws. It`s the Bush/Cheney Administration, not the American People, who planned, propagated, executed and are responsible for the military and political disaster that is Iraq. It`s the Bush/Cheney Administration, not the American People, who need to be seen by the rest of the world and by future generations as responsible. And it`s the Bush/Cheney Administration, not the American People, who should personally pay the full price for their moronic, racist and hateful policies. If we let them get away with what they have done in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and in our own backyards, the consequences will be even more horrible, and we deserve whatever we get.

The power of the Bush/Cheney administration depends on a manufactured reality. This sophisticated illusion can be effectively fought by exposing the many intimate connections between: 1) the tortures and other human rights abuses that have recently come to light; 2) the criminal wars of aggression that led directly to these crimes; and 3) their criminal motivations for control of oil and imperial power projection, by establishing strategically located military bases. Both the command responsibilities for the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, and the dramatic unraveling of the Iraqi occupation over the past couple months, have the quality of "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain," an unsurpassed "teachable moment." The levers and sources of illegitimate power are being revealed. Whether the-powers-that-think-they-be have the guts to take action is a separate point. It`s up to us as the opponents of such power to publicly and insistently call its proponents to account for their many crimes.

This result may not be achieved, one way or the other, before the election in November, and (ugh) maybe not even then. It may not ever be achievable through criminal prosecutions of the lead henchmen. It will certainly take a while, at best. Americans too often want instant results, which in view of the powerful and entrenched interests behind these horrendous crimes of State, is a patently unreasonable expectation. But at least the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are asking the right questions, which is a good start. By actively and persistently seeking to hold those truly responsible for some of the most horrible misdeeds of our times fully accountable under law for their actions, we can begin to give meaning to the concept of "justice" for a world that sorely needs it.

"...[Orwell`s 1984] was, as many have noticed, a warning: a warning about the future of human freedom in a world where political organization and technology can manufacture power in dimensions that would have stunned the imaginations of earlier ages. ... And we hear echoes of that warning chord in the constant demand for greater security and comfort, for less risk in our societies. We recognize, however dimly, that greater efficiency, ease, and security may come at a substantial price in freedom, that law and order can be a doublethink version of oppression, that individual liberties surrendered for whatever good reason are freedom lost."

- from Walter Cronkite`s Preface to 1984

Tom Stephens is a lawyer in Detroit. He can be reached at: lebensbaum4@earthlink.

[Joerver]

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Sexuelle Dominierung in Uniform: Ein amerikanischer Wert
von Linda Burnham
War Times / ZNet 19.05.2004
Die Bilder sexueller Demütigung und Unterwerfung aus Abu Ghraib haben die miteinander unglaublich verwobenen Stränge aus Rassismus, Frauenfeindlichkeit, Homophobie, nationaler Ignoranz und übersteigerter Maskulinität enthüllt, die das US-Militärs charakterisieren. Militarisierte sexuelle Dominierung steht weder �im Widerspruch zu amerikanischen Werten� noch ist sie einfach das Werk einiger �fauler Äpfel�. Sie ist vielmehr tägliche Praxis.

Die Verteidigung, dass es sich um �faulen Äpfel� handle, ist gleichermaßen unsagbar unangemessen und völlig unaufrichtig.

Während die Einengung des Untersuchungsrahmens auf individuelle Verstöße dem Militär ein passendes Schutzschild schaffen mag, lenkt es auch die Aufmerksamkeit ab von sehr beunruhigenden Wirklichkeiten. Die Fotos von Abu Ghraib enthüllen genauso viel über unsere Nation wie über die Soldaten der 372. Militärpolizeikompanie.

Wie unser Präsident klarstellte, war die Absicht der Invasion und Besetzung des Iraks, die irakische Opposition in die Knie zu zwingen. Warum dann die Überraschung, wenn Soldaten davon elektrisiert wären, so wörtlich zu Folge zu leisten? Das Szenario, bei welchem ein irakischer Mann mit dem Penis eines anderen in oder nahe bei seinem Mund kniete, schockierte uns alle. Doch der Ruf unserer Führer nach unverhüllter Demütigung von Arabern und Muslims war nicht so gedämpft, dass ihn nur ein paar vereinzelte Soldaten hörten.

Irakische Gefangene dazu gezwungen, Frauenunterwäsche zu tragen... Die, die sich fürs gleiche Recht der Frauen zu dienen eingesetzt haben, sollten aufmerksam sein. Erniedrigung und Schwäche werden immer noch mit dem Weiblichen gleichgesetzt in dieser Männerarmee.

Viel wurde aus Soldat Lynndie England gemacht, dem Pin-up-Girl der Gefangenenmisshandlung. Ihre Schuld scheint erwiesen und, wieder auf heimischer Erde, wird England so gut sie es kann um ihre Seele kämpfen müssen.

Doch England ist das zweite Aufmachermädchen in den Irakfolgen von des US-Militärs� Geschichte sexueller/geschlechtlicher Integration. Jessica Lynch war die erste. Zwei jugendlich wirkende, kleinstädtischer Arbeiterklasse entstammende Mädchen, begierig, den Eingrenzungen aus Ort und Position zu entkommen. Und entkommen sind sie, in die offenen Arme einer Institution, die die eine dazu nutzte, die Nation [unter der Fahne] zu sammeln, indem sie eine Erzählung spann von einer in Gefahr geratenen, aber doch schneidigen Frau, gerettet aus den Fängen der düsteren barbarischen Horden. Sie wird die andere als Opfer benutzen, um die Ängste einer verunsicherten Nation zu beruhigen.

In ihrer Rolle als Domina über irakische Männer enthüllte England die Sexualisierung der nationalen Eroberung. Als ein Glied in dem militarisierten Gebilde des Maskulinen verkörperte sie einen brandneuen, Furcht einflößenden Archetyp: die einer dominierenden Nation entstammende Frau als freudige Ausführerin sexueller, nationaler, rassistischer und religiöser Demütigung. Wie ist es damit als [Frauen-/Irak-]Befreiung?

Von Lynndie England einmal abgesehen: Die Szenen von Abu Ghraib bilden sexuelle Dominierung ab als ein Merkmal militärischer Hypermaskulinität. Die entsetzlichen Enthüllungen der Denver Post über eine Unzahl von Angriffen auf und Vergewaltigungen von beim Militär dienenden Frauen sind ein weiterer Hinweis darauf, dass sexuelle Dominierung in Uniform schwerlich eine Seltenheit darstellt.

Unser Militär ist aufgebaut auf die tägliche Unterwerfung der Sexualleben von vielen tausenden Frauen unter die sexuellen Begierden von Militärangehörigen in Übersee. Die Unterordnung der nationalen Interessen anderer Länder unter die geopolitischen Interessen der USA erfordert anscheinend die sexuelle Opferung eines gewissen Teils der Frauen dieser Nationen � grundsätzlich armer Frauen.

Militärprostitution wird als Pause und Entspannung gesehen, als Unterhaltung der Truppen. Während das vorgebliche �Ziel� der sexuellen Demütigung von Gefangenen in Abu Ghraib darin bestand, notwendige Informationen herauszubekommen, erzählen die Fotos eine verwickeltere Geschichte. Die lustigen Gesichter zeigen, dass die Inszenierung der metaphorischen Vergewaltigung der irakischen Nation durchs Ausleben sexueller Dominierung von irakischen Männern großer Spaß war.

Indem sie sich selbst zu Regisseuren und Schauspielen des Schauspiels sexueller Demütigung machten, glaubten die Gefängniswächter offenbar, dass sie tun könnten, was immer sie wollten, und sich während dieses Vorganges ausgiebig amüsieren sollten. War es unamerikanisch, dass sie das dachten? Nicht, wenn die Kernaussage ihres Oberkommandierenden ans irakische Volk war: �Du wirst vor unserem Vermögen zu dominieren in die Knie gehen, und wir werden dieses Vermögen trotz globalen Widerstandes ausüben.�

Das Gerangel um die Schuldzuweisung hat den Charakter eines politischen Tangos um höchste Einsätze angenommen. Obgleich es außer Frage steht, dass jeder Verantwortliche, von den unmittelbaren Tätern an nach oben, zur Verantwortung gezogen werden muss, geht die Schuld doch viel tiefer.

Es mag schwer sein, morgens aufzustehen und dieser Tatsache ins Gesicht zu sehen, aber wir sind, kollektiv, verdammt schuldig. Wir zollen sadistischer Hypermaskulinität Respekt und belohnen die, welche sie am besten darstellen, mit Landeschefposten (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Wir widmen riesige Mittel für Unterwerfung und Disziplin in unserem Strafjustizsystem auf. Und wir belügen uns selbst unablässig.

Die Welt ist Amerikas elende Unschuldsbehauptung müde und von ihnen hochgradig verärgert.

Die Soldaten von Abu Ghraib haben den Vorhang vor ihren perversen Aufführungen zurückgezogen, so dass wir sehen können, wer wir sind. Haben wir den Mut hinzusehen? Haben wir den Willen uns zu ändern?

Anmerkungen:

Linda Burnham ist leitender Direktor des Zentrums für Materialien für farbige Frauen in Oakland, Kalifornien (www.coloredgirls.org).

[Joerver]

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U.S. War Policy `Grave Error`

Ex-Rumsfeld aide admits occupation of Iraq a failure
Britain, U.S. at odds over interim government`s role

SANDRO CONTENTA
EUROPEAN BUREAU

05/27/04 "Toronto Star" -- LONDON, England—One of the ideological architects of the Iraq war has criticized the U.S.-led occupation of the country as "a grave error."

Richard Perle, until recently a powerful adviser to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, described U.S. policy in post-war Iraq as a failure.

"I would be the first to acknowledge we allowed the liberation (of Iraq) to subside into an occupation. And I think that was a grave error, and in some ways a continuing error," said Perle, former chair of the influential Defence Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon.

With violent resistance to the U.S.-led occupation showing no signs of ending, Perle said the biggest mistake in post-war policy "was the failure to turn Iraq back to the Iraqis more or less immediately.

"We didn`t have to find ourselves in the role of occupier. We could have made the transition that is going to be made at the end of June more or less immediately," he told BBC radio, referring to the U.S. and British plan to transfer political authority in Iraq to an interim government on June 30.

This public criticism of U.S. policy from one of the leading advocates of the war — and a firm political ally of U.S. President George W. Bush — indicates just how much Bush`s political fortunes are being damaged by post-war chaos.

With polls indicating 64 per cent of Americans believe Bush has no clear plan for Iraq, the U.S. president is embarking on a series of weekly speeches to pitch his proposal to hand over sovereignty to an appointed interim Iraqi government on June 30. But that plan, contained in a United Nations Security Council resolution drafted by the United States and Britain, has led to confusion about who will have ultimate control over U.S.-led coalition forces.

The resolution leaves over-all military control in the hands of the United States, but British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted yesterday that such power would be transferred to the interim Iraqi government.

The interim government, Blair added, will even have the power to order foreign troops to leave the country — a power not mentioned in the resolution.

"After the 30th of June there will be the full transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi government. Therefore, the people who will decide whether the troops stay or not will be the Iraqi government," Blair told reportersat his monthly press conference.

The Iraqi interim government, Blair added, would have the power to veto military actions, such as the one U.S. soldiers launched recently against militants in the Iraqi city of Falluja.

"If there is a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Falluja in a particular way, that has to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government," he said. "And the final political control remains with the Iraqi government. Now that`s what the transfer of sovereignty means."

Blair`s description of the U.S.`s Falluja operation as a "political decision" — suggesting it was not a matter of military or security necessity — was also veiled criticism of an action that killed an estimated 600 Iraqis, and has been strongly denounced in a British foreign ministry memo as "heavy handed."

Blair made clear that the Iraqi interim government`s power over coalition troops would be limited, insisting that British troops will not carry out orders they disagree with.

Still, his comments seemed at odds with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who insisted yesterday U.S. forces "will remain under U.S. command and will do what is necessary to protect themselves."

Iraq`s interim defence minister, Ali Allawi, told reporters in London he thought coalition forces would be gone within months.

"In terms of the timeline for the presence of multinational forces to help us establish security and stability, I think it would be a question of months rather than years," he said.

Blair`s comments on the powers of the Iraqi interim government provided the kind of detail that France, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, noted is missing from the resolution tabled on Monday.

The resolution says the "unified command" of the multinational force in Iraq remains under U.S. control. It also authorizes coalition forces to "take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq."

Blair added that Britain`s 7,500 soldiers in Iraq would leave once Iraqi security forces were able to ensure the country`s stability.

"We stay until we get the job done, but obviously, the sooner the better we are able to get Iraqi security forces in charge of their own security, then the easier it is for us to leave," he said.

France, Russia, Spain and China signalled they wanted changes to the draft U.N. resolution.

French President Jacques Chirac called Bush to say Iraqis must see the sovereignty they get June 30 as "real," and Russia said it needed to see the composition of the interim government. But several Security Council members said they expected the resolution to be adopted with only minor changes.

"I do not expect any fight," said Ambassador Abdallah Baali of Algeria, the only Arab member of the council. "All of us are in a constructive mood. We want the transition to succeed."

Bush has made Iraq the central plank in his so-called war on terror. But a report from a leading think-tank yesterday suggests the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have only accelerated recruitment for Al Qaeda.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates the extremist network now has 18,000 radical militants in its ranks and cells in more than 60 countries.

"Al Qaeda must be expected to keep trying to develop more promising plans for terrorist operations in North America and Europe — potentially involving weapons of mass destruction," institute director John Chipman told a news conference to launch the think-tank`s annual survey of world affairs.

Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited.

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May 27, 2004
U.S. Agrees to Suspend Fighting in Najaf After Deal With Cleric
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 27 — American forces and guerrillas loyal to the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr agreed today to pull back from the holy Shiite city of Najaf, in a deal that signaled the end of a seven-week-old stand-off that has left hundreds of Iraqis dead.

The agreement, hammered out between Mr. Sadr and Iraqi leaders and approved by the Americans, calls for the Mahdi Army, whose fighters have held the city since April 5, to put away their guns and go home, and for the American forces to pull most of their forces out of the city. Under the agreement, the Americans can maintain a handful of posts inside the city and may still run patrols through the city center.

The deal also applies to the nearby city of Kufa, the site of Mr. Sadr`s mosque.

In a major concession to Mr. Sadr, the Americans and Iraqi officials promised to suspend the arrest warrant issued against him for his suspected involvement in the murder of a rival cleric in April 2003. Since Mr. Sadr called on his forces to rise up last month, the Americans have said repeatedly said that they intended to "kill or capture" Mr. Sadr.

In a news conference today, the Americans and the Iraqis said Mr. Sadr`s fate was open to negotiation. Some Shiite leaders said plans were in the works to offer Mr. Sadr or people around him positions in the new government, scheduled to take over when the Americans transfer sovereignty here on June 30.

Even with the agreement in place, the persistent violence in Iraq was underscored today when gunmen attacked a convoy carrying a Shiite member of the Iraqi Governing Council who had been in Najaf to help negotiate the deal with Mr. Sadr.

The convoy carrying Salama al-Khafaji was ambushed near the town of Yusufiya, about 15 miles southwest of central Baghdad, said Mohee al-Khatib, secretary general of the council.

Ms. Khafaji was returning from Najaf to Baghdad.

Mr. Khatib said he did not have further details, and it was unclear whether Ms. Khafaji had been killed or injured. The Associated Press reported there were three cars in the convoy.

Soldiers from the First Armored Division, which is supposed to control the area, were on the scene by 11 p.m., said Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, assistant division commander for support. The general added that the soldiers were "caring for them," but declined to give details on casualties.

Ms. Khafaji is a Shiite and one of three women on the Governing Council. She was given her seat after another Shiite female member, Aquila al-Hashimi, was shot to death last September near her home in Baghdad.

The agreement struck today fell into place after the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country`s most powerful Shiite leader, sent a message to the Americans urging them to get behind the deal.

According to two Iraqi Shiite leaders, American officials signed onto the agreement with Mr. Sadr after they received a forceful note from Ayatollah Sistani and other senior clerics, passed to them by Iraq`s national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie.

"The religious leadership passed a strong warning to the Americans yesterday to end the stand-off in Najaf peacefully," said Hamed Khafaf, an aide to Ayatollah Sistani.

Had the Americans refused, Mr. Khafaf said, the ayatollah, convinced that the presence of American forces so near the Imam Ali Shrine was unsustainable, "would not stay silent."

In Baghdad, American officials said they played little role in the negotiations between Mr. Sadr and the Iraqi leaders, and said they had agreed to pull back their forces provided Mr. Sadr`s men do the same.

A senior coalition official in Baghdad confirmed that the American officials had received the message from the Shiite religious leaders. "The religious authorities have conveyed their concern about the situation in Najaf," the senior coalition official said.

In an earlier press conference, Dan Senor said the Americans had agreed to immediately suspend offensive operations, and that they would reposition their forces outside the city as soon the Iraqi police were in control of the city.

"It`s important to recognize that we are not doing this at the behest of Moktada," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said. "The Iraqis are coming to us and saying this would be helpful."

The deal, which would leave the Mahdi Army intact, represents another significant compromise agreed to by American leaders to bring an end to the armed revolt that sprang up across much of the country early last month. In the city of Falluja, the scene of heavy fighting last month, the Americans agreed to include anti-American insurgents into a local "security force" as part of an agreement to end the violence there.

The deal in Falluja, which has brought a significant measure of calm to the city, has been sharply criticized by Shiite leaders, who say the Americans made a dangerous miscalculation that will likely explode some time in the future.

The agreements in Falluja and Najaf appear to reflect a strong desire on the part of the Bush administration to bring a measure of at least apparent calm to the country for the June 30 handover.

American and Iraqi sources said this evening that Mahdi Army insurgents had begun to pull back from their positions and go home.

Edward Wong contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 27, 2004
TEXT
Senator Kerry on National Security

Following is a transcript of a speech on foreign policy that Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, gave in Seattle on Thursday, as recorded by the Federal News Service.

Over the next 10 days, our nation will come together to honor the bravery and the sacrifice of past generations of Americans. On Saturday in our nation`s capital, we`re going to dedicate a memorial to the heroes of the greatest generation, who won World War II. And on Memorial Day, we will salute all those who for more than two centuries made the ultimate sacrifice when America`s freedom was on the line. And on June 6th, we will mark the anniversary of D-Day by remembering those extraordinary souls, those young men who conquered the bluffs on beaches called Omaha and Utah, and who brought the light of liberty from the new world to the old.

To me and to millions of Americans, the days ahead will be filled with the pride of families, the sadness of loss, and a renewed commitment to service. But that is not enough. We must pay tribute. And that tribute will come as we hear and heed the lessons of the greatest generation.

Our leaders then understood that America drew its power not only from the might of weapons, but also from the trust and respect of nations around the globe. There was a time, not so long ago, when the might of our alliances was a driving force in the survival and the success of freedom, in two world wars, in the long years of the Cold War, and then from the Gulf War, to Bosnia, to Kosovo, America led instead of going it alone. We extended a hand, not a fist. We respected the world, and the world respected us.

More than a century ago, Teddy Roosevelt defined American leadership in foreign policy.

He said America should walk softly and carry a big stick. Time and again -- (interrupted by applause) -- time and again this administration has violated the fundamental tenet of Roosevelt`s approach. As Roosevelt described it, if a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble. (Applause.)

And that is precisely what this administration has ignored. They`ve looked to force before exhausting diplomacy; they bullied when they should have persuaded. They`ve gone it alone when they should have assembled a whole team. They have hoped for the best when they should have prepared for the worst. They`ve made America less safe than we should be in a dangerous world. (Applause.) In short, they have undermined the legacy of generations of American leadership, and that is what we must restore, and that is what I will restore. (Applause.)

Today as you look around you, talk to your neighbors, listen in your places of work, talk with family at home, there`s a powerful yearning around the world for an America that listens and leads again; an America that is respected, not just feared and mistrusted. I believe that respect is an indispensable mark of our nation`s character, and it is an indispensable source of our nation`s strength. It is the indispensable bond of America`s mighty alliances.

I`m running for president because abroad as well as at home it`s time to let America be America again. (Applause.) And by doing so, we can restore our place in the world and make America safer.

It`s time for a new national security policy that is founded on four principal imperatives.

First, we must launch and lead a new era of alliances for the post-9/11 world.

Second, we must modernize the world`s most powerful military to meet the new threats.

Third, because our military might is not the only source of power, of our power in the world, we must deploy all that is in the American arsenal -- our diplomacy, our intelligence system, our economic power, and most importantly, the appeal, the extraordinary appeal that through centuries has made us who we are, the appeal of our values and our ideas. (Applause.)

Fourth and finally, to secure our full independence, our full freedom, to be the masters of our own destiny, we must free America from its dangerous dependence on Mideast oil. (Cheers, applause.)

These four imperatives are an inescapable reality. The world -- and the war itself -- has changed. The challenge and the enemy are different. And we have to think and we have to act anew.

Today we`re waging a global war against a terrorist movement committed to our destruction. Terrorists like al Qaeda and its copycat killers are unlike any adversary that our nation has ever faced. We don`t know for certain how they`re organized. We don`t even know for certain how many operatives they have. But we know the destruction that they can inflict. We saw it in New York and in Washington. We`ve seen it in Bali and in Madrid, in Israel and across the Middle East. And we see it day after day in Iraq.

This threat will only be magnified as the technology to build nuclear and chemical and biological weapons continues to spread. And we can only imagine what it would be like, what would happen, if the deadly forces of terrorism got their hands on the deadliest weapons in history.

Everyone outside of this administration seems to understand that we`re in deep trouble in Iraq. Failure there would be a boon to our enemies, and it would jeopardize the long-term prospects for a peaceful, democratic Middle East, leaving us at war not just with a small radical minority, but with increasingly large portions of the entire Muslim world.

There is also the continuing instability of Afghanistan, where al Qaeda has a base. Osama in Laden is still at large because the Bush administration didn`t finish him off at the Battle of Tora Bora when they had the chance. (Applause.)

And in East Asia, North Korea poses a genuine nuclear threat while we have begun to strip American forces from that peninsula to relieve the overburdened forces in Iraq.

In the coming week, I will also offer specific plans to build a new military capable of defeating enemies both new and old, and stop the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. But first, here today I want to set out the overall architecture of a new policy to make America stronger and respected in the world.

The first new imperative represents a return to the fundamental principle that guided us in peril and victory through the past century -- alliances matter, and the United States must lead them. (Cheers, applause.) Shredding alliances is not the way to win the war on terror or even to make America safer. As president, my number one security goal will be to prevent the terrorists from gaining weapons of mass murder, and our overriding mission will be to disrupt and destroy their terrorist cells. Because al Qaeda is a network with many branches, we have to take the fight to the enemy on every continent -- smartly. And we have to enlist other countries in that cause.

America must always be the world`s paramount military power, but we can magnify our power through alliances. We always have. It has always served us. It`s always saved us money, it`s always saved us lives, it`s always made is safer. We simply can`t go it alone or rely on a coalition of the few.

The threat -- (interrupted by applause) -- of terrorism demands alliances on a global scale, to find the extremist groups, to guard ports and stadiums, to share intelligence, and to get the terrorists before they get us.

In short, we need a coalition of the able, and in truth, no force on earth is more able than the United States and its allies. So we must build that force and we can. We can be strong without being stubborn; indeed, that is ultimately the only way that we can succeed.

But building strong alliances is only the first step. We cannot meet the new threats unless our military is adapted for new missions. And that is the second imperative.

As president, on my first day in office, I will send the message to every man and woman in our armed forces, this commander-in-chief will ensure that you are the best led, best equipped fighting force in the world, and you will be armed with the right weapons, schooled in the right skills and fully prepared to win on the battlefield. But you will never be sent into harm`s way without enough troops for the task or asked to fight a war -- (interrupted by applause) -- and you will never be asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace. (Cheers, applause.) And you will never be given assignments which have not been clearly defined and for which you are not professionally trained. This administration -- (interrupted by applause) -- this administration has discarded and disrespected the advice, wisdom and experience of our professional military officers, and often ended the careers of those who dared to give their honest assessments. That is not the way to make the most solemn decisions of war and peace. As president, I will seek out, listen to, and respect the views of our experienced military leaders, and I will never let ideology trump the truth. (Cheers, applause.)

I will honor professional military careers and the lifetime of patriotism that they represent.

In the past when our leaders envisioned the use of force, they had in mind the unleashing of massive numbers of American troops, battleships and aircraft in confrontation with the uniformed military of an enemy nation. Of course, a conventional war to halt conventional aggression still remains a possibility in some places and it is one for which we must prepare, but there are other, urgent challenges.

I will modernize our military to match its new missions. We must get the most out of our new technologies. We must reform training and update the way we structure our armed forces: for example, with special forces designed to strike terrorists in their sanctuaries, and with National Guard and Reserve units retooled to meet the requirements of homeland security which have been neglected by this administration.

This strategy -- (applause) -- this strategy focuses not only on what we must do but on what we must prevent. We must ensure that lawless states and terrorists will not be armed with weapons of mass destruction. This is the single gravest threat to our security. Any potential adversary should know that we will defend ourselves against the possibility of an attack by unconventional arms. And if such a strike does occur, as commander in chief I will respond with overwhelming and devastating force.

SEN. KERRY: If such -- (applause) -- if such an attack appears imminent, as commander in chief I will do whatever is necessary to stop it. And as commander in chief, I will never cede our security to anyone. I will always do what is necessary to safeguard our country. (Applause.)

The Justice Department said, yesterday and the day before, that terrorists may be planning to attack the United States again this summer. Some believe that al Qaeda would use an attack to try and influence the outcome of the November election. Well, I have a message today for al Qaeda and for any terrorist who may be harboring these illusions: We may have an election here in America, but let there be no doubt, this country is united in its determination to defeat terrorism. (Cheers, applause.)

And we will never be deterred in our exercise of democracy.

So this is my message to the terrorists. As commander in chief, I will bring the full force of our nation`s power to bear on finding and crushing your networks. We`ll use every resource of our power to destroy you.

But not all problems should be viewed through a military lens. We should never wait -- (applause) -- we should never wait to act until we have no other choice but war, and that brings me to my third new imperative. In this new world, beyond military power, we must deploy all of the power in America`s arsenal, and we should do that before we go to war. We need to employ a layered strategy to keep the worst weapons from falling into the worst hands, a strategy that invokes our non-military strength early enough and effectively enough so military force does not become our only option.

As president -- (applause) -- as president, I will launch a long- overdue global initiative to fully secure the materials needed for nuclear weapons that already exist and sharply limit and control future production. This initiative -- (applause) -- this initiative will include changes in international treaties, sharing of intelligence, and setting conditions for economic sanctions and the interdiction of illegal shipments. The key -- the key, my fellow Americans, the key -- is for America to lead, to build an international consensus for early preventative action so that states don`t even think of taking the nuclear road, and potential traffickers in nuclear/biological technology fear the consequences of getting caught.

We must also have the best intelligence capabilities. Nothing in a war on terror is more important than early warning and specific information when dangerous technologies are being developed or sold. Whether it was September 11th or Iraq`s supposed weapons of mass destruction, we have endured in these last few years under this administration too many intelligence failures. And that is why I will do what this president has failed to do: reform our intelligence system by making the next director of the CIA a true director of national intelligence with true control over intelligence personnel and budgets all across our government so we coordinate more effectively than we ever have before. (Applause.)

All of the levers of power will be deployed to overcome the 21st century dangers that we now face, and I intend to discuss this initiative in detail early next week.

Finally, a new national security policy demands an end to our dependence on Mideast oil, and that is my fourth new imperative. For too long America has lost its voice when talking about the policies and practices of some governments in the Persian Gulf. We`ve been constrained by their control over the oil that fuels too large a portion of our economy. This is a weakness that this administration has ignored and one that must be addressed.

I have proposed a plan for energy independence from Mideast oil in the next 10 years. It invests in new technologies and alternative fuels. It provides tax credits to help consumers buy and manufacturers build fuel efficiency cars in the United States of America, built by Americans. (Applause.)

It will tap America`s ingenuity and initiative to strengthen our national security. It will grow our economy, and it will protect our health and our environment, and reduce the cost of health care in America.

I will look for cooperation and I will seek to work constructively with all those who want to become part of a peaceful and reformed Middle East. But we must never be forced into a box where we trade our values for oil. That must end. (Applause.)

If we are serious about energy independence, then we can finally be serious about confronting the failure of Saudi Arabia to do all that it can to stop financing and providing ideological support of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

We cannot continue this administration`s kid glove approach to the supply and laundering of terrorist money. As president, I will impose tough financial sanctions against nations or banks that engage in money laundering and facilitate terror in this world, and we will take strong steps against those who fail to act. I will launch a "name and shame" campaign against those that are financing terror, and if they do not respond, they will be shut out of the U.S. financial system. (Applause.)

And the same goes for Saudi sponsorship of clerics who promote the ideology of Islamic terror. To put it simply, we will not do business as usual with any country that does not demonstrate its full will to partner in this struggle. They must all take concrete steps to stop their clerics from fueling the fires of Islamic extremism.

Let me now turn to a subject that I know is much on the minds of all Americans -- the situation in Iraq. The stakes in Iraq could not be higher. Earlier this week, the president again said that he wanted to create stability and establish a representative government in Iraq. He did acknowledge what many have known all along; that we would be far better off if our allies were with us. What`s important now is to turn this late realization and acknowledgement from words into action.

In the coming weeks, President Bush will travel to Europe and meet with members of the G-8 here in the United States. There will be speeches, handshakes, ceremonies. But will our allies promise to send troops to Iraq? Will they dedicate substantially more funding for reconstruction there? Will they pledge a real effort to aid in the transformation of the Middle East? Will they in fact become part of the stakes that are at large for all of us? That is what we need. But the day is late and the situation in Iraq is grim. Attracting international support in a situation like Iraq is a clear test of presidential leadership; it is what capable and confident presidents do. It is its own statement about this administration`s failed approach that they must so constantly be so urged to change that approach, and that they do so only reluctantly and at the last minute.

It is time for President Bush to make a sustained effort, and he should start at the summit at Istanbul by persuading NATO to accept Iraq as an alliance mission with more troops from NATO and its partners. (Applause.) He should seek help in expanding international support for training Iraq`s own security forces so that they can safeguard the rights and the well-being of their own people and allow them to come out into the streets and take part in new freedom. And he should propose the creation of an international high commissioner to work with the Iraqis in organizing elections, drafting a constitution and coordinating reconstruction.

Over the last year, we`ve heard from the president that our policy should be to simply stay the course. Well, one thing I learned in the Navy is that when the course you`re on is heading for the shoals, it`s pretty smart to shift the rudder. Staying the course -- (interrupted by applause) -- staying the course is important. But staying the wrong course is not a sign of strength; it is a mark of stubbornness, and it ultimately weakens this nation and the world. (Applause.)

If president Bush does not secure new support from our allies, we will once again feel the consequences of a foreign policy that has divided the world instead of uniting it. Our troops will be in greater peril. The mission in Iraq will be harder to accomplish, if not impossible, and our country will be less secure.

I have spoken today about the architecture of a new national security policy. But at issue here is not just a set of prescriptions; at stake is a vision of an America that`s truly stronger, truly respected in the world. This is not a partisan cause. Patriotism doesn`t belong to any one party or to any president or to any ideology. And if I am president -- (interrupted by applause) -- if I am president, I will enlist the best among us, regardless of party, to protect the security of this nation.

And I will call on the whole nation to let America be America again.

My -- (applause) -- my father was a pilot during World War II. A year before Pearl Harbor, he was on active duty. And for the rest of his life, he served in one capacity or another, whether nationally or locally, by vocation or as a volunteer. He told me shortly before he died that the human conscience, when it works, is the most divine thing in our small segment of the universe.

In today`s world, conscience marks the difference between tolerance and terror. In an earlier era, it was the difference between honor and holocaust. Much has been written about the greatest generation. The question before us now is what will be written about our own, because for better or worse, as Abraham Lincoln once said, we cannot escape the judgment of history. We do not have to live in fear or stand alone. We don`t have to be a lonely watchman on the walls of freedom. Instead, we must honor the legacy of the greatest generation by restoring respect for the United States as the greatest force for freedom and progress on this planet.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 28, 2004
In the Scrapyards of Jordan, Signs of a Looted Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ

SAHAB, Jordan, May 26 — As the United States spends billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq`s civil and military infrastructure, there is increasing evidence that parts of sensitive military equipment, seemingly brand-new components for oil rigs and water plants and whole complexes of older buildings are leaving the country on the backs of flatbed trucks.

By some estimates, at least 100 semitrailers loaded with what is billed as Iraqi scrap metal are streaming each day into Jordan, just one of six countries that share a border with Iraq.

American officials say sensitive equipment is, in fact, closely monitored and much of the rest that is leaving is legitimate removal and sale from a shattered country. But many experts say that much of what is going on amounts to a vast looting operation.

In the past several months, the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, has been closely monitoring satellite photographs of hundreds of military-industrial sites in Iraq. Initial results from that analysis are jarring, said Jacques Baute, director of the agency`s Iraq nuclear verification office: entire buildings and complexes of as many as a dozen buildings have been vanishing from the photographs.

"We see sites that have totally been cleaned out," Mr. Baute said.

The agency started the program in December, after a steel vessel contaminated with uranium, probably an artifact of Saddam Hussein`s pre-1991 nuclear program, turned up in a Rotterdam scrapyard. The shipment was traced to a Jordanian company that was apparently unaware that the scrap contained radioactive material.

In the last several weeks, Jordan has again caught the attention of international officials, as pieces of Iraqi metal bearing tags put in place by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, established to monitor Iraqi disarmament during Mr. Hussein`s rule, have been spotted in Jordanian scrapyards. The observation of items tagged by the commission, known as Unmovic, has not been previously disclosed.

"Unmovic has been investigating the removal from Iraq of materials that may have been subject to monitoring, and that investigation is ongoing," said Jeff Allen, a spokesman for the commission. "So we`ve been aware of the issue," he said. "We`ve been apprised of the details of the Rotterdam incident and have been in touch with Jordanian officials."

Recent examinations of Jordanian scrapyards, including by a reporter for The New York Times, have turned up an astounding quantity of scrap metal and new components from Iraq`s civil infrastructure, including piles of valuable copper and aluminum ingots and bars, large stacks of steel rods and water pipe and giant flanges for oil equipment — all in nearly mint condition — as well as chopped-up railroad boxcars, huge numbers of shattered Iraqi tanks and even beer kegs marked with the words "Iraqi Brewery."

"There is a gigantic salvage operation, stripping anything of perceived value out of the country," said John Hamre, president and chief executive of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan Washington research institute, which sent a team to Iraq and issued a report on reconstruction efforts at the request of the Pentagon last July.

"This is systematically plundering the country," Dr. Hamre said. "You`re going to have to replace all of this stuff."

The United States contends that the prodigious Middle Eastern trade in Iraqi scrap metal is closely monitored by Iraqi government ministries to ensure that nothing crossing the border poses a security risk or siphons material from new projects. In April, L. Paul Bremer III, the occupation`s senior official in Iraq, and the Iraqi Ministry of Trade established rules for licensing the export of scrap metal from the country.

The sites now being monitored by the atomic energy agency include former missile factories, warehouses, industrial plants and sites believed to contain "dual use" equipment like high-precision machine tools that could be used either for civilian purposes or for making components for nuclear and other weaponry. Mr. Baute said that the analysis had been completed at about a dozen sites and that the agency was working to prepare a report on the entire monitoring program.

Sam Whitfield, a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said that penalties for not obtaining a license or abiding by its terms were severe for a trucker. "If he does not have it or is found to be exporting scrap illegally, not only can his load be seized but his truck can be seized," he said.

Mr. Whitfield said that the overall quantity of scrap might not be surprising, considering that there were, for example, an estimated 3,000 damaged tanks and other military vehicles in Iraq as a result of a series of wars. Those vehicles are being legitimately scrapped, he said.

"There`s huge volumes of scrap out there, just all over Iraq," he said.

A senior American intelligence official said the idea that the material to build missiles or nuclear devices might be being exported from the military-industrial sites was "far-fetched."

"It`s conceivable that some of this material might be dual-use in nature," the official said, adding that "what appears to be happening is simply looting."

Mr. Whitfield asserted that the coalition had put a stop to widespread looting in Iraq. But a visit to an enormous scrapyard on the side of a dusty hill surrounded by goat herds in this town about 10 miles southeast of Amman raises serious questions about that assertion. Cranes and men with torches pick through seemingly endless piles of steel, aluminum and copper that workers there say has come almost exclusively from Iraq.

On a recent afternoon, roughly 100 trucks, many with yellow Iraqi license plates, were lined up near the entrance to the scrapyard or maneuvering with inches to spare inside, their engines snorting as they kicked up the flourlike dust.

Yousseff Wakhian, a scrapyard worker wearing a gray jumpsuit and a cap with a New York Yankees insignia, said that 60 to 100 trucks had come in that day from Iraq and 50 had left with loads of the scrap to be sold elsewhere.

Some of the piles contain items that might — or might not — have arrived as part of legitimate scrap operations. There is stripped copper cable from a high-voltage electrical system, jumbled piles of tank treads, big engine blocks and crankshafts and thick steel walls connected to a door with lettering indicating that it was part of a building at an airport.

Last year, there were widespread reports of looting of electrical transmission lines and military bases, among other things.

But Muhammad al-Dajah, an engineer who is technical director Jordanian free-trade zones like the Sahab scrapyard, pointed with chagrin to piles of other items that hardly looked as if they belonged in a shipment of scrap metal. There were new 15-foot-long bars of carbon steel, water pipes a foot in diameter stacked in triangular piles 10 feet high, and the large flanges he identified as oil-well equipment.

"It`s still new," Mr. Dajah said, "and worth a lot."

"Why are they here?" he asked rhetorically, and then said, referring to the devastation in Iraq. "They need it there."

The scrap operation has not been without incident, Mr. Dajah said. A few months ago workers cutting apart an automobile at Zarqa, another free-trade zone, set off a concealed bomb that killed one of them, he said.

An Iraqi truck driver at Sahab, Ahmed Zughayer, said the trip from Karbala, where he picked up a load of tank parts that were still piled in the back of his truck, was insufferable because of delays at the Jordanian border.

"First time and last," he said when asked how often he had made the trip. "Seven days at the border being inspected. And here two days."

Mr. Zughayer said Jordanian military personnel had combed through the load and probed it with detection equipment. Officials at the atomic energy agency said that since the Rotterdam incident, radiation detectors at Iraq`s borders had repeatedly picked up generally weak radioactive emissions from deep within loads of scrap.

The agency said that in one incident on May 15, radiation detectors began clicking when a truck carrying a load of scrap stopped at the Habur border crossing with Turkey; the truck was turned back.

Several Middle Eastern analysts said that the widespread traffic in Iraqi scrap did not have all the hallmarks of an above-board operation.

"What we are finding out in Iraq, there are gangs, some of them from the old days, some of them new with corruption, and they can get away with it," said Walid Khadduri, an Iraqi who is editor of the Middle East Economic Survey in Cyprus and was in the country as recently as January.

"It is really mayhem," Mr. Khadduri said. "There is no law."

Labib Kamhawi, a Jordanian political analyst who has done business in Iraq under the oil-for-food program, said that there was in fact much talk in the business community of deals "to ship new things under the title of scrap."

Beyond what has been seen at the scrapyards, Mr. Kamhawi offered no specific evidence that those deals were taking place. But a former high-ranking Jordanian military official said that functioning pieces of, say, sophisticated electronics from surface-to-air missile batteries or precision machine tools almost could not avoid being passed around with scrap, since it is so difficult to destroy such equipment completely.

The official also said there was far from just a single Jordanian scrapyard doing a brisk business in Iraqi machinery and scrap. He said that only a few days before, he had seen nearly an entire Russian-made T-55 tank with Iraqi markings, its muzzle cut off by a blowtorch, sitting on a flatbed truck outside a steel plant near the road from Amman to the main commercial airport.

On a recent day, the plant, identified on a sign as part of the United Iron and Steel Manufacturing Company, a Jordanian business, had three trucks with Baghdad license plates idling out front. At a tumbledown shack on the way toward piles of steel in the distance, a wiry, weathered security guard with a three-day growth of beard stopped a car carrying an American journalist and two Jordanians.

"No, you can`t go in," said the guard, who identified himself as Azzam Tamimi. "I have orders."

A Jordanian asked Mr. Tamimi what was down among the piles of steel to warrant barring visitors from the area.

"Nothing is in there," Mr. Tamimi said. "There is only destroyed Iraqi tanks from the war."

Douglas Jehl contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Old missile parts remain at a military-industrial site in Baghdad after valuable items were taken away.

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May 28, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Speech That`s No Joke
By BOB HERBERT

It has always been easy to make fun of Al Gore. But if there`s any truth to the thunderous criticism he`s turned loose on the Bush administration this week, it`s time to dispense with the jokes and listen seriously to what the man is saying.

If Mr. Gore is right, the nation is faced with a crisis of leadership that is perilously close to an emergency.

If he`s wrong, then all the folks who have made the easy jokes at his expense can consider themselves vindicated.

The war in Iraq, said Mr. Gore, in an interview on Wednesday, "is the worst strategic fiasco in the history of the United States. It is an unfolding catastrophe without any comparison."

In an echo of the growing chorus of criticism here and around the world, he said the war has not only damaged "our strategic interests" and isolated the U.S. from its allies, it has also made the country more — not less — vulnerable to terror.

In a widely covered speech earlier in the day, Mr. Gore said that Iraq had not become, as President Bush has asserted, " `the central front in the war on terror.` " But he said it has become, unfortunately, "the central recruiting office for terrorists."

The speech was extraordinary — blunt, colorful and delivered with the kind of passion you seldom see in politics anymore. The former vice president described Mr. Bush as incompetent and untrustworthy, and said his policies had endangered the nation.

The president, said Mr. Gore, had "planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind."

In the view of Mr. Gore (and many others), the essential problem has been the triumph in the Bush crowd of ideology over reality. The true believers knew everything better than everybody else, and the arrogance born of that certainty led, step by tragic step, to the war with no exit doors that we are locked in today.

That arrogance gave rise to the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, the contempt for international agreements like the Geneva Conventions, the dismissal of concerns by some of the highest-ranking military professionals about the way a war in Iraq should be fought and the willingness of top administration figures to blow smoke in the eyes of ordinary Americans who were traumatized by Sept. 11 and worried about the possibility of further terrorist attacks.

"The same preference for ideology over reality has turned trillion-dollar surpluses into multitrillion-dollar deficits," said Mr. Gore. "And that same approach has led to the locking up of American citizens without recourse to lawyers or access to courts or even a right of their families to know they`re being held in secret."

These and other matters are transforming the United States into a country that is more warlike, more brutal, less free, less just, less admirable and much less appealing than the nation that existed when Mr. Bush stepped into the presidency in January 2001.

Those who disagree with Mr. Gore should challenge him on his facts. Those who agree must look for ways to defend the honor and perhaps the very identity of the United States as we`ve known it.

The least serious part of Mr. Gore`s speech was the part that got the most attention, his call for top officials of the Bush administration to resign. As an attention-getter, it worked.

But this was a speech in which the former vice president said: "What makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have led us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations, more than the people of any other nation."

This is a time to remember the principles that made this a great nation, and to reaffirm them. I don`t know what will happen in the election in November. What I know is that the nation is facing a crisis now. The Bush administration needs to step back from the abyss its ideology has dragged us to.

It may be that the president never understood what made the U.S. great. In that case, he`d be among those who could benefit most from a reading of Mr. Gore`s speech. If he followed that up with a look at the Bill of Rights (it would only take a few minutes), he`d have a better understanding of what this country, at its best, is about.

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May 28, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
To Tell the Truth
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Some news organizations, including The New York Times, are currently engaged in self-criticism over the run-up to the Iraq war. They are asking, as they should, why poorly documented claims of a dire threat received prominent, uncritical coverage, while contrary evidence was either ignored or played down.

But it`s not just Iraq, and it`s not just The Times. Many journalists seem to be having regrets about the broader context in which Iraq coverage was embedded: a climate in which the press wasn`t willing to report negative information about George Bush.

People who get their news by skimming the front page, or by watching TV, must be feeling confused by the sudden change in Mr. Bush`s character. For more than two years after 9/11, he was a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness.

But now those people hear about a president who won`t tell a straight story about why he took us to war in Iraq or how that war is going, who can`t admit to and learn from mistakes, and who won`t hold himself or anyone else accountable. What happened?

The answer, of course, is that the straight shooter never existed. He was a fictitious character that the press, for various reasons, presented as reality.

The truth is that the character flaws that currently have even conservative pundits fuming have been visible all along. Mr. Bush`s problems with the truth have long been apparent to anyone willing to check his budget arithmetic. His inability to admit mistakes has also been obvious for a long time. I first wrote about Mr. Bush`s "infallibility complex" more than two years ago, and I wasn`t being original.

So why did the press credit Mr. Bush with virtues that reporters knew he didn`t possess? One answer is misplaced patriotism. After 9/11 much of the press seemed to reach a collective decision that it was necessary, in the interests of national unity, to suppress criticism of the commander in chief.

Another answer is the tyranny of evenhandedness. Moderate and liberal journalists, both reporters and commentators, often bend over backward to say nice things about conservatives. Not long ago, many commentators who are now caustic Bush critics seemed desperate to differentiate themselves from "irrational Bush haters" who were neither haters nor irrational — and whose critiques look pretty mild in the light of recent revelations.

And some journalists just couldn`t bring themselves to believe that the president of the United States was being dishonest about such grave matters.

Finally, let`s not overlook the role of intimidation. After 9/11, if you were thinking of saying anything negative about the president, you had to be prepared for an avalanche of hate mail. You had to expect right-wing pundits and publications to do all they could to ruin your reputation, and you had to worry about being denied access to the sort of insider information that is the basis of many journalistic careers.

The Bush administration, knowing all this, played the press like a fiddle. But has that era come to an end?

A new Pew survey finds 55 percent of journalists in the national media believing that the press has not been critical enough of Mr. Bush, compared with only 8 percent who believe that it has been too critical. More important, journalists seem to be acting on that belief.

Amazing things have been happening lately. The usual suspects have tried to silence reporting about prison abuses by accusing critics of undermining the troops — but the reports keep coming. The attorney general has called yet another terror alert — but the press raised questions about why. (At a White House morning briefing, Terry Moran of ABC News actually said what many thought during other conveniently timed alerts: "There is a disturbing possibility that you are manipulating the American public in order to get a message out.")

It may not last. In July 2002, according to Dana Milbank of The Washington Post — who has tried, at great risk to his career, to offer a realistic picture of the Bush presidency — "the White House press corps showed its teeth" for the first time since 9/11. It didn`t last: the administration beat the drums of war, and most of the press relapsed into docility.

But this time may be different. And if it is, Mr. Bush — who has always depended on that docility — may be in even more trouble than the latest polls suggest.

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Shiite Politicians` Objections Lead Candidate to Withdraw

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 28, 2004; Page A19

BAGHDAD, May 27 -- A politically independent Shiite Muslim who had been a top choice of the United States and the United Nations to become Iraq`s prime minister withdrew from consideration after objections from formerly exiled Shiite politicians who want the job for themselves, officials involved in the political transition said Thursday.

The politicians` refusal to accept Hussain Shahristani as prime minister has complicated U.S. and U.N. efforts to form an interim Iraqi government to assume limited political authority on June 30, forcing U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and top U.S. officials to scramble for new candidates. The U.S. occupation authority had hoped to have the government named by Monday, to give appointees a month to work into their new jobs, but U.N. officials said that goal now appears unattainable.

The stand against Shahristani also struck a serious blow to attempts by the United States and the United Nations to fill top positions in the interim government with independents and technocrats instead of politicians, many of whom spent years in exile and enjoy little public support.

The U.S. government funded many exiled opposition politicians during the rule of President Saddam Hussein, and several were appointed to Iraq`s Governing Council after Hussein was toppled last year. Because of their unpopularity, however, the occupation authority has sought to minimize their role in Iraq`s next government. Yet Shahristani`s inability to win their approval illustrates their continuing ability to disrupt U.S. plans for the country`s political transition.

"They feel they are a kind of club, and this was a person who is outside their club," said an Iraqi official close to Shahristani. The official said Shahristani, who had met with Brahimi several times over the past few weeks and was regarded as the U.N. envoy`s top choice, talked to Brahimi on Tuesday night "and said he couldn`t be a candidate because he cannot get the support of this club."

The Shiite politicians who opposed Shahristani`s appointment included Ahmed Chalabi, a onetime U.S. ally who heads the Iraqi National Congress, which had been funded by the Pentagon; Ayad Allawi, the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, which had been supported by the CIA; Adel Abdel-Mehdi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq; and Ibrahim Jafari of the Dawa party, according to people familiar with the discussions with Brahimi.

Allawi, Abdel-Mehdi and Jafari each wants to be prime minister, the sources said.

The process of forming the interim government has also been complicated by demands from ethnic Kurdish politicians. They want a Kurd to be given either the presidency or the prime minister`s post. Brahimi and the top two U.S. officials involved in forming the government -- L. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator of Iraq, and Robert D. Blackwill, a presidential envoy -- have offered the Kurds, who account for about 20 percent of the country`s population, one of two vice presidential posts and two of the four most powerful cabinet ministries.

According to sources close to the process, Brahimi, Bremer and Blackwill had planned to give the jobs of president and prime minister to Arabs -- the presidency to a Sunni and the prime ministership to a Shiite. The Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of the population, also would receive one of the vice presidential slots.

Kurdish leaders, who appeared close to accepting the U.S. and U.N. offer a few days ago, have renewed their insistence on one of the top posts, Kurdish officials said.

"The Kurds need one of those two top positions," a senior Kurdish politician said. "We must not be marginalized and must not appear [to be] second-class citizens."

The demands of the Kurdish leaders and the refusal of the Shiite politicians to accept an independent prime minister have turned the process of forming the interim government, which is supposed to be a caretaker administration in power for only seven months, into a complicated, high-stakes negotiation among Iraqis, U.S. officials and U.N. diplomats. Brahimi, Bremer and Blackwill have spent the past few weeks meeting with dozens of different groups of Iraqis in an effort to forge a consensus.

"What`s happening here is the fully blown breakout of politics," a senior Bush administration official said.

To some people involved in the process, though, it appears that a handful of former exiles are once again forcing a revision of American plans. Opposition from Iraqi political leaders scuttled earlier U.S. initiatives to write a permanent constitution before the handover of authority and to select a transitional administration through caucuses.

"The exiled politicians are demanding a dominant role, and they may get it just because there isn`t much time left and nobody wants to risk people boycotting the new government," an official involved in the process said.

Brahimi had favored the idea of giving the presidency and the two vice presidential jobs to political leaders while restricting the prime ministership and cabinet posts to people with technical expertise. But faced with demands from political leaders for a greater role in government, the U.N. envoy may be forced to revise his blueprint, people with knowledge of the process said.

Shahristani, 62, a nuclear scientist who was imprisoned by Hussein`s government for more than a decade after he refused to help Iraq build nuclear weapons, has little political experience. Shahristani escaped Iraq in 1991, but unlike many other Iraqis who lived in exile, he was not active in opposition political parties, choosing instead to focus his energies on helping Iraqi refugees. For the past year, he has avoided politics and worked on humanitarian aid projects in southern Iraq.

"With all respect to Mr. Hussain Shahristani, this new situation needs somebody who is known by the street, someone who has a political platform and someone who has demonstrated excellent performance during the last year," said Adnan Ali, a senior adviser to Jafari. "Dr. Shahristani is a nuclear expert who has a long history of being a prisoner and a long history of working with charities. It`s difficult to see how he can jump from this kind of specialty to deal with sovereignty and the ministries and the budget."

Ibrahim Janabi, a spokesman for Allawi, said Shahristani "will find it difficult to solve the problems that Iraq faces now" because he does not have a political background. "We need people with political skills at this time."

Speaking at a news conference in Baghdad, Shahristani said he had informed Brahimi that he did not wish to serve in the interim government and instead wanted "to continue to serve the Iraqi people through my current activities in the humanitarian field." He would not say publicly why he had asked not to be considered other than to say his reasons "were not personal at all."

"I do believe there are convincing reasons, at least they are convincing to me," he said. "But I don`t think it`s correct to discuss these issues at such a sensitive time in the history of the country. I`d rather pave the way with my silence for a new Iraqi government to try to lead the country on the road to democracy."

Shahristani said the new prime minister should be someone "who is not a member of one of the leading parties." The job, he said, should go to the "most competent person."

"I think if the Iraqis could work together in a better way, we would have a better chance of improving the process," he said.

Shahristani did not rule out a future in politics, though. He said he would run for a seat in parliament when national elections are planned early next year.

Staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Worry and Anger Over Iraq Situation
Poll, Interviews Find Rising Concern

By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 28, 2004; Page A19

OGALLALA, Neb. -- From this edge of the western plains to California`s palm-lined drives to New York`s urban canyons, Americans say they are worried and angry about the U.S. role in Iraq, with their anxiety matching that of the earliest days of the war when the success of the push to Baghdad was far from secure.

Nearly daily attacks on U.S. troops and continuing revelations about abuse of Iraqi prisoners have combined to stir the unrest, leading many to doubt whether the outcome will match the Bush administration`s stated goals for going to war.

"I`m getting worried now about this war," Betty Johnson said this week as she waited for two soft pretzels at downtown Ogallala`s meeting place, the Spruce Street Sandwich Shop. "Before, I felt it was something we had to do. But it`s going so bad. So I wonder now, kind of, what`s the point?"

A few blocks away, Bill Terry pondered the same question. "If we`d found . . . nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, that would be something," Terry said as he tallied receipts at his gas station alongside Interstate 80. "We got Saddam out of there. But I think there`s just as bad people in the rest of the world. So, for all the mess, what have we got out of it?"

Such questions reflect the concerns of a majority of the nation. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll, concluded Sunday night, found that two-thirds of Americans -- 67 percent -- describe themselves as "worried" about the situation in Iraq. In early March of last year, days after combat began, 64 percent said they were worried about the war.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans say they are "angry," nearly double the figure in March 2003. While most Americans say they are "hopeful" about the eventual outcome, the number of optimists has fallen, from 80 percent 15 months ago to 62 percent today. In another change, a minority today describe themselves as "proud" of the U.S. effort in Iraq.

The poll shows that the war and its aftermath are continuing to ferment strong emotions among Americans, with many beginning to shift from being backers of the war to doubting the United States` role in Iraq.

"Now it looks like we`re the bad guys," said Bob Soltan, a carpenter who was renovating a brownstone in Brooklyn, N.Y.

President Bush has embarked on an aggressive campaign to assure Americans that the turnover of power to a new Iraqi government at the end of June will go smoothly but to such official assurances, Soltan responds with a classic New York brushoff: "Yeah, everything is going to be nice as long as America stays there for 100 years. How long can this go on?"

While it is clear that the anxiety felt by many about Iraq is strong, the nature of it seems to vary by where people live.

In the big cities, people say they are concerned that the war will spark new bursts of terrorism in the United States. Marvin Bailey, selling trolley tickets on the bank of the Chicago River, said in reference to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, "If I pick a fight with someone, I have to watch my back."

Those fears have prompted many to change their daily routines. "I don`t like going on the trains. You can`t trust anymore," said Jeanette Gonzalez, a store manager in the Bronx.

In suburbia, where terrorism still seems far away, the worry is for a different reason: The continuing violence in Iraq has brought about far more casualties since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations 13 months ago than during the initial fighting.

"I`m proud our soldiers are there, but I`m starting to get worried that we`ve been there for so long," said Jossie Sandoval, 40, sitting at a table outside a Pasadena, Calif., bookstore. "Things aren`t progressing as quickly as people thought, and there doesn`t seem to be any end in sight. I think what we`re trying to do is good, making Iraq a democracy, but I`m not sure what we want to do and what they want is the same thing."

The anxiety over Iraq easily bubbles over into anger for many people, who see what has happened in Iraq -- especially the abuse of prisoners -- as an erosion of American values.

"I just kept thinking, stopping that kind of stuff from happening is why we went in there in the first place," said Stephen Zukowski, as he worked in a deli in Hopkinton, Mass., steps from where the Boston Marathon begins. "That`s as bad as their previous government."

"It makes me mad. You just get the sense that we are not in the right anymore, if we ever were," said Jennifer Eldridge, 18, working at a supermarket in Hopkinton. "I think it gets worse every day, and the worst thing we could do is send more people over to die."

"I am angry with the president," said John Lopez, a veterinary technician in Miami`s Coconut Grove neighborhood. "We are there because of his obsession to go there, and I`ve gotten angrier and angrier. I can`t turn the television on in the morning to `Good Morning America` because in five minutes I am frothing at the mouth. It is a fiasco."

Others are just as angry but direct their emotion toward Iraqi fighters. "I`m worried about our soldiers getting killed over there," said Steve Schwartzkopf ("No relation to the general," he said, smiling) as he worked behind the counter of Ogallala`s Runza restaurant. "I think we should just go for it, you know, drop bombs and clear out any city where Americans are killed. But we`re not willing to do that."

Across the country, Americans are saying that the war in Iraq reminds them of another war that lasted longer than expected. "This started something that is going to end up very bad, worse than Vietnam," said Gus Serrano, in his picture-framing shop in Miami. "It`s like a tennis game going back and forth -- I do this to you, then you do that to me. I worry that it is going to get worse and worse, so bad that there will be more terrorist attacks like the World Trade Center."

The signs reading "Support Our Troops" and "United We Stand" are still found on posters, school lockers and bumpers. But after 15 months of difficult fighting, many people have decided that supporting American soldiers does not mean backing the war itself.

"I support our troops, but I certainly don`t agree with what we`re trying to do by trying to Americanize and westernize a culture that doesn`t want to be Americanized," said Janet Pope, a management analyst for the Pasadena Police Department. "I`m worried and borderline disgusted that many of our young people will die in this war when we truly don`t know the reasons behind it."

Staff writer Jonathan Finer in Hopkinton, Mass., and special correspondents Kimberly Edds in Pasadena, Calif.; Michelle Garcia in New York; Kari Lydersen in Chicago; and Catharine Skipp in Miami contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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The Homicide Cases



Friday, May 28, 2004; Page A22

PRESIDENT BUSH`S persistence in describing the abuse of foreign prisoners as an isolated problem at one Iraqi prison is blatantly at odds with the facts seeping out from his administration. These include mounting reports of crimes at detention facilities across Iraq and Afghanistan and evidence that detention policies the president approved helped set the stage for torture and homicide. Yes, homicide: The most glaring omission from the president`s account is that at least 37 people have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and that at least 10 of these cases are suspected criminal killings of detainees by U.S. interrogators or soldiers.

The deaths reveal much about the true nature of the still-emerging prisoner scandal. First, only a minority of them occurred at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad; nine of the 10 homicides acknowledged by the Pentagon occurred elsewhere. Second, the administration has done its best to cover up the killings: They have been reported only after news of them leaked to the media, and details about most of them are still undisclosed.

No one has been criminally charged in any of the cases, even though some date to December 2002. Investigations have been shoddy and secretive. And no senior officer or administration official has accepted responsibility or been held accountable for allowing unlawful killings to take place under his or her command. Had it not been for the leak of the photographs from Abu Ghraib, which record less serious crimes, it is probable that none of the deaths in Iraq would have become public knowledge.

Take the case of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, the former chief of Iraqi air defenses, who died Nov. 26 at a detention facility at Al Qaim, northwest of Baghdad. After his death the Pentagon released a statement reporting that "it appeared Mowhoush died of natural causes." That was a lie. In fact, according to an autopsy report, Gen. Mowhoush died of "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression." According to documents first obtained by the Denver Post, two soldiers slid a sleeping bag over him and rolled him repeatedly from his back to his stomach; one then sat on his chest and covered his mouth. Only after the Denver Post`s report last week did the Pentagon acknowledge the truth and say that a homicide investigation was underway.

Or take the case of two Afghan detainees who died at Bagram airbase in December 2002. In March 2003 the New York Times reported that their deaths had been ruled homicides; only then did the Pentagon say that an investigation was underway. But no further information became available about the case until this month, when the Times learned that the prisoners died while being interrogated by personnel from the same intelligence unit that later served at Abu Ghraib. After 17 months, no one has been charged or otherwise held responsible for the deaths, nor are Pentagon officials able to plausibly explain why there has been no conclusion to the investigation.

Nine of the 10 homicides acknowledged by the Pentagon occurred "either before or during interrogation sessions that may have led to the detainee`s death," a senior official told a briefing last week. Those interrogations were conducted by various units; at least one was in the hands of the CIA. But all were operating under loosened rules for interrogations developed at the Pentagon after 2001, after Mr. Bush`s decision that the Geneva Conventions would not apply to detainees in Afghanistan. Techniques approved for use, such as sensory deprivation and shackling, played a role in several of the homicides. For example, a detainee named Abdul Jaleel, held by Special Forces in Asad, Iraq, died on Jan. 11 after he was gagged and shackled by his hands to the top of his door cell.

It is horrifying to contemplate that U.S. interrogators have tortured and killed foreign prisoners and that their superiors have ignored or covered up their crimes -- and yet that is where the available facts point. Pentagon officials say they will pursue investigations vigorously and that those guilty of crimes will be brought to justice. It is essential to the preservation of this country`s fundamental values that they do so. It is essential also to examine the consequences in the field of policy decisions made by the most senior officials in Washington. But the sorry record of the Bush administration -- and the president`s own refusal to speak the truth about it -- suggests that justice will require vigorous and sustained intervention by outside parties, beginning with Congress.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Obsessed With Iran

By Jim Hoagland

Friday, May 28, 2004; Page A23

George Shultz says that life in official Washington is not one damn thing after another. It is the same damn thing over and over again. A sudden lurch by the Bush administration to using Iraq`s Sunnis to contain Iran`s Shiite rulers shows that the former secretary of state is on to something, again.

Bush policymakers and spies have made fear of Iran a driving -- and highly distorting -- force in the continuing war in Iraq. They now resemble the LBJ-era Cold Warriors who were so intent on defeating China and the Soviet Union in Vietnam that they lost sight of the stakes and dynamics of the real war they were fighting.

In Iraq today the CIA is building an Iraqi spy agency from the ruins of Saddam Hussein`s Mukhabarat -- the secret police unit that was at war with Iran and Syria for two decades. Like ex-Nazis recruited to fight the Soviet peril, these Iraqis come with useful skills and experience in trying to destabilize Tehran. Some of them were on the job during the Iran-Iraq war, when the Reagan administration (in which Shultz served) shared U.S. intelligence with Hussein`s regime to prevent the revolutionary ayatollahs of Iran from taking Baghdad. Old intelligence connections die hard.

But the inordinate fear of Iran is rapidly contaminating U.S. relations with the Shiite majority of Iraq. It is also complicating U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi`s effort to name an interim Iraqi government. The White House hopes to get the government named and a new Security Council resolution on Iraq approved before President Bush goes to Europe next week.

The Algerian mediator had all but settled on Hussain Shahristani, a respected chemist and a Shiite, as his interim prime minister. But Shahristani withdrew his name Wednesday after it became clear U.S. authorities would not approve him, apparently after they conducted a background check, according to U.S. and foreign sources, in Baghdad and elsewhere.

What the vetting by U.S. agencies turned up is not known. But Shahristani escaped to Iran in 1991 after being jailed and tortured for refusing to help Hussein`s nuclear program. In eight years in Iran, he is unlikely to have been able to avoid contact with and interrogation by Iranian intelligence.

He is also unlikely to have told Iran anything of his own free will, according to people who know and admire him. But the hard line against Tehran championed by U.S. proconsul Paul Bremer and others would have inevitably hurt the chances of Shahristani, especially in the poisonous atmosphere created by CIA allegations that Ahmed Chalabi, another Shiite politician with ties to Iran, has given Iran classified information.

In the closed world of smoke and mirrors that exiles and intelligence agencies inhabit, Shahristani was a source on Hussein`s weapons programs for U.S. government agencies and journalists, as were Chalabi, Ayad Allawi and many others. Shahristani was lionized by the television program "60 Minutes" one month before the Iraq invasion.

The ongoing Chalabi-CIA struggle, essentially over who will control an independent Iraq`s intelligence service and whether it will ultimately be used to destabilize Iran, is a topic for another day. The more immediate problems belong to Brahimi, who now must publicly deny that the United States is vetting and then passing or blocking his choices for prime minister and other jobs.

That this administration would insist on retaining such power in a rebellious country it spent American lives to occupy is one of those obvious power realities that diplomacy was invented to obscure. As in a Hemingway short story, what is important is what is left out, both in Brahimi`s public statements and the latest Security Council draft resolution on Iraq.

The U.S.-British draft is silent on command arrangements and other vital topics. It is intended to maximize U.S. power while seeming to pass authority to a group of mostly political unknowns blessed by Brahimi. Iraqi leaders well known in the West, such as Massoud Barzani or Jalal Talabani, would not get significant jobs.

The premature leak by U.S. officials of Shahristani`s name as a candidate backed by Ali Sistani has embarrassed the Shiite grand ayatollah and makes it even harder for him to work with Brahimi, a Sunni Arab whose daughter is to be married on Sept. 7 to the son of King Abdullah of Jordan.

The king, a CIA favorite, is not as diplomatic as his future in-law. Asked recently by the New York Times who should rule Iraq, Abdullah replied: "I would probably imagine . . . somebody with a military background who has experience of being a tough guy who could hold Iraq together for the next year." Or in Shultzian terms, the same Saddam thing over again.

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US retreats after failing to capture militia chief
By Justin Huggler in Baghdad

28 May 2004

United States forces agreed yesterday to withdraw from the Shia holy city of Najaf and end fighting with the militia of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. In a climbdown by the Americans, who had vowed to kill or capture Sadr, it now appears he will be allowed to remain free. His Army of Mehdi militia will also withdraw under the deal.

The Americans appeared to have given up their two main demands to end the fighting in Najaf: that Sadr surrender to them and that the Mehdi Army be disbanded immediately.

The American agreement to withdraw without capturing Sadr will be seen in Iraq as a second embarrassing capitulation in as many months, after US forces ended their April siege of the Sunni city of Fallujah without capturing those responsible for killing and mutilating the bodies of four American contractors - the original reason for the siege in which hundreds of Iraqi civilians are believed to have died.

Civilians have died in Najaf too, though not as many as in Fallujah. There has been widespread anger in the Shia world at the fighting in the holy city, especially after Iraq`s most sacred Shia shrine, that of the Imam Ali, was damaged.

Members of the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council who negotiated the deal with Sadr said yesterday it included an agreement to hold new talks over an arrest warrant under which he is wanted for the murder of another cleric last year, and on the future of the Army of Medhi. It remains to be seen whether the Americans, who have been demanding that Sadr surrender and face trial, will accept that. But the immediate threat to Sadr appears to have been lifted.

Dan Senor, the occupation authority`s spokesman, said US forces would suspend their offensive in Najaf immediately and withdraw as soon as Iraqi security forces are able to take control of the city - an arrangement similar to Fallujah.

Mohammed al-Musawi, a Shia leader who was involved in extensive efforts to arrange a peaceful end to the fighting in Najaf, claimed the deal included an agreement that Sadr will not face any prosecution until after an elected Iraqi government takes office, which will not happen until next year. He also said that under the deal the Mehdi Army would become a political organisation.

Whether Sadr will get that much remains to be seen, but at any rate he appeared to have got the most out of yesterday`s deal. It was a good result for him after scores of his militiamen were killed in the past few days.

The Americans may have agreed to the deal partly because of their need to calm the situation ahead of the planned handover of sovereignty to a new appointed Iraqi government on 30 June.

Sadr also appeared to have outmanoeuvred the Americans. Until yesterday, their answer to any criticism for fighting inside the holy city was that Sadr`s militia had forced them into it by taking up positions there. But once Sadr had publicly offered to withdraw his militia if US forces did the same, a refusal would have made them appear the ones responsible for further violence inside Najaf.

Sadr launched his uprising in April after the US occupation authorities closed a newspaper he ran. The arrest warrant against him was only announced after his uprising began. The Americans appeared to be banking on a lack of widespread Shia support for Sadr. But they got bogged down in fighting with his militia, and every day it continued risked a more general Shia backlash.

Gunmen ambushed a convoy carrying a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Salama al-Khafaji, as she was returning to Baghdad from mediation efforts in Najaf yesterday, an aide said. She survived, but three bodyguards were killed and her son was missing, according to a council member.


28 May 2004 09:20

© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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As Satan Scrubbed My Toilet
It`s a slew of new, disposable products that really scream "Screw the planet, I`m an American!" Life is good
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, May 28, 2004

Pity the poor beleaguered housewife, still struggling like a haggard dog through her array of thankless daily chores.

Just look at her, hair pulled tight and life a-shambles, saddled with all manner of horrible bristly toilet brushes and horrible sponges and horrible cloth towels to wipe down the horrible countertops and then topping it all off with being forced to use one of those horrible old-fashioned bristle brooms to sweep the floor. Horrible!

Thank God, then, for modern ultraconvenience. Thank God for the corporate household-product industry, so thoroughly glutted on excess merchandise and overinvention they can`t possibly think of things we actually need anymore. And thank God for our concomitant complete lack of any real environmental conscience. Yay America!

See, now, the happily narcotized, entirely sexless, vaguely bulbous modern housewife in the recent TV commercial as she finally tosses away her angry, growling, animated (!) toilet brush (see how it snaps and snarls at her like a drunken deadbeat dad! See her toss it into the trash can and then plop her butt down on it in satisfied glee!) in favor of -- say it with me -- disposable toilet scrubbers you use once and throw away!

Like the ScotchBrite! Or the Clorox ToiletWand™! Or the Scrub N` Flush! Or the Scrubbing Bubbles™ Fresh Brush™ Toilet Cleaning System! Yes, Virginia, the world is certainly headed in the right direction.

Just watch that brush head break apart in a swirl of pulpy chemical fibers in the toilet. Look at the nifty cheap-ass landfill-plastic handle -- remember, it`s not a brush, it`s a "toilet-cleaning system." Look at the shiny plastic tub of refills you have to buy every month just to keep the goddamn thing stocked before the handle snaps in half and you have to buy a whole new one because it`s actually worth about seven cents and is made by disposable factory workers in Malaysia who die of petroleum-related cancer even faster than BushCo can decimate the Clean Air Act. Neat!

See? Life is easier already. Who knew you needed a new toilet brush to replace that tough metal one you had that lasted years? No one, that`s who! What was wrong with the old, sturdy kind? Nothing, that`s what! Hail marketing!

Dear sweet Jesus in sterilized heaven, why have we all been washing dishes using those positively archaic reusable scrub pads? Won`t someone please invent a single-use, pretreated disposable scrubber that looks like a large feminine sanitary pad and is made of some frightening paper/plastic compound and coated in thick gobs of foaming chemicals and mysterious toxins that you use once on your lasagna pan and then throw away so you have to buy a new box of the damnable things every week?

Thank God, someone has! It`s the new Dawn Wash N` Toss! Or maybe it`s the Brillo Scrub N` Toss! Or those disposable Palmolive DishWipes, which all come in big noxious tubs made from unrecycled plastics! Cool! Screw those loser trees. First one`s free, Mom.

Brooms? Pshaw. Satan`s whiskers. Brooms suck. Brooms are so totally Rubbermaid-O`Cedar-soap-opera-Valium-haze-Daddy`s-away-on-business 1976. What we need now is a ridiculous plastic-handled thing with floppy little static-cling pads that you stick on the end and use once up and down the hardwood hallway and then throw away, never to be thought of again, because, well, we never do.

All hail the Swiffer! And the Swiffer Max! And the Swiffer WetJet™, with that big plastic spray-attachment tub you have to refill with toxic chemical cleaner! And the Swiffer hand duster, which you detach and throw away and replace until your shopping list consists solely of 18 different Swiffer refill products and maybe a huge bottle of Tylenol to combat the savage migraines you get from inhaling all those chemicals that poison your blood and make your kidneys cry. Whee!

Now just watch as the Swiffer-endowed housewife runs around like a coked-up lunatic singing the Swiffer song to the tune of "Whip It," drunk on the joy of electromagnetic McDusterthingies. No more brooms! Swiffer the world! Lobotomies all around!

You might think by now that we`d be slightly more aware. You might think that after decades of impassioned environmental movements and organic evolution and reams of irrefutable evidence proving how we are aggressively mauling the planet on a daily basis, that we`d be just slightly more conscious and attuned by now regarding what we put in our mouths, in our homes, down our toilets.

You might even think, furthermore, we`d be just a bit more cautious regarding toxic household cleaners and electric chemical air fresheners and various solvents and detergents and coatings, and realize that dousing the home with 10,000 synthetic petroleum-based products that are known to cause cancer and skin irritation and tumors and impotence and painful emphysemic death, well, it might not always be the best way to go. You might think.

You would, of course, be wrong.

There is no such awareness. Not yet. Not on any significant scale. The rain forests can disappear and we`ll still buy disposable toilet brushes and throwaway diapers by the truckload. Oil prices can hit 50 bucks a barrel and 1,000 sad disposable U.S. soldiers can die in oil-rich foreign nations and still Ford Expeditions will sell like hotcakes. We can create a mountain of dead useless slightly radioactive cell phones roughly the size of the planet Pluto. No one really cares. Can you hear me now? Um, no.

It is our global peril and our national trademark. Americans are notoriously, famously, massively blind to causality. We make zero connection between how we consume and the effects of that consumption on our bodies, our politics, the planet. It is staggering and sad and it is also nothing new.

But the scary news is, it seems to be getting worse. Still.

These silly new products, these sexist new ads, are merely a small but nasty sign, like a malignant lump, a festering murmur, in the karmic heart. Just more proof of how we are still being trained not to care, still trained since birth to believe the supply of paper and wood and plastic and petroleum is inexhaustible and that America is the land of abundance and it will all last forever and, besides, most of us will die well before there`s any "serious" problems, right? So who the hell cares, and leave it to the next generation to figure out. Now pass the giant tub of foam packing peanuts. Mmm, landfill.

As it is with toilet brushes and brooms, so it is with our national agenda, our environmental policy, our war motives. In other words, there is a straight and unwavering line connecting the Scrub N` Toss with our environmental policy, our worldview, our motives for war and destruction. The world is our commodity. This is the message, the American standpoint. The world is our giant toxic overlit soul-sucking Wal-Mart. Restrain it at your peril.

The good new is, we still have personal choice. Barely. Most of us still have the ability to discern between that which is truly helpful and beneficial in our lives and that which is simply not worth stomping over the planet like it`s a fleeing butterfly and we are a screeching heavily Ritalined little boy wielding a stick.

It`s an increasingly precious commodity, this ability, this discernment, more endangered than the blue whale and the baby seal and the right to own a vibrator in Texas, and it`s diminishing fast, because BushCo hates it with a white-hot intensity normally reserved for nature or individuality or gay people in love. But it`s still ours to make.

And if we don`t exercise it today, right now, on the next shopping trip to buy scrub pads and detergents and toilet brushes, SUVs and tennis shoes and vibrators, it will itself become just another wasted resource, another landfill commodity we once used and then used up and didn`t give another damn about.

It is, as always, up to you. Use that dwindling ability to stay informed and conscious, or it quickly disappears, dissolving away like some sort of sad, disposable wad of perspective and conscience. Call it the Think N` Toss. Consider the consequences of your actions only once, for the briefest possible moment, then shrug it off and merely flush them away, never to be thought of again. How wonderfully convenient.
# Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
# Mark`s column archives are here

Mark Morford`s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. Subscribe to this column at sfgate.com/newsletters.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…

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In der heiligen Kette der Verantwortung

Was den US-Präsidentschaftskandidaten John Kerry und den US-Präsidenten George W. Bush verbindet / Von Jochen Arntz und Holger Schmale

Weltweit schauen jene voller Hoffnung auf den demokratischen Präsidentschaftskandidaten John Kerry, die mit der Politik des US-Präsidenten George W. Bush nicht einverstanden sind. Die Autoren zeigen jedoch, dass Kerry und Bush nicht so weit auseinander liegen, wenn es um Großmachtdenken und den Führungsanspruch der USA geht.

. . . . .
John Kerry, der demokratische Kandidat für das Amt des US-Präsidenten, ist ein selbstbewusster Repräsentant einer selbstbewussten Nation, die sich nahe bei Gott fühlt.

Amerikanische Politiker sind mit großen Worten nicht geizig, und wer glaubt, nur George W. Bush lebe in dem Sendungsbewusstsein, dass Amerika den Rest der Welt mit seinen Ideen beglücken soll, der täuscht sich. Bei John Kerry hört sich das so an: " Als Amerikaner stehen wir mit unserem Geburtsrecht der Freiheit in einer heiligen Kette der Verantwortung, die zurückgeht zu den Gründervätern und zu den Einwanderern, die dieses Land unter Opfern aufgebaut haben, und die bis in den heutigen Tag reicht. Unsere Aufgabe besteht nicht nur darin, materiellen Fortschritt zu sichern. Zusammen mit einem besseren Leben müssen wir unseren Kindern diesen einzigartigen Sinn für Optimismus vermitteln und den von Gott gegebenen Glauben an die universelle Anziehungskraft unserer Ideen, der unseren nationalen Charakter immer bestimmt hat."

Ein deutscher Politiker, der so seinen Wahlkampf für das Amt des Bundeskanzlers eröffnete, würde bestenfalls Kopfschütteln ernten und von einer kritischen Presse wohl des Chauvinismus geziehen werden. Amerikanern ist diese Art des Sendungsbewusstseins selbstverständlich. Auch kritische, liberale Geister sprechen ohne zu zögern von God`s Own Nation, der einen, der auserwählten Nation. Entscheidend ist allerdings, wie amerikanische Politiker diesen Anspruch ableiten und wie sie ihn einordnen in das internationale Zusammenspiel der Kräfte - als Anrecht auf die Weltherrschaft oder als Auftrag an eine Supermacht, die Welt im Interesse von Frieden, Freiheit und Demokratie zu führen.

Vehikel für amerikanische Ideale

Die Frage ist also: Können die so hoffnungsvoll auf Kerry blickenden Europäer eine Kehrtwende in der Außenpolitik erwarten, wenn der Demokrat im November das Weiße Haus erobern sollte? Die kurze Antwort lautet: Ja - aber im Rahmen des amerikanischen Großmachtdenkens.

In seinem Buch " A Call To Service" entwickelt Kerry eine bemerkenswerte Philosophie der Führungsmacht USA. Sie bezieht sich auf die großen Präsidenten der Demokraten wie Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy und schließlich auch auf Bill Clinton. Sie haben nach Kerrys Überzeugung jeder in seiner Zeit das Wichtigste gezeigt: " Leadership - den Mut, Herausforderungen anzunehmen und eine Vision zu führen" . Nun sei die Zeit gekommen, eine neue " mutige Vision des progressiven Internationalismus für das 21. Jahrhundert" zu entwickeln.

Kerry wirft Bush ein überhebliches Verhalten gegenüber Freund und Feind vor. Dies sei nicht nur ein unerfreuliches Nebenprodukt des Kampfes gegen den Terrorismus, sondern eine grundsätzliche Fehlkonzeption der Außenpolitik dieses Präsidenten. Sie werde dazu führen, den amerikanischen Einfluss auf solche Ziele zu beschränken, die mit Gewalt oder Einschüchterung zu erreichen seien. " Der Präsident und seine Berater haben vergessen, dass wirkliche globale Führung ein strategischer Imperativ für Amerika ist und kein Gefallen, den wir anderen Ländern tun. Die am weitesten entwickelten Demokratien zu führen, ist keine Sache eines breiigen Multilateralismus; es verstärkt die Stimme Amerikas und vergrößert seine Reichweite. Mit Hilfe der internationalen Institutionen zu arbeiten, bindet uns nicht die Hände. Es gibt unseren Zielen eine größere Legitimation, bringt uns entscheidende Unterstützung und dämpft die Ressentiments, die Großmächte unausweichlich wecken."

Kerry nennt die Politik Bushs eine gefährliche Mischung aus Isolationismus und Unilateralismus. Er setzt ihr das Konzept eines entschlossenen, kooperativen Multilateralismus entgegen - in der Tradition von Wilson und Roosevelt, Truman und Kennedy. Diese Konzeption geht allerdings von einer klaren Grundbedingung aus: " Multilaterale Institutionen - die alle auf Initiative der Vereinigten Staaten gegründet wurden - sind Vehikel für die Beförderung unserer Ideale und den Schutz unserer Interessen überall auf der Welt. Diese Ideale und Interessen entsprechen in der globalisierten Welt dem Frieden, dem Wohlstand und der Selbstbestimmung eines jeden Landes auf der Erde." Kein Zweifel, auch John Kerry ist von dem Weltmodell USA überzeugt: " Amerika erhebt den in der Menschheitsgeschichte seltenen Anspruch, dass seine Interessen und die der Welt eins seien. Ich akzeptiere vollkommen die moralische Herausforderung und die militärische Verantwortung, die mit diesem Anspruch einhergeht." Er stehe für eine prinzipienfeste Diplomatie, unterstützt durch militärische Kraft, gegründet auf einem klugen Selbstinteresse statt der kurzsichtigen Durchsetzung von Macht. " Eine Diplomatie, die es Amerika erlaubt, auf verschiedene Weisen zu führen - nicht nur mit Gewalt, aber nicht immer ohne sie."

Es ist also nicht überraschend, dass Kerry eine Sicht auf die Rolle des amerikanischen Militärs und auch auf die Debatte vor dem Irak-Krieg hat, die seine Bewunderer in Europa vielleicht nur ungern zur Kenntnis nehmen. So schreibt er: " Ein demokratischer Präsidentschaftsbewerber sollte der französischen und russischen Obstruktionspolitik in den Vereinten Nationen während der Debatten über Irak mindestens ebenso kritisch gegenüberstehen wie dem Zögern von Bush, die Vereinten Nationen überhaupt einzubeziehen."

Enttäuschung nicht ausgeschlossen

Denn für den Zusammenbruch der Beziehungen zwischen der UN und den Vereinigten Staaten sei beileibe nicht nur die Bush-Regierung verantwortlich. " Frankreich, Deutschland und Russland haben nie eine wirksame Methode angeboten oder unterstützt, die sichergestellt hätte, dass die UN-Resolutionen durch den Irak befolgt werden." Die Ergebnisse der UN-Waffeninspektoren und vor allem die Berichte ihres Leiters, des schwedischen Diplomaten Hans Blix, sprechen zwar eine andere Sprache. Doch weiter Kerry: Frankreich flirte mit der Idee, Europa zu einer unabhängigen, von Paris geführten Gegenmacht zu den USA zu entwickeln. " Und in Deutschland droht der Neopazifismus, der dem Nein zum Irak-Krieg zu Grunde lag, die Nato zu einem zahnlosen und irrelevanten Instrument für die kollektive Sicherheit der Allianz zu machen." Sollten Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder und Außenminister Joschka Fischer hoffen, mit Kerry würde ein friedenspolitischer Gesinnungsfreund in das Weiße Haus einziehen, könnte das zu einer herben Enttäuschung führen.

George W. Bush konnte in seinem Wahlkampf gegen Clintons Freund und Vizepräsidenten Al Gore vor vier Jahren noch von den Glaubwürdigkeitsproblemen des Präsidenten profitieren, mit denen dieser vor allem seit der Lewinsky-Affäre belastet war. Viele Amerikaner hatten diesen trickreichen Umgang mit der Wahrheit, der bis zur offenen Lüge ging, satt. Sie wollten gerade im Weißen Haus jemanden, der das vorlebte, was sie ihren Kindern beizubringen versuchten: Ehrlichkeit, Wahrhaftigkeit, Einstehen für Fehler. Das versprach Bush.

George W. Bush hat ein Problem

Doch heute redet niemand mehr über Clintons Verfehlungen, die schließlich trotz aller Empörung rein privater Natur waren und nichts mit seiner Regierungspolitik zu tun hatten. Debattiert wird hingegen, dass Bush und seine Regierung das Land unter Vorspiegelung falscher Tatsachen in einen Krieg verwickelt und über hunderttausend Soldaten in einen opferreichen Kampf fern der Heimat geführt haben. Kaum einer glaubt mehr, dass der Irak über Massenvernichtungswaffen verfügte. Kaum einer glaubt mehr, dass der irakische Dikatator Saddam Hussein nur durch einen Angriff der USA davon zurückgehalten werden konnte, die USA zu attackieren. Dies aber waren die Gründe, die der Präsident wieder und wieder zur Verteidigung seines Kriegskurses vorgebracht hat.

George W. Bush hat außerdem ein Problem, das ihn gerade in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Vietnamkriegs-Helden John Kerry als charakterlich zweifelhaft erscheinen lässt. Nicht nur, dass Bush wie viele Söhne einflussreicher Eltern dem Vietnamkrieg entging, indem er sich, vorbei an einer langen Warteliste, zu einem vergleichsweise lauen Dienst in der Nationalgarde einberufen ließ. Recherchen amerikanischer Journalisten haben ergeben, dass er sich sogar vor einem erheblichen Teil dieses Dienstes auch noch drücken konnte. In der fraglichen Zeit war er als Wahlhelfer für einen republikanischen Politiker in Alabama unterwegs. So liegt die Vermutung nahe, dass er von politischen Beziehungen seines Vaters profitierte.

All dies hat ein Reporter des Boston Globe bereits vor vier Jahren herausgefunden und veröffentlicht, als Bush Präsidentschaftskandidat der Republikaner wurde. Doch damals griff kaum jemand diese Geschichte auf, sie spielte im Wahlkampf keine Rolle, wie die New York Times nun ebenso verwundert wie selbstkritisch feststellt. Aber jetzt geraten die damals beiläufig zur Kenntnis genommenen Erklärungen von Bush, mit seinem Wehrdienst bei der Nationalgarde sei alles in Ordnung, in Widerspruch zu Dokumenten die zeigen, dass er seinen Verpflichtungen offenbar keineswegs nachgekommen ist - und darüber auch noch die Unwahrheit gesagt hat. Und anders als vor vier Jahren gibt es heute eine an diesen Fragen sehr interessierte Öffentlichkeit.

Aber natürlich lassen die Republikaner dies nicht ohne Antwort. Auch sie haben ein Glaubwürdigkeitsproblem entdeckt, das sie anhand von Kerrys Abstimmungsverhalten in zwanzig Jahren Zugehörigkeit zum amerikanischen Senat herausarbeiten wollen. Und wenn es ein Problem in der politischen Karriere des demokratischen Senators gibt, dann ist es tatsächlich die Unklarheit seiner Positionen. Dann sind es die wechselnden Standpunkte, die er manchmal auch innerhalb kurzer Zeit eingenommen hat, ohne sie recht erklären zu können - außer mit taktischen, man könnte auch sagen: opportunistischen Motiven.

1991 stimmt Kerry zunächst gegen den ersten Golfkrieg, wie die meisten seiner demokratischen Kollegen im Senat. Nach dem schnellen Sieg ändert er seine Position. Interpretationsfähig ist auch seine Meinung über den " Patriot Act" . Im Senat stimmt er für das Gesetz, mit dem die Regierung Bush nach dem 11. September 2001 empfindlich in die Bürgerrechte eingriff und den in den USA ohnehin rudimentären Datenschutz praktisch abschaffte. Während Kerry die Grundsätze des Gesetzes weiter verteidigt, kritisiert er die extensive Anwendung mancher Paragrafen durch den erzkonservativen Innenminister John Ashcroft. Das nehmen Republikaner zum Anlass, ihm Unzuverlässigkeit im Kampf gegen den Terrorismus vorzuhalten. Um diesem Vorwurf auszuweichen, hat Kerry inzwischen auch sein absolutes Nein zur Todesstrafe relativiert: Gegen zweifelsfrei überführte Terroristen müsse sie doch verhängt werden können, erwog er - sofern dies nicht die Auslieferung aus anderen Ländern verhindere.

In diesem Zusammenhang spielt auch eine Gesetzesinitiative Kerrys aus der Zeit vor dem 11. September eine Rolle, die zu einer deutlichen Kürzung der Etats der Geheimdienste führen sollte. Angesichts der Diskussion über das Versagen der Geheimdienste bei der Verhinderung der Anschläge versucht er nun seinen Vorstoß damit zu begründen, die Dienste hätten ihren Schwerpunkt von der Arbeit mit technischen Mitteln wieder auf den Einsatz von Agenten verlagern sollen. Wie das aber mit weniger Mitteln hätte finanziert werden sollen, kann der Senator nicht erklären.

Unklar ist auch die Haltung des Außenpolitikers Kerry zu Israel. Vor Amerikanern arabischer Herkunft kritisiert er im Herbst 2003 den Bau des israelischen Schutzwalls zum palästinensischen Westjordanland als Provokation und Friedenshindernis. Funktionären jüdischer Organisationen in den USA versichert er etwas später hingegen, er sehe in der Mauer einen legitimen Akt der Selbstverteidigung Israels vor palästinensischen Terroristen. Es finden sich also Widersprüche über Widersprüche in der politischen Laufbahn des John Kerry, aus denen sich ohne allzu viel Mühe ebenfalls erhebliche Zweifel an seiner Glaubwürdigkeit entwickeln lassen.

Das große Geld

John Kerry tritt im Wahlkampf als vehementer Kritiker des Großen Geldes und dessen Einflusses auf die Bush-Regierung auf. Der gehe es in erster Linie " um das Wohlergehen der großen Unternehmen, besonders der Pharma- und der Ölindustrie, und der anderen reichen Leute, die in Washington etwas erreichen können mit ihrer Lobby und all ihrem Geld" , lautet eine Standardpassage in seinen Wahlkampfreden. Aber ist das glaubwürdig aus dem Munde des Mannes, der als reichster Senator der USA gilt, als der wohlhabendste Präsidentschaftsbewerber seit Kennedy, und dessen Ehefrau als Erbin des Heinz-Ketchup-Imperiums nicht nur über hunderte Millionen Dollar verfügt, sondern auch selbst eng mit der Wirtschaft verwoben ist? Wie ungern Teresa Heinz-Kerry ihre Steuererklärung öffentlich macht, ist mittlerweile allgemein bekannt.

Ein Blick in die Spenderlisten John Kerrys zeigt, wie sehr auch Kerry vom Großen Geld zehrt, wenn auch eher aus anderen Branchen als Bush. In den vergangenen fünf Jahren erhielt der ehemalige Staatsanwalt 1,4 Millionen Dollar von der Anwaltslobby, 764 000 Dollar von Brokerfirmen der Wall Street und etwa 500 000 Dollar aus der Immobilienbranche.

Wes Brot ich ess, des Lied ich sing?

Das "Center for Public Integrity" , eine Stiftung, die das Lobbywesen der USA durchleuchtet, hat vor allem das Engagement Kerrys für die Telekommunikationswirtschaft hinterfragt. Denn sein jüngerer Bruder Cameron arbeitet seit zwanzig Jahren als Anwalt für eine Bostoner Kanzlei, die die Interessen großer Unternehmen dieser Branche vertritt. Wohl nicht zufällig ist sie auch einer der größten Wahlkampfspender für John Kerry. Sein langjähriger Bürochef David Leiter wiederum vertritt die Kanzlei als Lobbyist in Washington. Das "Center for Public Integrity" verweist nun darauf, dass Kerry zahlreiche Gesetzesinitiativen zu Gunsten der Telekommunikationswirtschaft, vor allem bei der Einführung des Mobilfunks, ergriffen oder unterstützt hat. Die Stellungnahme des Büros von John Kerry zu den Vorwürfen klingt vorhersehbar: "Der Senator trifft seine Entscheidungen, auch hinsichtlich wichtiger Fragen dieser Branche, allein danach, was vernünftige Politik ist und was im besten Interesse der Menschen liegt, die er vertritt."

Nun ist klar, dass, wer im amerikanischen Wahlsystem bestehen will, sich aus der Spendenpraxis nicht befreien kann. Immerhin zeigt Kerry Problembewusstsein: " Es wird Zeit, dass wir uns dafür schämen, in dem Land mit der niedrigsten Wahlbeteiligung und den höchsten Wahlkampfspenden unter den Demokratien zu leben." Gemessen an den Summen, die in den bislang teuersten Wahlkampf der amerikanischen Geschichte gepumpt werden, sind die genannten Beträge ohnehin Kleingeld. Die so genannte Kriegskasse des Präsidenten wurde zu Beginn des Jahres auf gut hundert Millionen Dollar geschätzt. Ziel der republikanischen Geldeintreiber ist die Verdoppelung dieses Betrages im Laufe der Kampagne, mindestens fünfzig weitere Millionen dürften realistisch sein.

In dieser Größenordnung rechnen auch die Demokraten, die angesichts der Hoffnung, Bush aus dem Weißen Haus vertreiben zu können, auf spendable Anhänger setzen. Offiziell hatte Kerry zur Zeit des Super-Dienstags nur noch 2,4 Millionen Dollar in der Wahlkampfkasse. Doch sein Erfolg ließ auch die Zuwendungen kräftig anwachsen: Innerhalb einer Woche kamen allein 14 Millionen Dollar online aquirierte Spenden zusammen.

Am Ende wird in dieser Hinsicht womöglich annähernde Chancengleichheit zwischen Präsident und Herausforderer herrschen. Der ungewöhnlich frühe und heftige Beginn des Wahlkampfes und die schier unerschöpflichen Mittel bergen allerdings für beide politische Lager das Risiko, Wähler abzuschrecken anstatt anzuziehen. Das heißt: Sollten die Amerikaner bis zum 2. November Monate einer unablässigen politischen Schlacht erleben, dürfte sich John Kerrys Hoffnung auf eine höhere Wahlbeteiligung und die Mobilisierung vieler bisheriger Nichtwähler wohl kaum erfüllen. Diese Stimmen aber braucht er.

Kommt es anders, hätte paradoxerweise der aufwendigste Wahlkampf der amerikanischen Demokraten nur einem genutzt - George W. Bush.


Die Autoren
Jochen Arntz, Jahrgang 1965, Studium der Geschichte und der Germanistik. Seit 1995 Redakteur der Berliner Zeitung, Ressortleiter der Seite 3. Arbeitete 2002 im Rahmen eines Stipendiums der Anna-Maria & Stephen M. Kellen-Stiftung als Gastredakteur in Massachusetts, wo er John Kerry persönlich begegnete.

Holger Schmale, Jahrgang 1953, Studium der Publizistik, Geschichte, Politischen Wissenschaften. Ab 1978 Redakteur der Deutschen Presse-Agentur in Berlin und Bonn. 1997-2001 USA-Korrespondent der dpa in Washington. 2001 Wechsel als politischer Korrespondent zur Berliner Zeitung.

Ihr Beitrag ist dem Buch entnommen: Jochen Arntz und Holger Schmale " John Kerry Kandidat gegen Bush - Amerika vor der Entscheidung" . Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch 2004. 160 Seiten (KiWi 860, Originalausgabe, Taschenbuch), 7,90 Euro. ISBN 3-462-03445-6. Das Buch wird in der kommenden Woche ausgeliefert. ber

Dossier: Der Kampf ums Weiße Haus http://www.fr-aktuell.de/uswahl/

Erscheinungsdatum 28.05.2004

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COLUMN ONE / THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Cashiered Over Cache in Baghdad
When GIs stumbled on multimillion-dollar stash, Matt Novak dived in. He then `tried to make it right,` but thinks he got a raw deal.
By David Zucchino
Times Staff Writer

May 28, 2004

HINESVILLE, Ga. — He took the money. Sgt. Matt Novak admits that much. He and several fellow soldiers could not resist after discovering nearly $200 million in $100 bills sealed inside a gardener`s cottage in a Baghdad palace complex last spring.

"Millions of dollars makes a lot of things go through your mind," Novak told a military review board in Georgia in December after confessing that he and the others had stolen about $12 million.

A year after American soldiers discovered about $760 million of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein`s cash hidden in several cottages, the case still raises questions. U.S. Treasury Department officials are trying to determine whether Hussein got the money from illegal oil sales and kickbacks, even as the cash is being spent on the U.S. occupation and rebuilding effort.

For Novak, one of six soldiers accused of stealing seven-inch-thick bundles of $100 bills, the affair has been a bitter lesson in military justice. He confessed, named higher-ups and led investigators to millions he and others had tried to hide. He has since been kicked out of the Army and banned from nearby Ft. Stewart, while the five others implicated received administrative punishments — and two were promoted, Novak`s lawyer said.

"I really thought everything would work out if I just did the right thing and told the truth," Novak said in the living room of his brick home. "I`m not asking anybody to feel sorry for me — I did something wrong. But I tried to make it right, and the Army got me good."

Novak, a trim, energetic man of 34, spends his days holed up in his house, the blinds drawn and the door locked. He chain-smokes, gulps coffee and cares for his young son and daughter while his wife works and attends night classes. He fears he is sinking into depression, in part because he is barred from civilian jobs at Ft. Stewart, where he feels his 12 years as a medic and supply sergeant could be put to good use.

There is one more thing troubling Novak: He says other soldiers have told him that several soldiers got away with stealing millions. According to these soldiers, Novak said, the money was buried at Baghdad University and in the desert outside the city. He said the soldiers noted the global positioning system coordinates and planned to return to recover the money.

Other soldiers scooped up cash hurriedly discarded by Novak and his confederates, he said, later spending $100 bills in stores in Hinesville. Novak said soldiers took photos of one another waving wads of cash.

While he was under investigation, Novak said, he twice took his allegations to Ft. Stewart`s inspector general`s office and was told to tell the Army`s Criminal Investigation Division. He said he opted not to say anything more to the CID, which had investigated him.

A CID spokesman in Ft. Belvoir, Va., referred questions to Ft. Stewart. A base spokesman, citing privacy issues, said he could not discuss the case.

For Novak`s old unit, the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), the theft was a troubling coda to the division`s dramatic capture of Baghdad in April 2003. The first cash was discovered April 18, just nine days after the division toppled the Hussein regime. In all, soldiers found about $760 million sealed inside five bricked-up gardeners` cottages in a neighborhood of mansions and manicured gardens.

After Novak implicated two higher-ranking soldiers, the division`s commanders offered amnesty against criminal prosecution to soldiers who confessed and cooperated. The commanders "decided that they did not want a black eye for the Army," a division captain testified at Novak`s administrative separation hearing in December. "Instead of focusing on prosecuting the soldiers for the crime, they decided to get the money back."

Novak`s attorney, Capt. Bernard A. Quarterman Jr., said he "argued to the [administrative separation] board that the Army went after Sgt. Novak because he named names."

"The only person who really told the truth was Sgt. Novak," Quarterman said, "and he is the only one who was chaptered out" — drummed out of the Army.

Pentagon and U.S. Treasury officials said some cash probably came from Iraq`s Central Bank, which was looted of $1 billion by Hussein`s sons, Uday and Qusay, three days before the regime collapsed. (The sons were killed in July in a firefight with U.S. forces.) And the money almost certainly was raised, the officials said, through Iraqi oil sales in defiance of United Nations sanctions and through kickbacks from oil suppliers.

Officials speculate that the cash was hidden by Baath Party and Republican Guard leaders as they fled ahead of the U.S. invasion. The fact that so much was left behind suggested Iraqi officials had also hauled away staggering amounts of money, which now could be funding the anti-American insurgency.

Green plastic seals on the galvanized aluminum cash boxes were stamped "Jordan National Bank." Each contained $4 million. Tape strips on locks on some of the bricked-up cottages were signed by a Republican Guard commander, Lt. Gen. Mohammed Ibrahim. They were dated March 20, 2003, the day the U.S. invasion began.

Whatever the source of the money, more than 99% of the $100 bills — most of them uncirculated currency with sequential serial numbers — were genuine.

The Pentagon comptroller`s office said the cash and other "seized assets" were being spent to rebuild Iraq. So far, $348 million has been spent on reconstruction and humanitarian assistance; $308 million on Iraqi ministry operations; $180 million on emergency response programs; and $90 million on gasoline and liquid propane.Novak said he went looking for the money only because a fellow soldier wanted to "get on TV" for his family back home. He said he and two other soldiers took a Humvee gun truck to the gardener`s cottages where two sergeants had found and turned in $320 million that day.

They spotted a similar cottage nearby. Novak said he, Spc. Jamal Mann and Pfc. Jeffrey Moyer used a tanker`s crowbar to collapse the wall. Novak smashed a locked door with a brick, cutting his hand on window glass and splattering the cottage floor with blood.

Inside, the soldiers found dozens of sealed aluminum boxes. Novak said he pried one open and pulled out bundles of $100 bills wrapped in rubber bands. The soldiers all stared at one another, he said.

"Up to this point, it was all fun and games," Novak said. "Now it suddenly got serious."

In his statement to investigators, Novak wrote: "Many things went through my mind — my three children, my wife, my future not in the Army. When that first box was opened, I felt like everything was out of control."

Mann wrote in his CID statement: "The first thing I was thinking when I saw the money was maybe I could pay for school, help my family out and pay some bills."

In an instant, Novak said, the soldiers were grabbing stacks of cash and stuffing it into their uniforms. It was an impulse, he said — an opportunity seized reflexively, without regard to the consequences.

"To see all that money in one place put us in awe," Novak told his separation hearing board.

Mann wrote: "To me, it was like free money."

At one point, Novak said, two higher-ranking men entered the cottage: 1st Lt. Charles Greenley and 1st Sgt. Eric Wilson. Novak said he shouted to Wilson, "Aren`t you retiring soon, first sergeant?" and tossed him a bundle of cash. Novak said he remarked to Greenley, "Hey, LT, you`re senior," and tossed him a bundle.

After a second box was opened, Novak said, he panicked and decided to hide the cash. He said he, Mann and Moyer dropped two boxes into a nearby canal. They scooped up loose cash off the cottage floor and hid it in a tree, near a drain and in shrubbery along a narrow roadway.

Lt. Greenley`s driver, Spc. Darnell Emanuel, told investigators that he, Mann and Greenley took another box and buried it near where their unit was based.

Commanders summoned to the cottage realized money was missing. Just as the commanders arrived, Novak said, he realized he still had a $100 bill in his pocket and he stuffed it into the grill of a parked truck.

The commanders searched the area and found $600,000 in the tree. Another $300,000 was found later in a cooler inside the truck that transported the cash for safekeeping.

Lt. Col. Philip deCamp, commander of the armored task force to which Novak`s engineer company was attached, confronted Novak, Mann and Moyer and advised them of their rights.

Confined to barracks over the next few days, Novak said he was overcome by guilt and shame. "I was torn up, just distraught," he said. "If it wasn`t for my wife and kids, I`d have blown my brains out."

He decided to write a statement, confessing to the thefts and naming Greenley and Wilson, the two higher-ranking soldiers.

Novak said he led CID investigators to the canal, where agents found the two boxes containing $8 million. They recovered another $178,000 in bundles and loose cash along the roadway.

Meanwhile, Mann confessed to mailing 12 envelopes, each stuffed with $600 to $700, to his mother and four other relatives in Newark, N.J. Postal agents in New Jersey intercepted the money and notes reading "I LOVE U."

On April 22, Emanuel led agents to a hole where he said he and Greenley earlier that day had reburied the box they had taken four days before, according to a CID report. About $3.8 million was recovered.

After the commanders` amnesty offer, a plastic Meal Ready To Eat spaghetti bag containing about $275,000 in $100 bills was found on the desk of the task force executive officer. With the cash was a note that read: "Rest went down sewer."

A CID report said Wilson told investigators: "That money was turned in during the amnesty period. Nobody was supposed to get in trouble." An analysis of Wilson`s handwriting compared to the note was inconclusive.

Authorities at Ft. Stewart declined to specify punishments given to the five soldiers besides Novak, citing privacy issues. Because of the amnesty offer, none of the six was criminally prosecuted.

Quarterman said that except for Novak, the soldiers received nothing more serious than letters of reprimand and/or poor fitness reports. Moyer testified that he was promoted despite what he called "the incident." Novak and Mann said Emanuel also was promoted.

DeCamp said Greenley was stripped of his command and given a poor fitness report. He said Wilson was given a poor fitness report and assigned to lesser duties with no chance of promotion. "Justice was served" in the case, deCamp said.

He noted that all other soldiers who found cash turned it in, along with $6.1 million his soldiers recovered when they foiled a bank robbery in Baghdad the same week.

At the separation hearing, Novak — a Gulf War veteran — was praised as an outstanding supply sergeant.

One officer said of Novak: "I would personally like him to be my supply sergeant because he knows all the answers…. I would go to war with him without a doubt." A month before the money was found, Novak`s battalion commander had awarded him the Army Achievement Medal, citing his "exceptional performance" during the war.

James C. Mead, a CID agent, testified that while Greenley and Wilson gave him false statements, "Sgt. Novak came and said the truth…. His confession was accurate. The information that he gave us did identify additional subjects."

The board — two commissioned officers and one noncommissioned officer — found Novak`s actions warranted separation from the Army. However, the board recommended he be given a six-month probationary period to "show successful rehabilitation." They called him "a deserving soldier whose service should not be ended."

But a month later, Maj. Gen. William G. Webster, the division commander, ordered Novak discharged. "Conduct such as yours is prejudicial to good order and discipline…. It demonstrates a lack of respect for law and order," Webster wrote.

Mann, who said he was allowed to leave the Army with an honorable discharge when his enlistment was up, said: "They treated Matt unfairly…. He couldn`t tell the first sergeant and the lieutenant what to do. We all did what we did on our own."

He added: "Any soldier — any human being — who came across that much money would have done the same thing. It was just too tempting, trust me."

Authorities at Ft. Stewart responded to a request for an interview with Webster by providing written responses from Maj. Robert F. Resnick of the base legal office. Resnick said Webster decided that "Sgt. Novak`s actions were far too serious" for him to remain in the Army. He said Novak "was very much the ringleader of this theft and he duped subordinates into joining him."

To Novak, the ultimate irony lies in what he says his commanders asked him to do before and after the money was found.

He said he was ordered or encouraged to grab computers, printers, office supplies and electrical equipment from abandoned Iraqi offices and homes. An Iraqi truck used to deliver the found millions for safekeeping had been taken by Novak off the streets of Baghdad for use by his unit, he said.

Even after he was accused of trying to steal the $12 million, Novak said, his commanders asked him to tear out electrical supplies and toilet fixtures from Hussein`s palaces to supply his unit after it was transferred from Baghdad to Fallouja.

"Nobody had any problem with telling me to take stuff. They all said I was their go-to guy," Novak said.

All he asks now, Novak said, is that the same treatment be given other soldiers who took money. "I lost my pride," he said. "I have nothing else to lose."

A few days before Hussein`s cash was discovered, several Americans in the elite neighborhood noticed that a cinderblock wall around a cottage had been smashed and the door broken. No one thought much of it until the $760 million was discovered. Only then did people speculate about the significance of several broken green Jordan National Bank seals on the cottage floor.

Had millions in cash been stored there? If so, was it taken by Iraqis or by the first Americans to arrive?

For Novak, a man who tried to get away with a fortune and now regrets his actions, it only suggests that millions of dollars are still missing.

"I guess you could call this a real life `Who Wants to Be a Millionaire` story," he said.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY
Freedom and Fear Just Over the Hill
By Clancy Sigal

May 28, 2004

April was the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Iraq, with 137 killed and about 1,000 wounded. Some of the casualties were barely out of high school. Five pregnant wives were left behind. Thirty-six of the dead were fathers, and 60 children lost a parent. At least 21 American soldiers thus far have committed suicide in Iraq, not counting those who killed themselves after returning home. By all accounts, including the most recent survey by the Pentagon itself, troop morale is low.

At least two U.S. military deserters — Pvts. Brandon Hughey, 19, and Jeremy Hinzman, 25, — this spring crossed the border into Canada asking for sanctuary. A Quaker-aided Canadian "underground railway" was there to receive them.

Here in the United States, well-established pacifist and "GI hotline" groups report escalating calls from soldiers actively seeking help to file for conscientious objection. A combat squad leader in Iraq, Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, was convicted this month by a military jury of desertion for leaving his combat unit in protest of the war.

The number of deserters — that is, those absent 30 days "with intent to stay away" — is still small, nothing yet like the mutinous days of the Vietnam-era "GI resistance." But we can expect more, especially if a draft is revived.

Desertion is the ultimate act of cowardice or defiance, depending on who is doing the deserting from what. The few Nazi soldiers who threw away their rifles and took off were considered "good," as were Saddam Hussein`s troops who defected during Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. But what about our own GIs who go AWOL from the no-exit Iraq war out of expediency or principle?

In World War II, only one deserter, Pvt. Eddie Slovik, was executed. During Vietnam, when I was a stationmaster at the London end of a worldwide underground railway for war resisters, the Pentagon`s policy tended toward leniency, if only because there were so many runaways. Once, at U.S. naval headquarters in Grosvenor Square, London, I attended the court-martial of a sailor AWOL for five years but who got off as not guilty because he had taken his hat with him, thus "proving" he might one day return to duty.

On the other hand, for AWOLs and their families, the act of desertion is usually life-changing, with profound and unpredictable consequences, aside from legal penalties.

It`s tricky to draw parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, but there are certain similarities. As in today`s army, most deserters were volunteers, not conscripts; most came from rural or small-town America; and in almost every case, the deserter`s life changed forever.

A decision to go "over the hill" might begin on an impulse resulting from a girlfriend`s "Dear John" letter or a petty wrangle with a sergeant but end with the deserter, often for the first time, questioning the very purpose and meaning of his life. It could also mean years of hiding, and constant fear of being found. Some Vietnam deserters I know never got over the habit of running.

Desertion is a hard road. To survive as an outcast, reviled as a traitor, supported perhaps by a few friends and an antiwar movement that itself was divided over desertion, took guts, guile and tenacity — just the qualities an army needs in war.

The Vietnam-era deserters are not a faceless statistic to me. I`ve kept in touch with some of them. Legally they`re in the clear, as a result of presidents Ford and Carter`s amnesties, or because they made a private accommodation with the military. Those who survived life on the run are today`s normal citizens. One is a nurse to terminally ill children, another an urban sociologist with a focus on air pollution, another a computer businessman overseas. For whatever reason, desertion is the ultimate rejection of war. It`s an embarrassing, difficult subject, not least for the Pentagon, which keeps changing its policy from arresting and sending deserters back to their units for "rehabilitation" to discharging them in disgust to whatever the latest policy happens to be.

In the past, the Pentagon just wanted the problem to go away. It didn`t. And won`t.

Clancy Sigal is a novelist and screenwriter.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Published on Thursday, May, 27, 2004 by Reuters
Opposition Growing to US Exemption on Global Court
by Evelyn Leopold


UNITED NATIONS - The United States may not have enough U.N. votes to exempt American soldiers from prosecution by a new global criminal court, with China now questioning the action in view of the prison scandal in Iraq, diplomats said on Thursday.

A Security Council draft resolution designed to put U.S. peacekeepers out of the reach of the International Criminal Court expires on July 1. A renewal was delayed last week by China and it is expected to go before the council again after a resolution on Iraq`s transition is adopted.

Two years ago the council voted unanimously in favor of the measure when the Bush administration began to veto U.N. peacekeeping missions after members hesitated.

Last year three nations abstained but this year there are enough abstentions that could bring the resolution perilously close to defeat. A minimum of nine votes in favor is needed for adoption in the 15-member council.

Brazil, Spain, France and Germany have signaled they would abstain and Chile, Romania and Benin as well as China are considering it.

But some diplomats said the resolution would squeak through because no one wanted to see Washington kill U.N. peacekeeping missions. "The British say they are holding their noses and voting for it and others may do the same," said one envoy.

But China`s position is an unusual one as Beijing has neither ratified nor signed the treaty establishing the court.

`A VERY BAD SIGNAL`

Several diplomats said that China was bargaining with the United States over Taiwan`s status in the World Trade Organization, one of the few international bodies that admit both Beijing and Taipei.

However, China`s U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, denied this was the case and said the resolution was sending "a very bad signal at this time," especially to Iraq.

He told Reuters the U.S. abuse of Iraqi prisoners raised the need for "strict observance of international law." The resolution, he said, was a signal that "whatever you are doing, you are being protected by the Security Council."

"So we find it difficult to say `yes` to this resolution," Wang said. "The United States has difficulties with ICC. We also have difficulties, but from different points of view."

The Bush administration argues that the tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands, could be used for politically motivated law suits against far-flung American soldiers. Supporters say the court`s statutes exclude countries with a proper judicial system, like the United States, from prosecution.

"The language agreed upon two years ago embodies a fair but hard-fought compromise that allows us to participate in U.N. peacekeeping operations, while protecting our personnel serving in these operations," said Richard Grenell, spokesman for U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte.

The court, the first permanent global war crimes tribunal, was set up to prosecute the world`s worst atrocities, such as genocide, mass war crimes and systematic human rights abuses.

Specifically, the U.S. draft resolution would place any soldier or official out of the court`s reach from any nation if they served on missions established or authorized by the United Nations. This would apply to those from countries that did not ratify the 1998 treaty creating the court.

Of the 15 Security Council members, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Romania and Benin are among 94 nations that have ratified the 1998 treaty creating the court.

Russia, Chile, Angola, Algeria and the Philippines, are among 135 nations that signed the treaty. China and Pakistan have neither signed nor ratified and the Bush administration rescinded the U.S. signature.

© Copyright Reuters 2004